Excerpt from A Letter to a Friend in the Slave State We are in the midst of civil war, to North and South alike unexpectedly; for when was civil war deliberated on The North did not believe the South would leave them; the South did not believe the North would fight to retain them the South armed and struck the blow, and now the sword is drawn on both sides, and cannot be sheathed without conquest or a compromise. We have to conquer the South or settle with them; and their unconditional conquest seems the policy of those that rule us. The purpose of this letter is to explain to you some of the views of the persons in this State who regard conciliation as our only available resort, and look upon the extreme course of the Government as ruin. 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.