The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863

PHILADELPHIA: T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, 306 CHESTNUT STREET. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
TO THE PATRIOT PRINTERS OF AMERICA— THE MEN WHO HAVE FURNISHED MORE SOLDIERS THAN ANY OTHER CLASS IN COMPARISON WITH THE WHOLE NUMBER OF THEIR CRAFT, TO THE DEAD HEROES OF THE WAR FOR THE UNION AND THE LIVING ARMIES THAT YET BULWARK ITS HOPE,— THIS BLENDING OF THE FACTS AND FANCIES OF WAR-TIME, IS DEDICATED BY THEIR BROTHER-CRAFTSMAN, THE AUTHOR. New York City, July, 1864.

Some persons, taking up this work with expectations more or less elevated, may possibly lay it down with disappointment after perusal, because it does not discuss with sharp personalities, as the title may have led them to suppose, the conduct of some of those well-known men connected with the Union Army, who have disgracefully faltered on the field. But the truth is that the Union Army has mustered very few cowards—so few, that a distinguished artist, not long ago called on to draw an ideal head of one of that class, said: Really it is so long since I have seen a coward, that I scarcely know how to go about it! The aim of the writer, eschewing all such tempting personalities, and quite as carefully avoiding all dry didactic discussion of the theme of courage and its opposite,—has principally been to illustrate the tendency of many men to misunderstand their own characters in certain particulars, and the inevitable consequence of their being misunderstood by the world, in one direction or the other. No apology is felt to be necessary for the length at which the scenery of the White Mountains, their actualities of interest and possibilities of danger, have been introduced into the narration; nor is it believed that the chain of connection with the great contest will be found the weaker because the glimpses given of it are somewhat more brief than in preceding publications of the same series. In those portions the writer has again occasion to acknowledge the assistance of the same capable hand which supplied much of the war data for both of his previous volumes.