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BOOK DESCRIPTION: 8vo, 350 pgs, frontis portrait and with other photo illustrations and portraits. Original decorated blue cloth with red and gold gilt device and with gilt titled cover and spine; top edge gilt. With authors presentation rubber-stamp on front endpaper. CONDITION DESCRIPTION: Covers rubbed on edges, joints, and spine ends. Gilt bright. Interior has a vertical glue residue on front and rear endpapers, front hinge weak; else clean and solid. With clear, mylar wrapper. CONTENTS DESCRIPTION: Oliver Willcox Norton was a Pennsylvania schoolteacher before the war. When the war broke out, he was already a member of a local militia called the Girard Guards, which later became a company of Col. John McLane's Erie Regiment. When the regiment's three-month term expired without any military action, Norton, then a private, followed his colonel into the newly formed 83rd Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, and became the bugler of Company K. In May 1863, Col. Strong Vincent selected Norton as brigade bugler and headquarters flag bearer. This assignment later provided Norton with the basis for his 1913 book, The Attack and Defense of Little Round Top, Gettysburg July 2, 1863 which contributes greatly to our understanding of the struggle for Little Round Top. The volume related how Vincent led his brigade during the contest for the critical hill. In addition, in July 1862, he helped compose Taps, the timeless bugle call honoring fallen soldiers; then adopted by the Army of the Potomac, and now still used to honor the fallen. Norton's book is a Civil War classic. REFERENCES: KRICK: 356: "Norton served in the 83rd Pennsylvania from 1861 to 1863, then became a lieutenant in the 8th U.S. Colored Infantry. He had been blind for years at the time this book was published. He was an eyewitness to the fighting on Little Round Top as brigade bugler and headquarters flag bearer for Strong Vincent. There is considerable material lifted intact from published reports and memoirs, covered by Norton's unabashed critiques. The most worthwhile material in the volume is in the form of unpublished letters and accounts.".
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