Bookstores
Mentioned
Chapel Hill Rare Books
P.O. Box 456
Carrboro, NC 27510
Tel: (919) 929-8351
Abraham Lincoln Book Shop
357 West Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60610
Tel: (312) 944.3085
Joe Rubinfine
505 South Flagler Drive, Suite 1301
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401
Tel: (561) 659-7077
Main Street Fine Books
206 North Main Street
Galena, IL 61036
Tel: (815) 777-3749
Quaker Hill Books
31 Topstone Road
Redding, CT 06896
Tel: (203) 938-9565
Many eyewitness accounts by soldiers were published
during the war. These books became primary sources for historians and scholars
and are prized by collectors.
Chapel
Hill Rare Books’s O’Dell prefers these chronicles
to later accounts, and Confederate over Union. “There was no Confederate
standing army at the start of the war,” he explained. “They
had to start from scratch. Some prominent Southern community leader would
raise a company and clothe and arm them. Most of the units stayed intact
throughout the war.” Some of the more interesting memoirs he recommends
are Orderly Sergeant Walter A. Clark’s 1900 book,
Under the Stars
and Bars; or Memories of Four Years Service With the Oglethorpes of Augusta,
Georgia ($950) and Edward A. Pollard’s
Observations in the
North: Eight Months in Prison and On Parole ($1,150). Clark recounts
his long service in many states and fought against Sherman’s army
as it marched on Atlanta. Pollard’s book, one of just three Confederate
prison narratives published during the war, has a good claim to the title
of last book published in the Confederacy.
Besides books, publishers quickly printed pamphlets
describing the latest news of the war. William Butts of
Main
Street Fine Books in Galena, Illinois, believes pamphlets are
undervalued. They are often particular to their region and serve as primary
historical sources. But, he said, “They just don’t jump off
the shelf,” even though many booksellers repackage them in boxes and
portfolios. As an example, Butts offered a fifty-six-page pamphlet written
by Dr. J. H. Rouse, a surgeon with the ninth regiment of the Virginia Volunteers,
who witnessed a massacre of troops in West Virginia. His “thrilling
account,”
Horrible Massacre at Guyandotte, Va., and a Journey
to the Rebel Capital, With a Description of Prison Life in a Tobacco Warehouse
at Richmond, is one of the rarest pamphlets relating to the Civil War
in West Virginia, which is seldom covered in war histories. Main Street’s
copy is in “good condition” only, but its scarcity commands
a price of $950.
The invention of photography produced a seismic
shift in publishing and in the history of warfare. Matthew Brady, a successful
studio photographer before the war, led a team of photographers into the
battlefields across the country. In spite of the difficulty and risk, Brady
and his team captured on film many major historical figures and also recorded
the life of the common soldier. Francis Trevelyan Miller’s
Photographic
History of the Civil War, published in 1911, was the first time that
Brady’s collected photographs were assembled and seen by the public. “The
impact of those horrendous battlefield images created quite a stir,” said
Anthony Freyberg of
Quaker
Hill Books. These images are burned into the collective consciousness
of America and changed the way people looked at warfare. Quaker Hill Books
has the complete 10-volume set in “good condition” for $1,250.
Most expert collectors and booksellers agree that
the old mantra is true: The collector should look for the materials that
interest them the most. Joe Rubinfine advises focus. “Develop your
own specialty within a subject. By continuing to learn, you can recognize
importance that a generalist would miss.” end