Advance and Retreat

John Bell HOOD   |   P.G.T. BEAUREGARD

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Advance and Retreat

"A GENUINELY TRAGIC BOOK, BRAVE AND BITTER": FIRST EDITION OF HOOD'S ADVANCE AND RETREAT, 1880

HOOD, John Bell. Advance and Retreat. Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate Armies. New Orleans: G.T. Beauregard, 1880. Octavo, original brown cloth gilt recased.

First edition of Hood's dramatic Confederate memoir, with two full-page engraved portraits and four maps, one folding, this copy with the owner inscription, dated year of publication, of a Tennessee officer who fought for the Confederacy, in original cloth.

Hood's memoir focuses on his Confederate service, from his early involvement at Second Manassas and Sharpsburg to his surrender at Natchez, Mississippi. Though much admired as a divisional and corps commander, Hood's aggressive tendencies helped to seal the fate of the Confederacy at the Battle of Atlanta. Hood took over army command after Johnston's removal and decided to move his troops from their well-entrenched positions in and around Atlanta to attack Sherman's numerically superior forces. The resulting rout broke the last Southern stronghold and freed the way for Sherman's infamous march to the sea. Of Advance and Retreat, Freeman wrote in The South to Posterity, "This is a genuinely tragic book, brave and bitter, wistful and manly, touched with humor in the early chapters, grim in its recountal of the circumstances which defeated his final plan of operations." Tall Cotton 93. Eicher 240. Wright 1051. Howes H622. Owner inscription of James W. Blackmore of Gallatin, Tennessee dated March 17, 1880, the year of publication. During the Civil War, he served as an officer in the 2nd Tennessee Regiment, and "participated in the battles of Manassas, Richmond, Perryville, Murfreesboro, and all those battles of Johnston and Sherman's campaign, surrendering with the Western Army at Greensboro, NC." At war’s end he became a lawyer and served as a state senator from 1883-87 before his death in 1914 (Confederate Veteran Magazine).

Interior generally fresh with scattered foxing, mild embrowning, recased with repair to spine head of original cloth. A very good copy with a distinctive Confederate provenance.

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