It is known what scant justice has been done to our State by the early historians of the country. This injustice Mr. Graham, as far as a lecture would admit, undertook to redress. Though his subject confined him to the events of less than two years, and took up the story five years after the first blood had been shed at Lexington, and four years after the Declaration of Independence, he presents a rapid and graphic sketch of what was done in North Carolina down to the year 1780. He depicts the advanced state of opinion in North Carolina before the war; he recounts the military expeditions sent out by her in support of the common cause; and shows that "from New York to Florida, inclusive, there were few battle-fields on which a portion of the troops engaged in defense of the liberties of the country were not hers." He then places before us in strong colors, the period just before Lord Cornwallis commenced his famous march--that period so justly designated as the dark days of the Revolution; when Georgia and South Carolina had been over-run and subjugated; when the army of the South had been nearly annihilated by the disastrous battle of Camden and the catastrophe of Fishing Creek. He relates the bold measures--measures which call to mind those of Rome, at similar crises of peril--with which the State of North Carolina prepared to meet the impending shock. He then enters upon a narrative of the different operations of the American and British armies under their respective commanders, Greene and Cornwallis, and a finer narrative it would be difficult to point out. A bare recital of the incidents of that campaign would not want interest in the hands of the dryest historian, but in this narrative it is brought before us in vivid colors. By his brief but striking delineation of the principal actors; by his rapid touches in which the relative state of the Whig and Tory population of that day is brought to view; by his sketches of the scenery of the Piedmont country--the theater of that campaign; by his notices of individual adventure; above all, by his masterly recital of the incidents of the retreat of General Greene and the pursuit of Lord Cornwallis--a retreat in which the hand of Providence seemed from time to time, so visibly interposed--the grand procession of events passes before us with the interest of an acted drama. We experience a feeling of deep relief, when at length, the army of Greene is placed in safety. After taking breath, which we had held as it were, during the quick succession of events in that celebrated retreat, we retrace our steps and the interest culminates in the battle of Guilford. "The philosophy of history," says Mr. Benton in his _Thirty Years' View_, "has not yet laid hold of the battle of Guilford; its consequences and events. That battle made the capture of Yorktown. The events are told in history, the connections and dependence in none." The future historian will find the task done to his hand in this lecture. Its