THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1881. 2 volumes. First edition, in the publisher’s best binding of half morocco . Illustrated with numerous black and white portrait plates and many maps including a number folding. Tall, thick, 8vo, publisher’s best binding of original three-quarter dark brown morocco over feathered marbled boards, gilt lettered on the spines between raised bands, marbled endleaves and edges. xxi, 707, [4] ads; xvii, 808, [4] ads. Index in each volume. An unusually nice set in the publisher’s scarce leather binding. The leather is still supple and dark with bright gilt work and only a bit of very minor wear to the extremities and rubbing to the paper on the boards. Internally sturdy and sound, hinges fine and tight and only a bit of the all but inevitable toning to the paper. SCARCE AND IMPORTANT FIRST EDITION IN THE ELUSIVE DELUXE BINDING. Nevins holds that this, the great work to come out of the Confederacy’s political system ‘conceals much’ and that it is the Confederate President’s most significant argument on secession and states’ rights. Eicher (154) considered it a “ valuable portrait of the postwar psychological state of Jefferson Davis. It is one of the great tomes to come out of the American Civil War when the remarkably literary and most eminent of the victors and vanquished penned their memoirs for the nation’s posterity.