Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - May - 2004 Issue
Rare and Unusual Americana <br>From David M. Lesser
Increase Mather describes King Philip's War from the point of view of the colonists.
Freedom of the press is the issue in Rights of Corporations and Reporters… This is an 1857 account from South Carolina about Robert Gibbes, a newspaper editor ejected from a city meeting upon which he planned to report. Gibbes sued various public officials, winning $25 from the Mayor and 6 1/4 cents from the Chief of Police. Item 52. $450.
The South wasn’t the only place interested in secession in the 1860s. There was southern sympathy in New York City at the time, and Mayor Fernando Wood was such a sympathizer. In his Communication from His Honor the Mayor, Fernando Wood… in 1861, the mayor, saying dissolution of the federal government is inevitable, calls for the city’s secession from the state of New York. Neither movement was successful, but New York City would become the scene of draft riots later in the Civil War as its devotion to the Union cause was not always unshakable. Item 121. $250.
Increase Mather and his son, Cotton, may be most often associated with witches, but Mather, Senior, wrote one of the most important books on King Philip’s War. This retells the conflict between Massachusetts settlers and the Wampanoag Indians under Metacomet (aka King Philip) that resulted in enormous casualties to both sides. Mather’s A Brief History of the War with the Indians in New England… is a rare and important work of 17th century Americana. This is the London edition, printed the same year as the Boston first edition. Item 76. $16,500.
Item 109 is Friedrich von Steuben’s Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States… published in 1794. These were actually prepared by von Steuben in 1779 at the low point of the American Revolution. It was the German immigrant and former Prussian military officer von Steuben who did much to shape General Washington’s troops at Valley Forge into a legitimate army. $750.
David M. Lesser’s Catalogue 900 is available at the following link: http://www.americanaexchange.com/collectors/newreport.asp?cid=89&R=0.
