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BOOK DESCRIPTION: 8vo, xii, 225 pgs, portrait frontis, photograph illustrations. Original blue cloth with gilt titled cover and spine. Top edge gilt. CONDITIOIN DESCRIPTION: Minor rubbing to edges and along spine; gilt bright. Interior with book plate of noted Civil War and frontier military historian, Peter Cozzens. Else pages are clean and tight. With clear mylar wrapper. CONTENTS DESCRIPTION: Perry was educated at Harvard Medical School, Boston 1863 and became a surgeon in New York in 1863, before enlisting in the army as an assistant surgeon. While in the army he badly broke his leg in a fall from his horse and was told by another surgeon that it needed to be amputated. Refusing that recommendation, he signed his own discharge papers to travel home. When he arrived home, there was no one to set his leg, so he set it himself with the help of his brother-in-law. After he had partially recovered and completed his medical degree, he returned to active duty on crutches. On his arrival he was required to be inspected by the surgeon-general, so he hid his crutches under the stairs, and managed with great difficulty to walk across the room without them. Perry was commissioned an officer in Company S, Massachusetts 20th Infantry Regiment, 14 April 1863 and mustered out, on or about 10 August 1864. Here a nice copy of the scarce first edition, seldom offered for sale; with no auction records since 1964. REFERENCES: DORN MA236; COULTER 370: Without bitterness or bias John Gardner Perry referred to the enemy as Confederates, ignoring the almost universal term of rebel used by other Northern writers. These letters relate to the area of northern Virginia, giving special attention to Fredericksburg, Warrenton, the Peninsula, and to the regions around City Point and Petersburg. Perry, a surgeon in the Twentieth Massachusetts Regiment, was interested not only in telling of conditions in the Federal hospital service but also in describing the character of both the Confederate civil population and soldiers. He thought the pillaging of private residences was indefensible and whenever possible he strongly repressed it. NEVINS I pg 145: Especially valuable for revelatons on hospital service and personal observations in Virginia. Seller Inventory # 0624030
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