The Soldier's Manual, For Cavalry, Artillery, Light Infantry, and Infantry.

The Soldier’s Manual, compiled by James H. Nesmith and published at Philadelphia in 1824, is celebrated as the first American military color-plate book, a landmark in the history of American illustrated printing at a time when the production of fine color-plate books was still overwhelmingly the province of London and Paris. Conceived as a practical instruction and drill manual for the citizen-soldiers of the American militia, it sets out the exercises, formations, and duties of the cavalry, artillery, light infantry, and infantry, and is embellished with twelve hand-colored plates depicting the elaborately uniformed volunteer corps of the First Division of the Pennsylvania Militia. In the decades following the War of 1812, the volunteer militia companies of the American cities were objects of intense civic pride, vying with one another in the splendor of their uniforms and the precision of their parade-ground drill, and Nesmith’s plates preserve an unusually vivid record of this martial pageantry, documenting the plumes, epaulettes, shakos, and facings of a citizen soldiery that has almost wholly vanished from the visual record. As at once a founding monument of American color-plate book production and a primary source for the study of early American military dress, the work holds exceptional importance for collectors of Americana, military history, and uniform illustration. Its significance was affirmed more than a century later when the Company of Military Collectors and Historians issued a facsimile of the plates in 1963 with an introduction by Anne S. K. Brown, the foremost collector of military prints of her generation. Genuine complete copies of the 1824 original are of the greatest rarity.