In North Carolina many skirmishes took place in the vicinity of the towns occupied by the Federal troops. Nothing decisive occurred during this year, but it was plain that the longer the war lasted the more certain would be the total defeat of the South.

Wilmington was nearly the only seaport within the bounds of the Confederacy which the blockaders could not close. Our sand-barred coast was still dangerous as in Sir Walter Raleigh's day and in the days of the Revolution, and ships had to stand off and on, so that our blockade-runners had many a safe passage through on dark nights. The yellow fever was brought over by these vessels, however, and in this fall Wilmington was fearfully ravaged by this scourge.

The year 1863 began disastrously for the Union armies. The battle of Chancellorsville was a great victory for Lee, and on all sides the Southern cause appeared to prevail. But the tide soon turned. The valley of the Mississippi, and the great river itself and all its tributaries, had long been in the hands of the western Union army. The Northern gunboats traversed every stream, and by degrees closed with a grasp never relaxed round every town on their banks.

1863. In July, 1863, after a long siege, the town of Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant, who commanded the western army of the Union. During the same week, Lee, who, misled by the success of his army in the spring, had carried the war into Pennsylvania, fought the battle of Gettysburg, which was a defeat for the Southern cause from which it never rallied. Southern soldiers performed prod

igies of valor, but they were met by equal valor in the Northern army and by nearly double their numbers. The Southern loss was 30,000 men. Among them were such as General Pettigrew, General Pender, Colonel Burgwyn, and Colonel Avery-names henceforth ever dear to North Carolina. In the death of James Johnston Pettigrew especially we mourned the loss of a singularly gifted, engaging, and brilliant young man.

It seems to us, looking back at those gloomy days and recalling our losses, as if every life laid down was that of a hero. These men died in obedience to the call of North Carolina. It was their duty to go: they went gladly, proudly, and died, knowing that their name and fame would never pass from the memory of their native State.

But with all this heroic sacrifice the heart of our North Carolina people was not in the war. They saw nothing glorious in the sight of a land drenched in fraternal blood, and nothing hopeful or inspiring in the prospect of a Southern Confederacy henceforth armed to the teeth, not only against the Northern States of the Union, but against all Christendom, in an unheroic attempt to destroy a great nation in defence of our right to hold slaves. Men laid down their lives who had never owned a slave. They fought not for secession, not for slavery, but because North Carolina, having felt in honor bound to act with the South, had gone into the war, and they were bound to obey her.

It is a part of the history of slavery in all times that its bonds are seldom loosed except by bloodshed. With us it was the white people only who suffered. The negroes looked

on in silence. They behaved well during the progress of the war, did their duty on the plantations while the white men were in the army, and were as faithful in the families of their owners as they ever had been; and they lifted neither hand nor voice, not even after President Lincoln had issued his proclamation (January, 1863) declaring them all free, and they were assured that they would be welcomed in the Northern army. They remained quiet, and when their freedom came at the end of the war they could accept it with a good conscience.

RECITATION.

TRUTH.

SOON rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.

Truth crushed to earth shall rise again—
The eternal years of God are hers,
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies amid his worshippers.

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust
When they who helped thee flee in fear,

Die full of hope and manly trust,

Like those who fell in battle here.

Another hand thy sword shall wield,

Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.

BRYANT.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE WAR CONTINUED.

1864. THE government at Washington City had changed the commander-in-chief of their armies many times in the first three years as one disaster after another overtook them. At last, General Grant, who had taken Vicksburg and opened the Mississippi Valley to New Orleans, and had followed up this triumph by seizing Chattanooga (November, 1863), was raised to the chief command and took charge of the army before Richmond.

From this time the fortunes of the Southern Confederacy declined. All through 1864 the struggle went on more and more hopelessly for us, though victories were still won by our troops on the battlefields.

Neither England nor France would interfere, though suffering for the want of cotton. In the manufacturing districts of England the working-classes were starving for food in the absence of work. England had first brought slaves to America, and England and the Northern States had assisted to make slavery permanent in the Southern States. But the English had long since outgrown the policy of such an ignoble institution. They had long since freed all the negroes in all their colonies and territories, and

now they wished to see the South compelled to give it up There was no chance of aid from abroad.

too.

The Southern people withdrew their eyes from outside hope, and fixed them upon Lee and his generals and the rapidly diminishing forces at their command.

In President Davis and his Cabinet, and in the Confederate Congress at Richmond, there was little agreement of counsel. We went on electing Congressmen and Senators and trying to hope that some good would come of it. But North Carolina was not popular in that government. We sent our best to the Senate, but their views and opinions were overlooked. George Davis of Wilmington, William A. Graham of Orange, W. W. Avery of Burke, and W. T. Dortch of Wayne were in turn our Senators at Richmond.

No man in North Carolina stood higher at this time than Ex-governor Graham. He was the son of General Joseph Graham of Revolutionary fame, and had inherited the patriotism, the talents, and the nerve that had distinguished his father. He had been United States Senator, Secretary of the United States Navy, and governor of North Carolina, and in every position enjoyed and deserved the fullest confidence of our people. He had always been a Whig in politics, and was a typical North Carolinian in this, that though he was opposed to the doctrines of secession, yet he had sent his seven brave sons to the army.

Graham advised now that the South should hang together to the last, but that some attempt at compromise should be made by its government, and the war put an end to as soon as possible.