"ONE OF THE GREAT TURNING POINTS OF THE WAR": FIRST EDITION OF POLLARD'S SEVEN DAYS' BATTLES, 1862, PRINTED IN RICHMOND "ALMOST BEFORE THE SULFUROUS GUN SMOKE DISSIPATED OVER THE SCENES OF THE FIGHTING"
(CIVIL WAR) (POLLARD, Edward A.). The Seven Days' Battles in Front of Richmond.. An Outline Narrative of the Series of Engagements Which… Resulted in the Defeat and Retreat of the Northern Army Under Major-General M'Clellan. Richmond: West and Johnston, 1862. Slim octavo, period-style half calf, marbled boards, original front blue wrapper bound in, original stitching; pp. 45.
First edition of Pollard's dramatic reportage, anonymously issued and "compiled from the detailed accounts" of Richmond newspapers, documenting Confederate victories in seven crucial battles between Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and McClellan's Army of the Potomac, featuring "plenty of first-hand evidence… of distinctly contemporary immediacy" (In Taller Cotton).
The Seven Days Battles of June and July 1862 achieved "a thrilling, war-changing Confederate triumph… made Robert E. Lee famous" and saw the retreat of Union forces under McClellan (Gwynne, Rebel Yell, 363). These key battles, which marked Lee's first campaign leading the Army of Northern Virginia, "saved Richmond, inspirited a Confederate people… and helped set the stage for a strategic counteroffensive that would take the Army of Northern Virginia to Second Manassas and across the Potomac to Sharpsburg… Taken overall, the ramifications were such that the Richmond campaign must be reckoned one of the great turning points of the war" (Gallagher, ed., Richmond Campaign, x).
"Richmond journalist Pollard launched this summary of the battles around Richmond into print almost before the sulfurous gun smoke dissipated over the scenes of fighting… Although Pollard grumbled in a preface about General Lee's security-driven inhospitable attitude toward newspapermen ('the exclusion from the lines of our armies of those whose province it has hitherto been to chronicle the events of the war'), plenty of first-hand evidence appears in these pages, all of it obviously of distinctly contemporary immediacy" (
In Taller Cotton 152). First edition: title page verso with "Evans & Cogswell, printers." Howes P461. Parrish & Willingham 5001. Crandall 2654. Wright II:520. Lightly penciled owner inscriptions to rear blank.
Text generally fresh, light chipping to original front wrapper. An extremely good Confederate work.