Comprising: GRANT. Personal Memoirs. 1885. 2 volumes. Original DELUXE publisher's half morocco gilt. -- CRAWFORD, Samuel Wylie. The Genesis of the Civil War. 1887. Provenance: Gordon A. Kite (bookplate). -- MCCLELLAN, George B. McClellan's Own Story. 1887. -- SHERIDAN, P.H. Personal Memoirs. 1888. 2 volumes. Provenance: George Forman Goodyear (bookplate); Martha C. Forman (signature on title-page). -- CUSTER, Elizabeth B. Tenting on the Plains or General Custer in Kansas and Texas. 1889. -- SHERMAN, W.T. Memoirs. 1892. 2 volumes. Fourth edition. -- Together, 6 works in 9 volumes, all 8vo, all in original gilt-decorated and lettered green cloth (unless otherwise noted), all illustrated with plates and maps, condition generally very good.

A NEAR COMPLETE SET OF THE "SHOULDER STRAP" SERIES, MOST FIRST EDITIONS, lacking only A.R. Hancock's Renaissance, which is usually seen without the shoulder strap design on the spine. The Shoulder Strap Series is regarded as one of the finest sets of Civil War histories ever printed. The publishing firm Charles L. Webster & Co. was founded in 1884 by Mark Twain, together with his business partner (and niece’s husband) Charles Webster, initially to publish Twain’s own works, beginning with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885. That same year, Twain secured the contract to publish Ulysses S. Grant’s Memoirs—a runaway success that launched the firm into producing the memoirs of other leading Civil War generals.