It has been often stated that the women of the South did more to drive the men to take up arms against the Government than the politicians. If this be so--and my experience makes me think it probable--then they have most surely reaped in the whirlwind of desolation which has burst upon their hitherto peaceful homes the most bitter fruits of the wind of treason they have sown. To them, unlike the women of the North, the fields of strife are not afar off, and they do not have to weep for their braves fallen in the distant battle-field. The clouds of strife gather and burst about their homes. They see their fields laid waste,--their towns and villages made the abode of desolation and anguish. They behold their sons, brothers, fathers, and friends stricken down by the hand of war before their eyes. Danger lurks forever at their doors. Famine--gaunt, ghastly, insatiate--forever hovers in their future, like a bird of ill omen. They are forced to many a weary struggle to provide the necessaries of life for their helpless, and too frequently, alas! fatherless children. Like the first of their sex, they incited disobedience, and now they find their paradise changed to an abode of wretchedness and misery, and are compelled, in tears and wretchedness to eat the bitter fruit of their crime. I have seen the widowed wife and orphan children standing pale, motionless and horror-struck over the dead body of the husband and father, and, with glassy eyes look upon the passing array of their foes, fierce and triumphant in the 'pomp and circumstance of war;' and I have thought what a pity that even so great an offence should have so terrible a punishment. But 'those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.' The attack on Kinston was planned and carried out by Gen. Wessells, and, though the fight was more severe, and of much longer duration than the battle of Newbern, a difficult position was carried with comparatively small loss--(about 100 killed and 400 wounded). The rebels had chosen their position, as before stated, upon a slight elevation beyond a swamp, and on both sides of the Kinston road. Their left was protected by a church and a growth of scrub oaks, and their right by a grove of large trees, their front and both flanks being pretty well protected by a swamp, difficult to cross, and densely covered with a growth of small trees and pines. [Illustration: BATTLE OF KINSTON] The brigade of Gen. Wessells opened the ball in fine style, driving in the rebel advance, and alone sustained the onset of the rebels, until the brigades commanded by Cols. Amory, Heckman, and Stevenson got into position, when they formed the left wing of our line of battle--Stevenson and Heckman the centre, and Amory the right.