The American Cyclops: The Hero of New Orleans, and Spoiler of Silver Spoons, Dubbed L. L. D.

Pasquino [James Fairfax Laughlin]

Verlag: Kelly and Piet, Baltimore, 1868

Beschreibung

Square octavo, 27pp., illustrated. A crisp, clean, very good or better copy in the publisher's green cloth, stamped in gilt on the front board with a rather unappealing portrait of the subject. Some gentle wear to the edges, and a few smudges to the boards, and just a faint hint of foxing internally, but a nice, clean example, with all tissue guards still in place. Contemporary name place of James H. Taylor on the front paste-down, pencilled name of H. F. Shewell on another blank leaf, and a lovely blindstamped bookseller's mark on the front free endpaper (Holmes Book House in Charleston, SC), certainly contemporary. An early volume of "Lost Cause" Confederate apologia, this verse volume was authored and illustrated by a Baltimorean Confederate sympathizer, who here skewers the figure of Union General Benjamin Butler, who was notorious in the Confederacy for his actions as the head of the occupying Union troops in New Orleans during the Civil War. Nicknamed "Spoons" for his unscrupulous petty thieving of various wealthy estates during his time as military governor, he was also reviled as "Beast Butler" among the Confederates for his supposed cruelty. Butler, who had been ambivalent about slavery during the war, grew more and more disgusted with the concept during his time in the south, and in his interactions with the restive Confederates. Butler eventually became perhaps the first Union General to see the opportunity in freeing large numbers of enslaved people by categorizing them as "contraband property" during military operations. Long overdue for a re-appraisal by the historians who have treated him as the kind of impish monster he is portrayed as in this volume, Butler was, in fact, one of the great liberating forces in the Union (his sticky hands notwithstanding). The book is scarce in commerce. Sabin 9620. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 10958

Bibliografische Details

Titel: The American Cyclops: The Hero of New ...

Verlag: Kelly and Piet, Baltimore

Erscheinungsdatum: 1868

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand: Very good +

Auflage: First Edition.