MacKay, Charles. Life and Liberty in America: or Sketches of a Tour of the United States and Canada in 1857–58; With Ten Illustrations. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1859. [11552]
Brown pebble publisher's cloth, bordered in blind with blind device at center of both boards, faded gilt spine titles, 7 3/4 x 5 1/4 inches. Brown end papers, viii, [9]-413 pp., 2 pp. publisher's adverts. Old signature of Thomas Reed in black ink at the top of the title page; infrequent light foxing. Good. Hardcover.
Howes M118; Flake 5178, "The Mormons..." Chapter XVIII, p. 147-51, in which MacKay comments on the Utah War.
Illustrations: Frontispiece - Torch-Light Procession of Firemen at New York; The Capital at Washington; American Indians Waiting for the President; The Banks of the Ohio - Mr. Longworth's Vineyards; The Mississippi Steamboat "Philadelphia"; The Levee at New Orleans; The Cemetery of Bonaventura - Savannah; The Victoria Tubular Bridge - Montreal; Break-up of the Ice on the St. Lawrence; Toronto - Canada West [a view with the river and ships in the foreground].
A vivid tour through the United States taken just a few years before the outbreak of the War Between the States. In addition to the sights of New York City, Boston, Niagara Falls, Newport & Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Alabama, South Carolina, Savannah, Richmond, and Baltimore, MacKay observes and comments upon American Indians, Slavery, Americanisms and American Slang, the Mormons, American Literature & Art, and political parties.
Charles MacKay (1814-1889), b. Perth, Scotland; d. London, England. MacKay was a journalist, poet, and author. He visited the United States and Canada in the 1850's, publishing his observations in Life and Liberty in America: or Sketches of a Tour of the United States and Canada in 1857–58. He returned to America as a war correspondent for the London Times during the first American Civil War. MacKay wrote on the Scottish Gaelic language, popular songs, an autobiography, historical novels, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and a biography of the Founding Fathers of the United States. During his years in the 1840s as an assistant editor at the Morning Chronicle, he worked alongside Charles Dickens and William Hazlitt.
