KENDALL, GEORGE WILKINS. 1809-1867.
The War Between the United States and Mexico Illustrated. Embracing Pictorial Drawings of All the Principal Conflicts by Carl Nebel ... With a Description of Each Battle. New York & Philadelphia: Appleton, 1851.
Large folio (570 x 420 mm). iv, 52 pp. Engraved "Map of the Operations of the American Army in the Valley of Mexico in August and September 1847" by Erhard-Schieble von Furstenberg. Original wrappers. Plus 12 fine hand-colored lithographed plates by Bayot after Carl Nebel, heightened with gum arabic, mounted on modern archival cards. Housed together in original red half-sheep gilt-lettered portfolio. Text booklet with some foxing, light insect wear to wrappers; plates with occasional very light fox-marks visible along edges or in sky; portfolio scuffed and stained but generally sound.
FIRST EDITION OF THE BEST PICTORIAL RECORD OF THE WAR WITH MEXICO. A reporter for the New Orleans Picayune, Kendall embedded himself with the US army, "rode with the rangers, witnessed most of Taylor's battles, and himself captured a cavalry flag ... He attached himself as a voluntary aide to the staff of General Worth and saw nearly all the fighting from Vera Cruz to Chapultepec. He was mentioned in dispatches and was wounded in the knee in the storming of the last fortress" (DAB). Bennett p 65 ("these seem ... the very best American battle scenes in existence"); Howes K76 ("b," "The fine plates by Carl Nebel were produced at Paris, the text printed at New Orleans, the book bound and sold by Appleton in New York"); Sabin 37362.
