Heading: (Civil War Occult - 1861 Washington Vision and McClellan Dream, only known copy)
Author: Bradshaw, Wesley (pseud. of Charles Wesley Alexander)
Title: Washington’s Vision and McClellan’s Dream
Place Published: Bath, [Maine]
Publisher:George E. Newman, Book and Job Printer
Date Published: No date [c.1861-62]
Description:

No date, but circa 1861-62; the first “published in the Boston Courier in 1861”, the second written “at the commencement of our national difficulties”). 8 pp. (8vo) original wrappers pale red wrappers printed in black.

The rarity of this imprint is certain; it is possibly the only existing copy, as the title does not appear in WorldCat as a holding of any American library. More debatable is its veracity, especially of the first portion, which quotes a Revolutionary War veteran as recalling George Washington’s “angelic prophecy” at Valley Forge predicting the Civil War. Alexander wrote numerous pot-boiler pamphlets during the Civil War about alleged women heroines who spied for the Union Army; continuing his literary output after the War with lurid “true stories of murderers and female fiends, full of torture, murder and melodrama…” The two pieces in this pamphlet, Alexander’s first ventures as author, were published separately - the second, originally, as a broadside of which only two institutional copies exist.  But they were here apparently united for the first time because the alleged “dream” of General McClellan, shortly after taking command of the Union Army, was of the ghost of George Washington haunting him with urgent military advice. Because Washington’s own “vision, a la “Bradshaw”, was repeatedly published and discussed and critiqued up to the present day, this little pamphlet is highly collectible.

Faint dampstaining at wrapper edges and page edges within; very good.