(CHAMBERLAIN, Joshua). WESTON, Edward P., editor

The Bowdoin Poets

Second edition. Original cloth gilt. Folding frontispiece engraving of the College. Cloth worn at the spine ends, still an attractive and presentable, very good copy. The first half of the book consists of selections of poetry by Bowdoin graduates, including Henry W. Longfellow. The second half of the book, with a separate titlepage (Bowdoin Souvenir), consists of blank pages for autographs. Ownership signature "James D. Fessenden, Bowd. Coll." from the Class of 1852 on the front fly. Fessenden has divided the book into sections labeled for each Class from 1849 through 1852.

James Deering Fessenden was the son of William P. Fessenden, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury during the Civil War; and the brother of Major-General Francis Fessenden. James D. Fessenden also served as a Brigadier-General in the war, both as the commander of Company D of the elite Second U.S. Sharpshooters, and later as commanding officer of the First South Carolina Regiment of the United States Colored Troops, and is mentioned as such in the landmark work on black troops in the Civil War, The Black Phalanx.

This book contains nearly 100 pages of autograph sentiments and good wishes to Fessenden, including a warm and closely written three page "letter" by Fessenden's classmate and fellow Civil War general Joshua L. Chamberlain (Signed "J.L. Chamberlain") dated in 1852 to "Jimmie," and mentioning details of their friendship. Additionally Inscribed by Fessenden's uncle, Congressman James P. Fessenden; Paris Gibson, later to be a U.S. Senator and the founder of Great Falls, Montana; John N. Jewett, (possibly related to John W. Jewett, the Boston publisher of Uncle Tom's Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, who lived at Bowdoin from 1850-53 as the wife of Bowdoin Professor Calvin E. Stowe, and where she wrote most of the novel); and several others who served with distinction as general officers in the War. We assume that during this period of history one couldn't swing a cat at an American institution of higher learning without hitting future commanders in the Civil War, but this is a pleasing group, with an interesting association between two future Civil War Generals, including Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top, and the central protagonist in Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Killer Angels.

[BTC #98105]