COLFAX, Schuyler - FORT PILLOW MASSACRE.

£1,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington

Fort Pillow Massacre [&] Returned Prisoners. First edition, presentation copy from Schuyler Colfax, inscribed on the front free endpaper, "Presented to M. N. Lord, La Porte, Ind., By Hon. Schuyler Colfax Speaker, House of Rep's U.S. July 4. 1864".A Republican, Colfax served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1863 to 1869 and as Vice President under Ulysses S. Grant from 1869 to 1873. The recipient, Monroe Nathan Lord (1818-1902), was pastor of the Church of Christ in La Porte, Indiana, which lay within Colfax's congressional district. His obituary noted, "Lord, who offered his services to his country as a soldier in the Civil War, was rejected on account of his poor health. Politically he was a Whig, later Republican. He was an effective stump speaker in several National campaigns" (The Daily Palladium, 26 June 1902).At Fort Pillow on 12 April 1864, Confederate troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest massacred Union soldiers attempting to surrender, a disproportionate number of them African American. The volume combines the House report on the massacre with its report documenting the condition and treatment of Union soldiers returned from Confederate captivity.The investigations were conducted by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. The Committee "recommended that Congress publish 60,000 copies for distribution among constituents... publishing the reports together made sense because each one painted the Confederacy as vicious and benighted, thereby reinforc

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