It is for this that I present these sketches, which, but for some good to be accomplished by them, would better have never been written. Where wrongs can not be redressed, or their recital be made available for good, they would far better be buried in oblivion, the wrong-doer and the sufferer alike awaiting in dread repose the final award of the Great Tribunal. How shall the South begin her new life? How, disfranchised and denied her civil rights, shall she start the wheels of enterprise and business that shall bring work and bread to her plundered, penniless people? How shall her widows and orphans be fed, her schools and colleges be supported, her churches be maintained, unless her rights and liberties be regained--unless every effort be made to give her wounds repose, and restore health and energy to her paralyzed and shattered frame? Is there any precedent in history of a war that ended with the freeing not only from all obligation to labor, but from all disposition to labor, of all the operatives of the conquered country? Is not the social status of the South at present without a parallel? Just emerging from an exhausting and devastating war, the country might well be crippled and poverty-stricken; but with three or four millions of enfranchised slaves, a population that is even now hastening to inaugurate the worst evils of insubordination, idleness, and pauperism among us, what hope for us unless the Northern sense of justice can be aroused into speedy action! While General Sherman's wagons were wallowing in the mud between Fayetteville and Goldsboro, vain attempts were being made in Raleigh to galvanize into some show of action and strength the fragments of an army that were concentrating there. General Lee's desperate situation in Virginia was not understood and realized by the multitude, nor that the Confederate territory was fast narrowing down to the northern counties of Central North-Carolina, and that Raleigh was the last capital city we could claim. Beauregard, Johnston, Hardee, Hoke, Hampton, Wheeler--names that had thrilled the whole Southern country with pride and exultation--they were all there, and for a time people endeavored to believe that Raleigh might be defended. General Sherman's plans appeared to be inscrutable. When he left Columbia, Charlotte was supposed to be his aim; but when he fell suddenly upon Fayetteville, then Raleigh was to be his next stage. The astute plan of a junction with Schofield at Goldsboro, which appears now to have been pre-arranged while he was yet in Savannah, did not dawn upon our minds till it was too late to prevent it. The fight at Bentonsville was a desperate and vain attempt to do what might possibly have been done before, and in that last wild struggle many a precious life was given in vain. With sad anxiety for the fate of those we loved, with sinking hearts, we heard, from day to day, from Averasboro and from Bentonsville, of the wild charge, the short, fierce struggle, and the