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Folio (22 4/8 x 17 inches). One lithographic map "Map of the Operations of the American Army in the Valley of Mexico in August and September 1847" 12 hand-coloured lithographic plates heightened with gum arabic by Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot after Carl Nebel (some spotting throughout and occasional light marginal staining). Original blue linen, printed paper label on the front cover (some staining, a bit scuffed at the extremities). Provenance: with the small library label of the Litchfield Historical Society on the front paste-down. First edition, variant issue in cloth binding, also published in paper wrappers, loose in a portfolio, and in half cloth. This extraordinary book was the work of two men who were masters of their respected trades. George W. Kendall was the pre-eminent war reporter of the day, and Carl Nebel was one of the finest artists working in the Southwest able to transpose chaotic scenes with a vivid eye for detail and composition. THE FINEST LITHOGRAPHIC VIEW OF TEXAS PRODUCED IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY George W. Kendall was a printer, a respected newspaperman, and a journalist whose account of his Santa Fe Trail adventures in 1841-1842, following his surrender to the Mexicans, was first published as letters in serial publications. His story, once released in book form in 1844, was so compelling that it went through many contemporary editions and upwards of 40000 copies were sold through the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1847. Kendall supported the admission of Texas to the Union, and was in Texas as a reporter when he heard the news of the Mexican War. "Despite his earlier experiences, he accompanied the armies of Generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott into Mexico as a war correspondent. While there, he captured a cavalry flag, was wounded in the knee, and earned widespread praise for devising, with Lumsden, methods for swift transmission of his war dispatches to the "Picayune". The men fitted out a small steamer as a press ship; it met other ships bearing war news, readied the news for printing, and took it to New Orleans, where workers at the "Picayune" rushed it to the press. It was circulated in the city and transmitted by swift express riders to other newspapers in the country. Kendall's biographer Fayette Copeland says that his Mexican War journalism made him famous as "the first modern war correspondent and the most widely known reporter in America in his day" (p. 150). "Before leaving Mexico, Kendall had agreed to write a book about the war that a [German] artist, Carl Nebel, was to illustrate. In 1848 Kendall sailed to France to work on the book, which was published in New Orleans and New York in 1851 as "The War between the United States and Mexico Illustrated". While in France, Kendall wrote frequent dispatches for the "Picayune" about the revolution of 1848. He also met and in 1849 married Adeline de Valcourt, a woman twenty-two years his junior, with whom he had four children. In 1852 he and his family moved to Texas near the present city of New Braunfels, where he became a sheep farmer at his ranch, "Post Oak" (Mary Ann Wimsatt for ADNB). "The very best American battle scenes in existence" (Bennett) Nebel, originally from Hamburg in Germany, travelled to America and lived in Mexico from 1829 until 1834. In 1836, he published in Paris his celebrated work "Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la partie la plus intéressante du Méxique", with 50 lithographs and an introduction by renowned explorer Alexander Humboldt. Nebel's magnificent plates in this volume depict the major battles of the Mexican War in dramatic and glorious detail. References: Bennett, American-Nineteenth Century Color Plate Books. Howes K76. Kurutz & Mathes, The Forgotten War. Seller Inventory # 72lib1158
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