New York, John S. Taylor, 1st, 1836, Book: Good, Hardcover, 296 pages plus 8 pages of publisher's ads in rear. Original black boards with embossed design, gilt lettering and design with number ! on spine. Folding chart/map tipped in at page 196 with short tears. Illustrated title page. The first of three anti-slavery books published by John Taylor, a staunch abolitionist. A few brief notations on prlim pages, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, John S. Taylor, 2nd pr., 1837, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, leather bound with gilt design on front and rear covers, spine also with gilt design with the title Cabinet of Freedom (the series under which the publisher issued this narrative). 517 pages with an extra illustrated title page dated 1836, the regular title page dated 1837. All edges gilt. First published by John Shugert in Lewistown PA a year earlier. Written with the help of Isaac Fisher, a white Philadelphia lawyer, who declares in his preface that he has edited the oral narrative Ball had dictated to him to omit any beliefs or feelings Ball may have expressed about slavery. This declaration of significant editing has led scholars to debate the authenticity of Ball's narrative, but most agree that it represents a true story. Ball describes his experiences as a slave, including the uncertainty of slave life and the ways in which the slaves are forced to suffer harsh and inhumane conditions. In particular, he recounts the qualities of his various masters, and the ways in which his fortune depended on their temperament. The leather has separated from the spine of the book but appears to be very repairable. The first 3 pages loose (a blank leaf and the two title pages), there is a light stain to the illustrated one and light foxing. The interior of the book is clean, tight with minimal foxing throughout.

Hardcover. US, University of Oklahoma Press, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 456 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. It was 1862, the second year of the Civil War, though Kansans and Missourians had been fighting over slavery for almost a decade. For the 250 Union soldiers facing down rebel irregulars on Enoch Toothman's farm near Butler, Missouri, this was no battle over abstract principles. These were men of the First Kansas Colored Infantry, and they were fighting for their own freedom and that of their families. They belonged to the first black regiment raised in a northern state, and the first black unit to see combat during the Civil War. Soldiers in the Army of Freedom is the first published account of this largely forgotten regiment and, in particular, its contribution to Union victory in the trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War. As such, it restores the First Kansas Colored Infantry to its rightful place in American history.