The news of Cornwallis' surrender was received throughout the country with the most tumultuous expressions of joy. The worthy New England Puritans considered it, as Cromwell did the victory at Worcester, "the crowning mercy." It promised them a return of peace and prosperity. The people of the middle States regarded it as a guarantee for their speedy deliverance from the presence of a hated enemy. But to the southern States it was more than this. It was the retributive justice of Heaven against a band of cruel and remorseless murderers and robbers, who had spread desolation and sorrow through their once happy homes. It is asserted in Gordon's "History of the War" that wherever Cornwallis' army marched the dwelling-houses were plundered of everything that could be carried off. The stables of Virginia were plundered of the horses on which his cavalry rode in their ravaging march through that State. Millions of property, in tobacco and other merchandise and in private houses and public buildings, were destroyed by Arnold, Philips, and Cornwallis in Virginia alone. The very horse which Tarleton had the impudence to ride on the day of the surrender was stolen from a planter's stable, who recognized it on the field and compelled Tarleton to give it up and mount a sorry hack for the occasion. It was computed at the time that 1,400 widows were made by the war in the single district of Ninety-Six. The whole devastation occasioned by the British army, during six months previous to the surrender at Yorktown, amounted to not less than £3,000,000 sterling, an immense loss for so short a time, falling, as it did, chiefly on the rural population. No wonder that they assembled in crowds to witness the humiliation of Cornwallis and his army. To them it was not only a triumph, but a great deliverance. Well might the Virginians triumph. The return of their favorite commander, a son of the soil, had speedily released their State from ravage and destruction and restored them to comparative peace and repose.