Charles Ashton; The Boy That Would Be a Soldier.

Leather-backed plain paper boards, 18mo, 108pp. Printed by Phelps and Farnam. About Very Good: Ffep partially pasted down with first blank removed; covering of rear board mostly torn away, rubbing at extremities including one-inch strip of loss at the rear joint obscuring the gilt spine title and a shallow chip at the rear foredge. Contents with occasional pencil ghosts, generally crisp. Shoemaker 12100.

“The following book is intended to assist in disseminating correct ideas with regard to the nature and character of war… While children are brought up to look upon the military profession as an honourable employment, upon a battle as a scene of noble and glorious exertion, and upon war as a necessary or even useful custom, there is little hope that any universal feelings in favour of the opposite sentiments can be excited in the minds of men in general." (5)

An argument for pacifism, attributed to John Ware, dedicated to Noah Worcester and invoking the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin. It tells of Charles Ashton, a promising clergyman's son of limited means who dreams of the excitement and glory of being a famous general, like those he read about in his history books. "He did not know that the noble qualities of his heroes, even the most faultless, were often stained by cruelty, oppression and tyranny. That they were, like other men, capable of the mean passions of avarice, envy, and revenge. He did not know that the glittering ranks of war were formed of a mass of hirelings, whom servitude and the severities of discipline had degraded to the rank of machines, who took no pride in the cause for which they fought, or were even ignorant that there was one. He did not reflect, that although a battle was a stirring and interesting theme of contemplation as a scene of activity, bustle, and grandeur, yet that it was, on the other hand, a horrid and degrading spectacle..." (12)