Trails, Rails and War: The Life of General G. M. Dodge.

PERKINS, J. R. [William T. Sherman].

$500.00

Item Number: 145733

Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1929.

First edition of this biography of Union Army officer and railroad executive, General Grenville Mellen Dodge; from the library of Philemon Tecumseh Sherman. Octavo, original red cloth, frontispiece portrait of General G. M. Dodge at seventy, illustrated with black and white photographs. Signed by the author on a note laid in, wishing the recipient a merry Christmas and prosperous New Year. P. T. Sherman’s bookplate adhered to the front free endpaper with his ownership signature to the half title page. In near fine condition with light rubbing to the spine and front panel. General William Tecumseh Sherman’s son P. T. Sherman was a lawyer in New York, specializing in labor and insurance, and was elected a member of the New York Board of Alderman in the late 1880s. In the early 1900s, he was appointed the New York Commissioner of Labor. He transferred his library to his niece, Eleanor Sherman Fitch, the granddaughter of General Sherman through his eldest daughter, Maria “Minnie” Ewing Sherman Fitch, before he died. Until now, the book was held at the family estate in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Grenville Mellen Dodge was a Union Army officer on the frontier and a pioneering figure in military intelligence during the Civil War, who served as Ulysses S. Grant's intelligence chief in the Western Theater. He later commanded troops against Native Americans and served as a U.S. Congressman, businessman, and railroad executive who helped direct the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. Historian Stanley P. Hirshon suggested that Dodge, "by virtue of the range of his abilities and activities," could be considered "more important in the national life after the Civil War than his more famous colleagues and friends, Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan."