RARE 1789 LEATHER AMERICA MORSE LEATHER DUST JACKET 1ST

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RARE 1789 LEATHER AMERICA MORSE LEATHER DUST JACKET 1ST Description: OFFERED HERE is a unique FIRST American edition of The American Geography; or, A View of the Present Situation of the United States of America, by Jedediah Morse, published at Elizabethtown (Mass.), printed by Shepard Kollock, for the Author, 1789. This copy is quite incredible. It sports what has to be one of the first dust jackets ever made, hand made out of leather (see the scan). Removable, but sewn onto the book, probably early in the 19th or late 18th centuries. A remarkable thing. The book is 8 and a half by 5 inches, 534 pages, plus some extra pages at the rear of errata, binding instructions, etc. What precisely is this book? It is one of the first attempts to fully describe America, just as the gains of the Revolution were being consolidated. With a state by state detailed description, including Southern states like South Carolina, Georgia, etc. The West is described as very wild. We have, for example, a description of New Mexico and California, noting that about 300,000 people lived in both places. "The characteristics of the Californians are stupidity and insensibility," Morse sagely advises, "want of knowledge and reflection, inconstancy, impetuosity, and blindness of appetite, an excessive sloth, abhorrence of all labour and fatigue, an excessive love of pleasure and amusement of every kind, however trifling or brutal, and a most wretched want of everything which constitutes the real man..." That about sums up Hollywood to us. Charlie Sheen should own a copy. Florida is described as a "Spanish Dominion," with towns mentioned being St. Augustine and Pensacola. Louisiana is noted to be "governed by a viceroy from Spain." If you care about early America, this is an incredible item. Note: all copies we have seen are missing the maps. This one is no exception. The 2 maps were almost always removed. We note one copy with the maps online, of this exact edition, for $7000. Jedidiah Morse (July 23, 1761 – June 9, 1826) was a geographer and the father of Samuel F. B. Morse, the man who created morse code. Morse made an important impact on the educational system of the United States. While teaching at a school for young women, he saw the need for a geography textbook oriented to the forming nation. The result was skimpy and derivative, Geography Made Easy (1784). He followed that with American Geography (1789) which was widely cited and copied. New editions of his schoolchildren textbooks and the more weighty works often came out yearly, earning him the informal title "father of American geography." His postponed gazetteer for his work of 1784 was bested by Joseph Scott's Gazetteer of the United States in 1795. However, with the aid of Noah Webster and Rev. Samuel Austin, Morse published his gazetteer in 1797, with his Universal Geography of the United States. He studied divinity at Yale (M.A. 1786). He was a pastor in Charlestown, Massachusetts (across Boston) for about thirty years. Among his friends and numerous correspondents were Noah Webster, Benjamin Silliman and Jeremy Belknap. Morse also made significant contributions to Dobson's Encyclopædia, the first encyclopedia published in America after the Revolution. In addition to writing authoritatively on geography, he rebutted certain racist views published in the Encyclopædia Britannica concerning the Native American peoples, e.g., that their women were "slavish" and that their skins and skulls were thicker than those of other human beings. He published the Panoplist and Missionary Magazine. Morse is also known for his part in the Illuminati conspiracy theory in New England 1798-99. Morse delivered three sermons beginning May 9, 1798 supporting John Robison's book "Proofs of Conspiracy." Morse was a strong Federalist and there were some fears that the anti-Federalists were influenced by alleged French Illuminati who, according to a conspiracy theory, were responsible for the French Revolution. Offici... read more

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