BOOK DESCRIPTION: 8vo, 410 pgs. Presentation from the Author on front preliminary page. Original green cloth with gilt stamped cover and spine. Second Edition; Originally published in 1883. CONDITION DESCRIPTION: Light rubbing to edges, else cover is clean and bright. Interior is clean and tight. With clear mylar wrapper. CONTENTS DESCRIPTION: This second edition was printed from the same plates as the 1883 printing. It was again reprinted in a Special Edition in 1886 that included a presentation page, but otherwise again from the same plates. Published 20 years after the war, Albert O. Marshall describes his service as a private in the Thirty-Third Illinois Regiment. Marshall based this memoir on memorandum journals he kept during the 3 years he fought in the war. This memoir is not a regimental history as that written by Virgil Way. It is the story of a twenty-year-old private whose youthful, vivid writing shows his personality. Marshall tells of the battles he fought and social activity in camp including the games he played. He writes about his friends, fellow soldiers, and officers, and of the regiments activities in Missouri and Arkansas, at Vicksburg, and in Louisiana and on the Texas Gulf Coast. Marshall states in his preface, I have made no attempt to write a war, nor even a regimental history; but this little book is submitted for simply what it claims to be A PICTURE OF A PRIVATE SOLDIERS ARMY LIFE. Here is a very attractive copy with an inscribed presentation from the author. REFERENCES: DORN IL164; NEVINS I pg 128: A heavily embossed account by a soldier whose principal service was in Missouri; interesting passages must he handled with caution. COULTER #316: Yet the book contains interesting comments on the Confederate people and apt descriptions of natural scenery, plantation homes, and a herd of Texas longhorn cattle.
