Yet Cornwallis burned no houses here--plundered no plantations. His aim was very apparently to conciliate if possible, to teach the people to look to him for protection and a good government. To be sure, he had not enjoyed the benefit of a West-Point military training--he was evidently in profound ignorance of the advantages to be derived from the principle of "smashing things generally," as he passed along; but he was, nevertheless, (perhaps in consequence,) a _gentleman_, and an accomplished statesman, as well as a consummate soldier. He well knew-- "----who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe." As to Fayetteville, and her lot in these later days, no such slight sketch as this will suffice for the story. Perhaps no town in the South had surpassed her in the ardor and liberality with which (after secession had become the law of the State) she supported the war. She gave her bravest sons; her best blood was poured out like water in the cause of the South, and then she gave of her substance. The grace of giving had surely been bestowed upon the people of Cumberland without measure, for there seemed literally no end to their liberality. For four years the columns of their papers had exhibited an almost weekly list of donations, that in number and value would have done infinite credit to a much wealthier community. The ladies, as usual, were especially active and indefatigable. Where, indeed, in all the sunny South were they not? And why should they not have been? They were working for their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, and lovers, and for principles which these beloved ones had instructed them to cherish. Would it not have been culpable in the last degree for the women of the country to have remained even indifferent to a cause (good or bad) for which the men were laying down their lives? Why should they not take joyfully all privations and all hardships, for the sake of these, and soothe the agony of bereavement with the belief that they who needed their cares no longer, lying rolled in their bloody blankets in the bosom of Virginia, or on the fatal hills of Pennsylvania, had died in a good cause and were resting in honored graves? Who shall question the course of the women of the South in this war, or dare to undervalue their lofty heroism and fortitude, unsurpassed in story or in song? When I forget you, O ye daughters of my country! your labors of love, your charity, faith, and patience, all through the dark and bloody day, lighting up the gloom of war with the tender graces of woman's devotion and self-denial, and now, in even darker hours, your energy and cheerful submission in toil and poverty and humiliation--when I cease to do homage to your virtues, and to your excellences, may my right hand forget its cunning and my voice be silent in the dust!