The coïncidences in the plan, and the contrasts in the mode of conducting the campaigns of Lord Cornwallis and General Sherman, are striking, and suggestive to the student of history. Cornwallis hesitated whether to strike North-Carolina in the heart of the whig settlements--between the Yadkin and the Catawba--or enter among his friends between the Pedee and Cape Fear, and ultimately decided to accomplish both purposes. In January, 1781, Sir James Henry Craig captured Wilmington, and on the nineteenth of February, Lord Cornwallis forced the passage of the Catawba at Beattie's Ford. General Schofield had possession of Wilmington when General Sherman, making _a feint_ at Charlotte, captured Fayetteville. In Lord Cornwallis's progress through Carolina he met with every thing to exasperate him in the conduct of the people. On his first entrance into Charlotte, September, 1780, the whole British army was actually held at bay for half an hour by a body of about one hundred and fifty militia, and a few volunteers, commanded by Major Joseph Graham, posted behind the court-house and houses, and commanded by Colonel Davie, who was "determined to give his lordship an earnest of what he might expect in the State." Three separate charges of the British Legion were repulsed by this handful of devoted men, who retired at last on being flanked by the infantry, in perfect order, with but a loss of eleven killed and wounded, while the British admitted a loss of forty-three killed and wounded. "When the Legion was afterward reproached for cowardice in suffering such a check from so small a detail of militia, they excused themselves by saying that the confidence with which the Americans behaved made them apprehend an ambuscade, for surely nothing of that sort was to be expected in an open village at mid-day." I have by me as I write, in Colonel Davie's own handwriting, his account of "the affair at Charlotte," as he modestly styles it, and it is well worth comparing with Tarleton's and Stedman's report of the same. A more brilliant and audacious exploit was not performed during the whole Revolutionary war. A series of such annoyances, heading and dogging the British army at every step all through that country, gained for Charlotte the well-earned and enviable _sobriquet_ of "The Hornets' Nest," and the commander-in-chief paid the whole region the compliment of declaring that "Mecklenburg and Rowan were the two most rebellious counties in America."