Kendall, George Wilkins

The War Between the United States and Mexico Illustrated. Embracing Pictorial Drawings of All the Principal Conflicts by Carl Nebel ... With a Description of Each Battle. New York: Published by D. Apppleton & Company; Philadelphia: George S. Appleton (Plon Brothers, printers, Paris), 1851



Folio (23 3/8 x 17 1/2 in.; 593 x 445 mm). Letterpress title-page and text, engraved "Map of the Operations of the American Army in the Valley of Mexico in August and September 1847" by Erhard-Schieble von Furstenberg, 12 fine handcolored lithographed plates, heightened with gum arabic, after Carl Nebel by Bayot; text foxed, occasionally severely, map lightly foxed, plates foxed, mostly confined to margins but sometimes encroaching on the image. Text and map bound in original red morocco-backed printed yellow wrappers, plates loose as issued; front wrapper foxed. Text and plates contained in publisher's portfolio: half red morocco over red cloth, front cover elaborately gilt-lettered, yellow-coated pastedowns; extremities rubbed, ribbon ties lost.

Bennett 65; Howes K76; Sabin 37362

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First edition; rare in the original publisher's portfolio. Kendall, a reporter for the New Orleans Picayune, saw both the Mexican-American War and the production of his illustrated documentation of the conflict as nationalistic endeavors. As a newspaperman, he endorsed U.S. military intervention in Mexico, and as a voluntary aide on the staff of General William Jenkins Worth he witnessed the American campaign from Vera Cruz to Chapultepec. Nebel also rode with the American troops and the lithographs are for the most part adapted from his on-the-spot drawings.

In order to achieve the fidelity of reproduction that he desired, Kendall had The War Between the United States and Mexico Illustrated printed in Paris. (The text was printed in Paris as well as the lithographs, despite Howes's often-repeated claim that it was printed in New Orleans; the Rue Vaugirard imprint of the Plon Brothers appears on the title-page verso.) In the preface, Kendall remarks, "As regards the style of the lithography, the coloring, the spirit thrown into the figures, and the general effect produced, the illustrations must speak for themselves. Every attention has certainly been paid to costume. The soldiers of the United States have been painted in their ordinary fatigue caps and dresses—such as they always wore during the war. More effect might have been produced by arraying them in their full uniforms, but this would have been deviating from the truth and was avoided. ... [T]he object of both artist and author, in securing the services of the best lithographers, colorists and printers, has been to produce a work which, so far at least as appearance may be taken into account, will be creditable to the United States. ..."