The Battle of Seven Pines de Smith, Gustavus - 1891

New York: C. G. Crawford, 1891. First edition. 8vo. 202 pp. Maps, facsimiles. Inscribed by the author on the front endpaper to E. J. Quirk, a contractor who worked on engineering projects with Robert E. Lee in New York in the 1840s (Washington and Lee holds an 1866 letter from Quirk to Lee referring to this relationship). Smith (1821-1896), a Kentucky native, graduated from West Point in 1842, and fought in the Mexican War before spending most of the 1850s working as an engineer including a stint in New York where he probably encountered Quirk; almost immediately commissioned major general as the Civil War began, he commanded a wing of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Peninsula Campaign in 1862 and the Georgia militia the last two years of the war. Nevins I, p. 43: "A detailed but painfully defensive tract on the Confederate operations at Fair Oaks by the man who temporarily commanded the army." Dornbusch III, 1573. Nicholson 786. Very good copy with an interesting inscription. Later burgundy buckram, gilt spine title, original gilt-stamped burgundy stiff wrappers bound in. (10024).