[TAYLOR, ZACHARY]. WRIGHT, Henry Clarke. Dick Crowninshield, the Assassin, and Zachary Taylor, the Soldier: The Differences between Them [caption title]. Edinburgh: H. Armour, Charles Ziegler & C. Gilpin; London: G. Gallie, [1848?]. [1] 2-11 [1, blank] pp. 12mo (18.1 x 10.6 cm), stitched. Except for light staining to p. [1], in fine condition.

Second edition (first edition, Hopedale, Massachusetts, 1848). This edition not in usual Mexican-American War sources.

An attack on Taylor that compares him to a famous American assassin hired by two brothers to kill their rich uncle so that they could inherit his money. The author is particularly spiteful and bitter about the attack on Monterrey, for which he provides gruesome details. He basically concludes that soldiers are no better than murderers: “Let all soldiers and all advocates of war be told that they are murderers, and let this truth be brought home to them on all occasions, till they feel its force; and then, and not till then, will men learn and advocate war no more” (p. 11). The reasoning that compares Taylor to Crowninshield is comparable to some extreme Jesuitical casuistry.

The author (1797-1870) was a famous pacifist and abolitionist associated with the short-lived Hopedale Community that had been founded by Adin Ballou in 1841 and where the first edition was printed. He once compared John Brown favorably to Jesus Christ, and later edited the papers of William Lloyd Garrison. It is not clear why this text was reprinted in England.