Trenton: Printed by Isaac Collins, 1785. In two volumes. First edition. 8vo. xx, 453; xx, 574 pp., including half-titles. Illustrated with five engraved folding maps and plans by Thomas Abernethie. Full contemporary speckled tan calf, red and black morocco spine labels, stamped in gilt, joints moderately worn and tender, scattered scuffing to boards, wear along extremities, boards unevenly toned, head of spine of Vol. II chipped; top edges stained dark, other edges stained yellow; old library call number on front paste-down of each volume, abrasion below same in each volume from removed label revealing old crossed out ownership signature; small and faint circular abrasion in lower title-page of each volume from sometime removed ink stamp, with short open tear in fore-edge in Vol. I from same. ESTC W20465; Evans 19211; Felcone 223; Howes R-36; Nebenzahl 61, 72, 81, 82, 196; Reese, The Revolutionary Hundred 80; Sabin 67691; Streeter 2:1135

Scarce first edition of David Ramsay's important history of the American Revolution in the South, the first book in the United States to receive a federal copyright.

Ramsay (1749-1815) was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, educated at Princeton, and then established himself as a physician in Charleston, South Carolina. During the war he served in the state legislature and the Continental Congress, as well as serving as a military surgeon, where he was held captive by the British in the early 1780s. Following the war, and an unsuccessful bid for the United States Senate, he began to write histories of the Revolution, his first published work being the above account in 1785, and then followed in 1789 with the History of the American Revolution. In April 1789 Ramsay petitioned Congress to have both histories protected by federal copyright, which was granted following the passage of the first copyright law, in May 1790.