An Unofficial Patriot

"An Unofficial Patriot" by Helen H. Gardener is a historical novel set in the US Civil War period.

Excerpt:

But if, as I have sometimes heard readers say—who looked upon themselves as of a somewhat superior order—you do not take an interest in people who have placed themselves outside of the beaten pathway of legal regularity, it will be just as well for you to lay this little story aside now, for, as I have said, it is a story of a clergyman, a slave-holder, a law-breaker, and a law-evader, which, I admit, does not at the first blush present a picture to the mind of a person in whom you and I, my lofty and immaculate friend, would be greatly interested, or with whom we would care to associate for any protracted period.