749 pp. Original cloth. First Edition.
Inscribed on flyleaf by the publisher, “Genl. Z. Taylor / With the respects of L.W. Hall / Syracuse Oct. [17?], [18]48”. Books owned by President Zachary Taylor are exceptionally rare. We can locate no auction record of another Taylor ex-libris.
This book, inscribed to the Mexican-American War hero weeks before his election, was one he may actually have perused, as the subject, deceased Democratic New York Governor Wright, had defeated Taylor’s victorious vice-presidential running mate, Millard Fillmore, in the gubernatorial contest of 1844. Given that Taylor was himself a Southern slave-owner, it’s also curious that he received this book from Hall, a former Massachusetts bookseller who had earlier published an anti-slavery hoax, purportedly the autobiography of a freed slave, but now attributed to the same Hammond who was Wright’s biographer.
