The Bold Cavaliers: Morgan’s 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Raiders.

BROWN, Dee Alexander. [Harper Lee].

$5,000.00

Item Number: 116234

Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1959.

First edition of the author’s Civil War classic. Octavo, original half cloth, cartographic endpapers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee on the front free endpaper to close University of Alabama college friend, Charles Weldon Carruth, “To Charles with love, Nelle.” In the fall term of 1945, Lee and Carruth both enrolled in a Shakespeare course taught by one of the University of Alabama’s most famous faculty members, Hudson Strode, who directed the school’s theatre troupe and taught several courses in theatre and creative-writing. At the University of Alabama, Lee contributed a regular column to the campus newspaper,  ‘Caustic Comments for Crimson White’, as well as many articles to the university’s humor magazine, Rammer Jammer, of which she became editor in chief in 1946. Lee ultimately dropped out of college before graduation and moved to Manhattan in 1949 to pursue writing as a career; Carruth later moved to New York City as well, where he worked as a radio producer before becoming a writer and editor for the Catholic News. The two remained close friends and corresponded well into the early 1990s. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Jacket design by Peter Burchard.

In 1861, Morgan's Raiders rode into the Civil War and within a few months attained almost legendary fame. Officially organized as the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, C.S.A, they called themselves the "Alligator Horses" and were the farthest ranging unit in the war - raiding, skirmishing and fighting full-scale battles in ten states. This is the story of the men who made the legend based on their memoirs, diaries, newspapers, and official records.