Book excerpt: Excerpt from With Sabre and Scalpel the Autobiography of a Soldier and Surgeon The Chief purpose Of this volume is to record from per sonal Observation something Of the social, economic, and political conditions which prevailed in the South before, during, and immediately after the Civil War. It was my good fortune to have been born and reared in a section Where the wealthy landed proprietors and slave-owners, the poorer whites, and the negroes came together. 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.