[AFRICAN AMERICANA] -- [CIVIL WAR]. A Sammelband of General Orders Affecting the Volunteer Force, for the years 1861, 1862, and 1863, including the Emancipation Proclamation. Identified to Union Surgeon George S. Kemble. 

General Orders Affecting the Volunteer Force. Adjutant General's Office, 1861. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1862. -- General Orders Affecting the Volunteer Force. Adjutant General's Office. 1862. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1863. -- General Orders Affecting the Volunteer Force. Adjutant General's Office. 1863. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864.   

8vo (118 x 180 mm). Charts and tables, some folding. (Minor toning at page edges.) Contemporary green cloth, spine gilt-lettered (light stains and scuffs, small puncture to front board cloth).

Provenance: George S. Kemble (1828-1884), Surgeon, U.S. Volunteers (ownership inscription and paper ownership label affixed to inner front board.) Kemble, from Pennsylvania, enlisted as a surgeon on 30 September 1861 and was commissioned into the US Volunteers Medical Staff. He was promoted by brevet to lieutenant colonel on 11 October 1865 and was mustered out on 19 October 1865. 

A collection of three publications by the Adjutant General's office of select General Orders that affected the Volunteer forces, each book with an index. Notably, the 1863 volume includes General Orders No. 1 issued on 2 January 1863 which disseminated President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: "A Proclamation...to wit: 'That, on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever, free.'" (p.1 of 1863 volume).