A Full and Correct Account of the Chief Naval Occurrences of the Late War Between Great Britain and The United States of America; Preceded by a Cursory Examination of the American Accounts of Their Naval Actions Fought Previous to That Period.

JAMES, William.

$850.00

Item Number: 130949

London: Printed for T. Egerton, 1817.

First edition of James’ naval history of the War of 1812, which inspired Theodore Roosevelt’s account from the American perspective: The Naval War of 1812. Octavo, bound in full crushed morocco, gilt titles and ruling to the spine, quadruple gilt ruling to the front and rear panel, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled, illustrated with three engraved plates. In near fine condition.

At the outbreak of the War of 1812, British lawyer and military historian William M. James was in the United States and was swiftly detained by American authorities. He escaped to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1813 and began work on his great chronicle of the war particularly defending the reputation of the Royal Navy and pointing out the factual errors and excessive claims that American reports made against the Royal Navy. Theodore Roosevelt, as a young Harvard University undergraduate in 1876–77, began work on a response from the American perspective. Published in 1882 as The Naval War of 1812, the book took James to task for what Roosevelt perceived as glaring mistakes and outright misrepresentations of fact based on malicious anti-American bias and shabby research, despite James's painstaking research and primary sources.