Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - December - 2006 Issue
America 1800-1815 from William Reese Co.
The end of the War of 1812 is announced to America.
Zebulon Pike is best remembered for his exploration of the American Southwest, and the peak in Colorado named for him. However, before heading west, he first traveled north, up the Mississippi in an unsuccessful attempt to find its headwaters. His very rare report on his journey, An Account of a Voyage Up the Mississippi River, from St. Louis to Its Source... is offered as item 128. It was this trip that earned him an appointment to make his more significant journey west. Published in 1807. $30,000. Pike's better known report, An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi, and through the Western Parts of Louisiana... published in 1810, is also offered as item 129. $25,000.
Indians were so often depicted as "savages" in early America that it is a welcome change to see them noted for their eloquence. Item 146 is Native Eloquence, Being Public Speeches Delivered by Two Distinguished Chiefs of the Seneca Tribe...Red Jacket and Farmer's Brother. Published in 1811, these two charismatic speakers talk about issues of the day. Red Jacket speaks of the negative impact of white civilization on his people, rejects the white man's religion, and opposes the sale of Seneca lands. $2,500.
The History of Printing in America, by Isaiah Thomas, was the first such history ever published. Thomas was a printer who devoted much of his life to preserving America's early printed works. He founded the American Antiquarian Society, which to this day holds the greatest collection of such material. This history was published in 1810. Item 157. $1,750.
The Seneca Indians were not the only people to produce great orators. One of the greatest speakers the nation has ever known, and a major political figure until the mid-19th century, was Daniel Webster. He is perhaps best known for his defense of the Union during the 1830s nullification crisis ("Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable"). In 1801, Webster was still a college student when he delivered this oration, A Funeral Oration Occasioned by the Death of Ephraim Simonds... Simonds was a fellow senior at Dartmouth College when he died, and Webster's tribute presaged the day he would become one of America's greatest orators. This is only Webster's second published work, preceded by a Fourth of July speech he delivered a year earlier. Item 172. $3,750.
