Four Years of Fighting

First Edition.
Presentation copy. Inscribed by Coffin.

Four Years of Fighting: A Volume of Personal Observation with the Army and Navy, from the First Battle of Bull Run to the Fall of Richmond.


Hardcover. Near Fine. Frontispiece. Illustrated. 8vo. Modern black cloth. Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1866. First Edition. Presentation copy, inscribed by Coffin on the front endpaper, "Capt. G[eorge] G[renville] Benedict / from the Author / C. C. Coffin / June 1st 1866."

Charles Carleton Coffin was one of the best-known newspaper correspondents of the Civil War and has been called the Ernie Pyle of his era. George Grenville Benedict, who fought with 12th Vermont Infantry, was among a group of men involved in the successful flank attack on Pickett's Charge during the Battle of Gettysburg. For his action on the third day of the battle he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Benedict's esteemed two-volume set, Vermont in the Civil War, was published in 1886. Coffin was frequently the first to get war reports from the battlefields to the media. He was present at most of the major battles in the eastern theater, including Antietam and Gettysburg. He was the first to break the story of the Battle of the Wilderness, and was to become the only news correspondent to serve throughout the entire war from before the battle of Bull Run, through Lees surrender at Appomattox. Some mild toning; a few institutional markings, o/w a fine copy.