TWO WARS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Mexican War; War Between the States, a Diary; Reconstruction Period, His Experience; Incidents, Reminiscences, etc.

Nashville, Tenn.: Confederate Veteran, 1901. xv, [i], 404 pages, plus frontispiece portrait of the author. Numerous full-page portraits and maps printed with the text. Errata slip tipped-in. Original dark red cloth lettered in gilt with pictorial flag centerpiece stamped in red, white, and blue. 24 x 17 cm. Good. Spine sun-darkened, worn at ends, and with small chip at base; corners worn. Front hinge started but holding; binding cracked after frontispiece, also holding; front free endpaper cleanly detached and present. Frontispiece and the portions of the title page not protected by the tissue guard are tanned; mild age-toning throughout; a few traces of marginal soiling or foxing. Provenance: Signature of T.C.M. Thompson dated Aug. 1902 on the front pastedown and that of his brother, Waddy Thompson, on the front flyleaf. [They were both sons of Hugh Smith Thompson (1836-1904), the Citadel instructor who led the attack on the Star of the West and who later served as governor of South Carolina. Thomas Clarkson Thompson (1860-1938) served as the mayor of Chattanooga (1909-1915) and presided over the establishment of Warner Park. He was a prominent businessman in the city and founded the children’s hospital that today bears his name. Waddy Thompson (1867-1939) was the author of a popular school history of the United States (1904). He was the namesake of his great-uncle, Waddy Thompson, Jr., the U.S. Representative and Minister to Mexico.] FIRST EDITION. Samuel Gibbs French (1818-1910) was a New Jersey native and West Point graduate who rose to distinction as an artillery officer in the Mexican War. He left the army in 1856 and became a plantation manager in Mississippi, where he had married into a prominent family. He joined the state forces at the start of the Civil War, was appointed a brigadier general in the Confederate Army in Oct. 1861 and was promoted to major general a year later. French initially served in the eastern theater, working on the defenses of North Carolina and Richmond, and fought in some of the Peninsula battles and the siege of Suffolk. Impressed by his ideas on the defense of the Mississippi, Secretary of War Seddon sent him west in the summer of 1863 to serve under J.E. Johnston. He participated in the failed attempt to save the Confederate forces at Vicksburg and then resisted Sherman's advances on Jackson and Meridian. He commanded a division during Atlanta campaign, made an unsuccessful attempt to take Allatoona Pass, and served under Hood in the invasion of Tennessee. His division was devastated at the battle of Franklin and French contracted an eye infection which forced him to relinquish command before the battle of Nashville. He was absent for much of the rest of the war and returned to duty to defend Mobile shortly before it fell. After the war, he resumed planting in Mississippi. In this military memoir, French is highly critical of his superiors, especially John Bell Hood, and attacks Gens. Hardee and Polk. Eicher argues that his partisanship undermines the credibility of his account and calls his casualty figures "wildly inaccurate," but states: "the work is well composed, told with enthusiasm, and provides significant commentary on a large number of officers on both sides of the Civil War and in the Mexican War as well." –“The Civil War in Books,” 221. "Though this narrative is largely military, it has considerable comment on matters of travel interest, especially in that part of the account which contains the author's diary." --Coulter, “Travels in the Confederate States,” 176. Nevins, CWB I, p. 91. Dornbusch II, 2742. Nicholson, p. 296.�