New York: Homer Lee & Co., 1878.
Price: $4,500.00
Hardcover. First edition. Octavo. 322pp. Engraved frontispiece portrait. Green cloth (one of several colors, with no known priority) elaborately decorated in gilt. A few small stains, mostly on the front board near the spine, extremities a bit bumped with slight loss of the cloth, a sound, very good copy. The autobiography of the first African-American to graduate from the United States Military Academy, covering primarily those four years. Flipper was born enslaved in Georgia in 1856. Although facing hazing and loneliness, Flipper graduated from West Point, but his military career was brief. Joining the famed Tenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment, he was dismissed for conduct unbecoming of an officer in 1882, a finding that may have been exacerbated by his daily habit of horseback riding with the wife of a white officer (the verdict was posthumously overturned in 1976). However his military academy training further qualified him to be a civil and mining engineer, and he was the first African-American to gain prominence in that field as well. Greene. *Black Defenders* pg.113, *Moebs* #169, *Negro History: 1553-1903* #143. A nicer than usual copy of a book now seldom found in the marketplace.
Item #459543
