“WHAT USED TO BE MEN NOW NOTHING BUT MERE SKELETONS”: FIRST EDITION OF KELLOGG’S LIFE AND DEATH IN REBEL PRISONS, 1865

(CIVIL WAR) KELLOGG, Robert H. Life and Death in Rebel Prisons. Hartford, Connecticut: L. Stebbins, 1865. Octavo, original gilt-stamped brown pebbled cloth.

First edition of Kellogg’s powerful first-hand account of his incarceration in Confederate prisons—“one of the first of many Andersonville memoirs”—drawn from his prison diary, with eleven full-page illustrations, including frontispiece and plans of Andersonville and Florence, South Carolina stockades.

“On November 30, 1864, 20-year-old Sergeant Major Robert H. Kellogg of the 16th Regiment Connecticut volunteers became a free man. Since early May 1864, he and most of the rest of his regiment had been confined in Confederate prisons at Andersonville, Georgia, and Florence, South Carolina… On May 3 and 4, 1864, the men of the 16th Connecticut entered Andersonville prison. Kellogg scribbled into his diary: ‘Our hearts failed us as we saw what used to be men now nothing but mere skeletons covered with filth & vermin” After his exchange Kellogg returned briefly home to Connecticut but soon was back on duty “to help process the thousands of other fellow prisoners returning north after months of incarceration. Through much of January 1865, as the war wound down, he witnessed the release of many other prison survivors like himself. Kellogg began to write about his experiences, drawing heavily from a personal diary he had kept in prison… Kellogg worked on his book feverishly, mailing stacks of manuscript pages to a publisher in Hartford. Printed in March 1865, Life and Death in Rebel Prisons was one of the first of many Andersonville memoirs published over the next three decades” In 1907 Kellogg spoke at the unveiling of a monument dedicated to Connecticut prisoners of war… Standing beside the bronze likeness of his younger self, the 63-year-old veteran addressed the small crowd…. he pronounced his and his comrades’ imprisonment at Andersonville ‘a lesson in patriotism… Prisoners died ‘not in the heat and excitment of the battle, but… within an enemy’s lines and under a hostile flag” (Gordon, “Surely They Remember Me” in Cimbala et al, Union Soldiers, 328-360). With rear leaf of publisher’s advertisement; without “certificates” leaf found in some copies. Nevins I:195. Dornbusch I:C70. Sabin 37300. See Nicholson, 441 (1866). Bookplates.

Interior generally fresh with light scattered foxing, bright gilt cloth. An about-fine copy.