With a little help from a search engine on my computer I can safely say that the book I hold in my hands is older than the Statue of Liberty and the statehood of Nebraska. No big deal you say? Okay, try this. Halfway through what would turn out to be his only term in office, Abraham Lincoln might have been interested in reading this book when it first came out.
Published in 1862, The Great Rebellion; A History of the Civil War in the United States, Volume I is today 149 years old. The author, a historian by the name of J.T. Headley, died over a century ago.
Still not impressed? This book proclaims to tell the history of the origins of the Civil War, with the promise to readers that Volume II will come out "within six months after the close of the war." Let me repeat that: it's a written history of the Civil War that couldn't be completed in one volume because the author didn't yet know who was going to win the war.
Damn, now that's old.
For being as old as it is, however, this particular copy is in remarkable shape. The engraved hard cover is worn but strong, the binding solid. The 506 pages remain gilded gold and hold every word clearly and legibly. All in all it's held up pretty well for being a century and a half old.
I inherited it from my late father, himself an avid student of the Civil War. It was part of his personal library, but unfortunately I have no idea how he came to own this book. I don't know where it came from, how he found it. Nothing. It was just sitting there on a bookshelf in his basement, next to two volumes of a three-volume biography of George Washington published in 1860.And now these very books, dusted in mystery, are part of my own book collection.
That's the amazing thing about books. They last. Books can outlast the vagaries of time and technology. But don't paintings, sculptures, even furniture have the same power to endure antiquity? Indeed they do. There's just something about an old book that, to me, is a little mystical. To think that someone long gone and forgotten once held this very same book in their hands, read it and hopefully enjoyed it, is a true testament to how a writer's thoughts and ideas can outdistance mortal life itself.
Will I ever take the time to read this entire book? To be honest, probably not. But like any other book I can always read it should I choose to do so. In the mean time I will take good care of it. Then maybe years from now someone else might look at it and say, "Wow, check out this old book. I wonder who else held it in their hands?"
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