History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865

Boston: The Boston Book Company, 1894. Very good.. xvi, 452pp., plus frontispiece and numerous additional illustrations, including nine maps (five single-page and two folding). Original deep blue cloth, spine and front board lettered in gilt. Ex-Shirley Public Library, with shelf mark on spine, bookplate on front pastedown, and paper remnants on rear endpapers, and priced accordingly. Moderate edge wear and scuffing to boards, spine ends a bit frayed. Minor occasional foxing to text. Overall good plus. The preferred second edition, revised and corrected, of an important historical account of the brave African-American soldiers of the legendary 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War. When the regiment was sent to Florida, a report stated, "had it not been for the glorious Fifty-fourth Massachusetts the whole brigade would have been captured or annihilated." Although the Black soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts knew that they would not be treated humanely by the Confederates, according to the usages of war, they "proved their courage in so many battles and with such serious losses as to earn a place among the three hundred fighting regiments chronicled in Fox's 'Regimental Losses in the American Civil War.'" (The publisher of Emilio’s history quoted in Negro History 1553-1903). The present second edition is notable not only for corrections to the roster but for the additional forty-page Appendix on the Confederate treatment of the African-American prisoners not found in the first edition. Library Company, Afro-Americana Collection 3486. Blockson 3033. Nevins, Civil War, p. I:86. Work, p.399.