Decorative gilt stamp to front board, blind stamp to rear board, faded git titling to spine. Interior pages very well preserved, 86 Chapters in total. 8vo; xv, 2-690, Appendix 46.
Illustrated with 13 full page plates plus 10 maps. Frontis illustration Drawn by Henry Herrick and engraved by Henry Bryan Hall. This is somewhat of a travelog of the author's tour through the South, it's battlefields, ruined cities, desolated states and talks with the people.
Includes the state of the country, it's agriculture, railroads, visits to patriots graves and rebel prisons, notes on the free labor system, social conditions, middle class, poor whites and negroes and much more. Trowbridge toured much of the defeated Confederacy during the summer of 1865 and the following winter. He observed carefully, and talked with a wide variety of people of both sexes, including freedmen, die-hard Rebels, Unionists, farmers, businessmen, refugees, and Northern entrepreneurs. In his book, he lets these people speak in their own voices, often adding his own comments. His book is written from the perspective of a loyal and fair Northerner genuinely concerned about conditions in the South and the evolving policies of the United States towards that section.
From 1865 to 1873 Trowbridge was co-editor with Lucy Larcom of Our Young Folks. Since his death he has been well known as a friend of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. Trowbridge's papers are located at Houghton Library at Harvard University.
1868 Reconstruction South Post Civil War Racism Slavery Hell Insurrection Death.