A concise history of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War. 1846-1847
ALL HAIL THE BRAVE BATTALION!
THE NOBLE, VALIANT BAND,
THAT WENT AND SERVED OUR COUNTRY
WITH WILLING HEART AND HAND.
ALTHO’ WE’RE CALLED DISLOYAL
BY MANY A TONGUE AND PEN,
OUR NATION BOASTS NO SOLDIERS
SO TRUE AS “MORMON” MEN
[Salt Lake City:] 1881 (but 1882). First edition.
Octavo (8 11/16” x 5 15/16”, 220mm x 151mm): pp. [2] (title, imprint), i-iii iv-viii, [2] (introductory, Martyrdom of Joseph Smith), 11-376.
Bound in the publisher’s black blocked cloth (re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down). On the spine, title and author gilt. All edges of the text-block sprinkled red.
Re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down. Some rubbing to the extremities. End-papers renewed. An overall clean, tight copy. Bookplate of James Strohn Copley to the front paste-down.
Daniel Tyler (1816–1907) was a member of the Mormon Battalion — the only unit ever organized on principles of belief — that mustered at Council Bluffs and marched to San Diego during the Mexican-American War of 1846. The Mormons, settled in Nauvoo, IL, agreed to leave the state, settling in the Salt Lake Valley from 24 July 1847. Keen for acceptance into the United States despite living outside of statehood, Mormon men organized to fight for the newly-claimed territory in the Southwest, resulting in the 1848 Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. Some remained in California, but many returned to Utah Territory, which was established in 1850.
Tyler’s account of the battalion — written from first-hand experience, is celebrated as “the earliest and probably the best book on the famous Mormon Battalion of the Mexican War” in the Zamorano 80, the legendary collection of books relating to the early history of California.
James Strohn Copley (1916–1973) was the consummate twentieth-century Californian. He published the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune (merged into the Union-Tribune in 1992), and was a longtime friend and confidant of Goldwater and Nixon. He began in the Northeast, managing the school newspaper at Phillips Andover and the humor magazine at Yale. Eventually the Copley Press came to own a great many papers in Illinois and, principally, California.
Graff 4226; Howes T 447; Zamorano 80, 75.
Item #JLR0848
Price: $875