The first volume of W.F.P. Napier's four-volume set, "History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France,"

One hundred and forty five years after it was stolen, a library book has been returned to Washington and Lee University. According to an Associated Press report, the first volume of W.F.P. Napier‘s four-volume History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France From the Year 1807 to the Year 1814, published in 1842, “was stolen by a Union soldier during the Civil War.”

It finally made its way home, reported the A.P., after being returned “by a friend of one of the soldier’s descendants to the Lexington school’s Leyburn Library.”

The A.P. reports that Union soldier “C.S. Gates pilfered the book on June 11, 1864, from the library of what was then Washington College. The theft took place when Army of West Virginia Gen. David Hunter‘s troops raided the area and looted the college’s buildings.”

Gates inscription in the book reads: “This book was taken from the Military Institute at Lexington Virginia in June 1864 when General Hunter was on his Lynchburg raid. The Institution was burned by the order of Gen. Hunter. The remains of Gen. Stonewall Jackson rest in the cemetery at this place.”

The book was passed down through C.S. Gates’s descendants, until eventually coming into the possession of Mike Dau, of the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, Ill., who inherited it more than 20 years ago from the estate of Myron and Isabel Gates.

“I had been meaning to take it back for years,” Dau told the A.P., “I got tired of talking about it and decided it belonged in the hands of the rightful owner.” He also said he was glad he wasn’t responsible for any fines.