INSCRIBED PRESENTATION-ASSOCIATION FIRST EDITION OF JOEL COOK'S FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN: THE SIEGE OF RICHMOND, 1862

(MCCLELLAN, George B.) COOK, Joel. The Siege of Richmond: a Narrative of the Military Operations of Major-General George B. McClellan during the Months of May and June, 1862. Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1862. Octavo, original dark brown cloth.

First edition of this war correspondent's eyewitness account of the 1862 Peninsula Campaign, the first offensive of McClellan's newly formed Army of the Potomac, presentation copy inscribed to a fellow reporter on the front free endpaper: "L.A. Gobright Esq. with the compliments of Joel Cook."

Joel Cook was a reporter for the Philadelphia Press who was embedded with McClellan's Army of the Potomac during the unsuccessful Peninsula Campaign. The recipient of this copy, Laurence Augustus Gobright (1816-81), was a renowned fellow journalist in charge of the Associated Press' Washington, DC bureau for some 25 years. "When the federal government imposed strict censorship of telegraphed news out of Washington in the early days of the war, Gobright was the only correspondent specifically exempted from censorship by the State Department" (ANB). Cook's narrative includes chapters on the organization of the Army of the Potomac, transportation, conditions in the peninsula, the Battle of Seven Pines (a.k.a. Fair Oaks), the siege, and finally the retreat and the Seven Days Battles.

A lasting outcome of this otherwise inconclusive campaign was the promotion of Robert E. Lee to commander of Confederate forces following General Joseph Johnston's wounding at the Battle of Seven Pines. Lee immediately displayed his aggressive instincts as he harried the Union forces throughout their withdrawal, known as the Seven Days Battles. Even at the time, Cook presciently notes: "The wounding of General Johnston was one of the best things for the enemy which had ever happened. A more marked change for the better never was made in any body of men than that wrought in his army by the sensible actions of General Lee" (247). Despite the withdrawal of the Union forces, Cook concludes: "There are few men in America… more capable of subduing the rebellion that Major-General George Brinton McClellan." Dornbusch III: 1538. Bookplate of the Hunt Library at Carnegie-Mellon University, stamped "Withdrawn."

Text clean, some rubbing to corners and spine ends. An extremely good presentation copy in the original cloth.