Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter 1860-1861.

The scarcest of the “Shoulder Strap” series of Civil War histories, named for each volume’s gilt-decorated spine band reminiscent of an officer’s shoulder strap. Mark Twain partnered with Charles Webster, who was married to Twain’s niece, in 1884 to publish his own books, starting with Huckleberry Finn in 1885, and they went on to publish U.S. Grant’s two-volume Memoirs to great success and to secure the memoirs of other generals. Long regarded as the standard study of the fall of Fort Sumter, written by a Federal eyewitness who was inside the fort, Genesis of the Civil War was the work of Samuel Wylie Crawford (1829-1892), born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1846 and its School of Medicine in 1850 and joined the U.S. Army as an assistant surgeon in 1851. Transferring to the infantry early in the war, he led a brigade at Cedar Mountain, was severely wounded at Antietam, and returned to action at Gettysburg, where his division drove the Confederates out of the Valley of Death beside Little Round Top, Crawford seizing the colors and leading from the front. He devoted himself for years afterward to the preservation of the battlefield, to which its survival is largely due.