Brevet Brigadier-General Commanding. General J.G. Martin, Asheville. The citizens of Asheville also owed it to General Palmer's interference that two regiments of negroes, which had been sent over into Yancey county, and which were bearing down upon Asheville, (it was said, at the suggestion and with the concurrence of Kirke and Gillam,) for the purpose of plunder and arson, were countermanded and sent over into Tennessee. The Asheville pillage concludes such accounts of General Stoneman's remarkable raid through Western Carolina as I have been able to collect. A rich harvest of incident yet remains for the future historian. I have done little more than indicate his route. Much of the above is taken verbatim from a ms. narrative furnished me, at my request, by Dr. R.L. Beall, of Lenoir, so admirably and accurately prepared that I hope it will be given to the public entire at no distant day. It gives me pleasure to acknowledge here my indebtedness to this gentleman, and my thanks for the generous public spirit he has displayed in his invaluable contribution to these pages. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 18: Perhaps it is not generally known in North-Carolina that Colonel Kirke had ardent aspirations for the provisional governorship of his beloved native State. I saw a letter from him just after the break-up, in which he avowed this noble ambition, evidently anticipating no very distant day when a grateful country should reward his patriotism and gallantry. By the way, it is said that Colonel Kirke also is a native of Salisbury. Both Kirke and Gillam! I am afraid there is a disposition to slander that fine old borough.] CHAPTER XVII. SURRENDER OF GENERAL LEE--WHY NORTH-CAROLINA COULD NOT HAVE TAKEN MEASURES TO SEND COMMISSIONERS--REVIEW--THE COAL-FIELDS RAILWAY--DIFFICULTIES OF TRANSPORTATION--PROVISIONS--THE LAST CALL--RECREANTS--PRIVATIONS--THE CONDITION OF THE PRESS. Not till we had seen General Lee's farewell to his army, printed on a slip from the Danville _Register_ office, and read in household circles with tears and sobs--not till then did we finally and fairly give up the Southern cause, and feel that it was indeed lost. That (for us) dismal fact once established, the large majority--I may say, the great body of Southern people--surrendered with their beloved and trusted leader. Here and there were doubtless some resolved still to blind themselves, to hope against hope, who talked wildly of collecting the scattered fragments of our armies, and prolonging the war beyond the Mississippi--or somewhere; but they were the exceptions, few and far between--_rari nantes_--who took counsel of their desperation rather than of their reason. For all men knew now, what had long been feared and suspected, that the ground on which we stood was hollow, and had given way hopelessly and forever, and that now we were to pay the reckoning of our four years' madness.