John Watson Morton. The Artillery of Nathan Bedford Forrest's Cavalry. Nashville & Dallas: Publishing House of the M.E. Church, South, 1909. 

8vo. Frontispiece portrait, photographic plates. Original brick red cloth gilt. FIRST EDITION. Howes M-459; Nevins I, p. 134. 

LIMITED PRESENTATION COPY, number 3717 of an unknown edition. Printed Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) Commandery printed presentation sheet affixed to the interior front board. Signed by Roswell H. Mason, Chicago, April 1910. 

Provenance: Marshall D. Krolick Collection

John Watson Morton (1842-1914) was a native Tennessean who was educated at the Western Military Institute in Nashville. Graduating shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, he initially joined the Rock City Guards (a local militia) before serving as the captain of artillery under Nathan Bedford Forrest.

After the war, he studied medicine but chose to follow agricultural pursuits. He served as the assistant commissioner of agriculture and was involved in farming-related publishing. He was also involved in the early Ku Klux Klan, forming the Nashville chapter and initiating his former commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, in 1866. 

A rigorous history of the artillery of Forrest's cavalry, Nevins notes that Morton "refreshed his memory by checking painstakingly all available sources." 

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