The First History of African American Military Service in the Civil War
The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity.
Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1867.
Price: $4,500.00
About the item
First edition. xvi, 380 pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Publisher's brown cloth, rebacked, endpapers renewed. Repairs to fore-edges of first two leaves. Sabin 8595; Blockson 3521; Work, p. 398. See Ezra Greenspan, William Brown Wells: An African American Life (New York & London: 2014).
Item #366890
Drawn from newspapers, regimental histories, and first-hand accounts related to him by veterans and family members, Brown's groundbreaking work was the first history of African American military service in the Civil Era to be published. Brown writes in the Preface: "Feeling anxious to preserve for future reference an account of the part which the Negro took in suppressing the Slaveholders' Rebellion, I have been induced to write this work."
Brown "practiced a different kind of history. His was a dynamic, popular history written close to the ground level from odd angles, created from a grab bag of sources and populated mostly by common people performing heroic actions. Brown's history-making pen put black men in the center and relegated everyone else to the periphery. Even Lincoln ... was mostly marginalized ... His major appearance came chiefly in the role of the assassinated president; only martyrdom made Lincoln truly palatable. Grant, Sherman, Lee and their subordinates likewise left few footprints in Brown's history. Brown replaced these standard figures with a black set of military heroes ..." (Greenspan, pp. 431-433).
Sold strictly by subscription, see Greenspan for a detailed account of the marketing of the book by and to African Americans.
