Three Decades of Federal Legislation, 1855 to 1885. Personal and Historical Memories of Events Preceding, During, and Since The American Civil War, Involving Slavery and Secession, Emancipation and Reconstruction, with Sketches of Prominent Actors During These Periods by COX, Samuel S - 1885

Providence: J.A. & R.A. Reid, 1885. Hardcover. Small 4to. Brown cloth with elaborate gilt and black lettering and pictorial stamping. 726pp. All edges gilt. Engraved title page with tissue-guarded steel-engraved portrait, 7 full-page called-for heavy stock tissue-guarded steel-engraved plates. Very good. Quite mild edgewear and touch of rubbing. A tight and handsome first edition of this thick, hefty account by a highly-regarded American politician and diplomat (1824-89) who served Congress both from Ohio (1857-65) and New York (1873-89) with a brief interval as minister to the Ottoman Empire. This sharp copy includes a fine autograph addition: Tipped to an inner flyleaf is an Autograph Letter Signed from Cox, 1p, 5½" X 9" , Washington, DC, 18 March 1880. Addressed to Mr. Ward. Near fine. Faint original folds. On lined "House of Representatives U.S." letterhead, Cox pens in his bold but hasty script: "I must send you Dr. Fisher's handsome letter. You see what a medium you became to unite old associations. My $15 is helping a poor family today in Ireland. His name is Cox & is of Cork -- no relation, but his terrible destitution was an accident of political association & came out of Cambridge! So Yale & Cambridge join -- even by a film." Boldly signed. Intriguing if cryptic and worth research. Like James G. Blaine's remarkably similar and often-overlooked "Twenty Years of Congress: From Lincoln to Garfield with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860," published the previous year, Cox's account is a substantial, worthwhile account from a primary player of the period.