A History Of George W. Murray, And His Long Confinement At Andersonville, Ga. Also The Starvation And Death Of His Three Brothers At The Same Place By Himself. Sold By Himself Only, For The Benefit Of The Author And Family Murray, George W. Civil War

12mo. Stitched printed wraps. iv, 5-30 pages. Rear blank outer wrap torn with loss about half the cover. A light vertical crease to wraps. Interior contents clean. This is an example of "Mendicant" literature. From the preface: "In writing this little book, I do not intend to bring before you a work of style or language, nor a history of the War. I intend simply to present to you a short narrative of my life as a soldier in the Army of the Potomac, and while a prisoner at Andersonville. Having lost the use of both my right arm and leg, which excludes all possibility of doing work to assist in supporting a wife and three children, I have, therefore, taken this method of raising means for their support." According to Nevins I page 198 - "A worthless, undetailed little work by an author who gives no evidence of ever having been in Andersonville." Nevins gives the place of publication in Hartford by the Press of Case, Lockwood and Company, 186? (second edition). Harvard Medical Library has referenced this pamphlet in their "Mendicant" collection and states the printer as Trumbull and Gere, 1865? From Harvard University: A pattern-maker in Springfield before the outbreak of the Civil War, George W. Murray was taken prisoner, along with his three elder brothers, after the battle of Spotsylvania and confined to the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville. He survived the ordeal, although parts of his hand and foot were amputated, and he lost the use of his right limbs. Murray then printed and sold this account of his imprisonment to help his wife and children: "All the fingers on my right hand gone, and my arm, from my wrist to my elbow, partially paralyzed; nearly one-half of my right foot was in a similar condition, while the rest of it is drawn entirely out of shape, which obliges me to use a crutch . I returned home a mere wreck of my former self. Therefore, unable to work, and ashamed to beg, I have taken this method to raise a small capital to start some business, in order to enable me to support my family comfortably." In 2005, Harvard purchased a collection of over 130 books, pamphlets, poems, and broadsides, all examples of the genre of mendicant literatureâ€"items composed and printed to raise charitable funds for their disabled authors. These narratives and autobiographical accounts of the hardships and triumphs of the blind, deaf, lame, and war-wounded are all now primary resources for the emerging field of disability studies. Harvard provides George Murray's birth year as 1853 which seems a bit early for him to be fighting in the Civil War.