Excerpt from Characteristics: A Novel The call of war stirred me in many ways. My peo ple had been Friends from the day of their landing in America, but I myself had ceased to be, like them, troubled with scruples as to war. I only hesitated as to how best I could serve my country. That in some way I must do this was clear to me. As to slavery I had been little disturbed; it was a gangrene sure in time to die of its own accursedness. But the thought of a dismembered land, and, above all, the final insult of Sumter, settled for me, as it did for thousands, what I ought to do. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.