COATSWORTH, Stella S. The Loyal People of the North-West, a Record of Prominent Persons, Places and Events, During Eight Years of Unparalleled American History. Chicago, Church, Goodman, Donnelly, Printers, 1869.
8vo. Original green pictorial cloth with bevelled edges, lettered and decorated in gilt; pp. 402, steel-engraved frontispiece with tissue guard, three wood-engraved plates of buildings and 10 steel-engraved portraits, all with tissue guards, mostly after photographs; extremities a little worn, inner hinges strengthened, wood-engraved plates a little browned, otherwise very good.
Rare first edition. Stella Coatsworth's husband served as a medical officer during the Civil War and died of pneumonia after the Battle of Stones River. 'Hailing from the family of an old Revolutionary officer, and surrounded by family ties which gave her rare facilities for usefulness, the author … was thrown into the hot water of the war at the beginning of its fiery eruption … she became familiar with the great struggle in its inner minutiae; and she has invested with peculiar interest, and related with eloquence, scenes that, by most historians, are given as cold statistics, or passed by unnoticed' (the Reverend T. M. Eddy in the Introductory Note). Stella Coatsworth analyses as well the socio-political background of the war, slavery and the anti-slavery movement, describes battles and treatises, fundraising for the war effort in the North, and the bitter end of the war. - Strangely, the author is not mentioned in the American National Biography or other reference works.
Sizer p. 311. Kelsey, Grant Bibliography16; COPAC locates only one copy, in the British Library.
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