Words of My Namesake

Henry Edwin Tremain (1840-1910)

 The past few days, when I should have been engaged in more productive tasks, I have been connecting with my namesake. He's not an ancestor, but a friend of my great grandmother for whom my grandfather, and subsequently my father and I were named. The irony of this is that being a good Southern boy, born and raised in the Carolinas, four generations of my family (including my nephew, who bears the middle name) have been named for a 'Yankee' general.

I have known since I was a small child that I bear two thirds of the name of General Henry Edwin Tremain (1840-1910) who served with distinction in the Civil War (he referred to it in his writings as the 'War of Rebellion'), and earned the Medal of Honor for riding his horse between two columns of Union troops who were mistakenly firing on each other*. I have also long been aware that Tremain wrote several books on the war and subsequent reconstruction, which have become somewhat obscure more than a century after his death—until now.

It seems that while time was not on the books' side for a long time, the fact that they have all passed into the public domain will ultimately ensure their survival. Many of his book- and pamphlet-length writings, including: In Memoriam, Major-General Joseph Hooker (1881); Sailor's Creek to Appamattox Court House, 7th, 8th, and 9th April, 1865, or, Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry (1885); The Closing Days About Richmond, or, The Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry (1900); Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry—A Reprint of War Memoranda (1904); Two days of War: A Gettysburg Narrative and Other Excursions (1905); Sectionalism Unmasked (1906); and A Family Genealogy (1908) are now preserved electronically by the Archive.org, OpenLibrary, and GoogleBooks Web sites.

These electronic versions are available in a number of file formats Some are physical page-by-page image scans of the original volumes, usually library copies, which are interesting to me as much for their content as for the unaltered glimpse they offer of the original, including library stamps pencil marks, and at least some illustrations. Versions compatible with e-readers like the Nook or Kindle are based on OCR (optical character recognition) scans, which transfer the type on the page into an editable text file. While these files are considerably smaller than their image scanned counterparts, they seem to include an inordinate number of electronically-induced errors that seldom get edited out before the document goes live online.

Sadly, these flawed scans sometimes also serve as the basis for some of the overpriced print-on-demand editions presently published by the likes of Nabu Press and Kessenger Publishing and sold through a variety of online sources including Amazon, Alibris and AbeBooks. Some these are even so shabbily done as to include a Google Books digital watermark on their pages. Even so, some versions like Kessenger's hardback editions, can command prices that approach those of the hardback first editions.

I recently purchased a soft cover reprint of Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry from Nabu Press and was favorably impressed with it, for what it is. Made from the PDF image files available online for free, the type is quite readable, except for one page that I finally figured out was a page of translucent tissue paper that separated the title page from a portrait of General Sheridan. and although a pull-out map located between pages 82 and 83 is replaced with a blank page, it gives a reasonable approximation of the experience of reading the original first edition.  For a scholar intent on closely studying these texts with highlighter in hand, these reprints are an invaluable resource; however, collectors will likely find them somewhat lackluster.

Until the digital revolution, the only one of Tremain's books to enjoy any sort of revival is Sectionalism Unmasked, a treatise on the (mis)treatment of blacks in the South in the years following the Civil War, which was re-published in 1969 by the Negro Universities Press (NUP). It seems that Tremain, a lifelong Republican, had a very progressive mindset for his time, although the Republican Party of a century ago was far more progressive than today's GOP. Today, the NUP edition is the most affordable of his books, selling for between $6 and $9. 

More desirable to collectors are his volumes on the Civil War, which he called 'war memoranda'. They are largely based on his first-person experiences and observations. As a Southerner, it's interesting to read his Northern perspective, related in a fairly objective, highly detailed, and reporterly fashion without excessive edtorializing or propagandizing. The mind of an officer who later became a lawyer comes through in these accounts.

Tremain appears to have published three different accounts of the closing days of the war, Sailor's Creek to Appamattox Court House, 7th, 8th, and 9th April, 1865, or, Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry (1885); The Closing Days About Richmond, or, The Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry (1900); Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry—A Reprint of War Memoranda (1904), each incorporating and expanding upon the previous one.

Besides reading over the online versions of his books, I have added a few physical volumes to my library. My father gave me a first edition of Sectionalism Unmasked for Christmas. He said he had bought it a few years ago, but the subject matter didn't interest him. What I found at least as interesting as the book itself were the promotional leaflets for Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry and Two Days of War that were tucked inside the cover. In addition to the print-on-demand copy of Last Days of Sheridan's Cavalry, I have also bought a first edition of Two Days of War. As I am not a Civil War scholar, I'm not sure these books would have interested me as much had I not had a family connection to the author, but I am none the less pleased to have his work represented on my bookshelves.


Update 3/19/13:
After spending a little time with the various copies of Tremain's work that I have recently acquired, I find it interesting that I relate to them quite differently. When handling the first editions of Two Days of War and Sectionalism Unmasked, I feel a direct connection to the past. These books are more than 100 years old and are historical artifacts in their own right. Almost as nice is my hardcover reprint of Sailors Creek to Appamattox Court House from Repressed Books. The publisher's stated intention is to approximate as closely as possible the antiquarian reading experience and this effort is largely successful. Printed on good quality paper, it appears to be a physical scan of the original, but the scanned image has been substantially cleaned up as very few stray marks appear, unlike the softcover reprint of Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry.  Printed on comparatively cheap paper, this volume is functional, but it has all the charm of a college course pack. The pages are readable but it is obvious they are printed directly from the page scans available online for free. No effort has been made to clean them up in any way.  In the long run, I think I would have been happier with a hardbound reprint or to have held out for an affordable first edition.

Update 4/15/21:
A few of years before he passed away, Dad acquired first editions of Last Hours of Sheridan's Cavalry and Two Days of War, which I now have in my possession. The former is in nice condition and I'm happy to have it as an upgrade to the print-on-demand copy but the latter is a battered ex-library copy for which he paid nearly twice what I paid for my copy. He said he'd had a line on what he thought was a better one but someone beat him to it. I never had the heart to tell him that the "someone" in question was very likely me.


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*If this scenario sounds slightly familiar, it's because you probably saw it in a movie. Kevin Costner's character did a similar thing at the beginning of Dances with Wolves (1990). Of course, fact and fiction quickly diverge. Unlike Costner's character, Tremain was not wounded, nor was he attempting to commit suicide when he rode his horse between the troops. He also was never sent to a deserted outpost in 'Indian Territory'. I have long wondered if screenwriter and novelist Michael Blake based this scene in his fictional story on Tremain's real life exploit.