The future historian of the great struggle will doubtless have ample material at his disposal; but from a vast mass of conflicting; evidence he will have to sift, combine, and arrange the grains of truth--a work to which few men of this generation are competent. But meanwhile there is much to be done in collecting evidence, especially by those who desire that justice shall be done to the South: and this evidence, it is to be hoped, will be largely drawn from _private_ sources. History has in general no more invaluable and irrefragable witnesses for the truth than are to be found in the journals, memoranda, and private correspondence of the prominent and influential men who either acted in, or were compelled to remain quiet observers of the events of their day. Especially will this be found to be the case when posterity shall sit in judgment on the past four years in the South. From no other sources can so fair a representation be made of the conflicts of opinion, or of the motives of action in the time when madness seemed to rule the hour, when all individual and all State efforts for peace were powerless, when sober men were silenced, and when even the public press could hardly be considered free. If it be true of the South in general, that even in the most excited localities warning voices were raised in vain, and that a strong undercurrent of good sense and calm reflection undoubtedly existed--overborne for a time by the elements of strife and revolution--more especially and with tenfold emphasis is it true of the State of North-Carolina. "Where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down: and, as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death; And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion, and confused events, New-hatched to the woful time." That North-Carolina accepted a destiny which she was unable to control, when she ranged herself in the war for Southern independence, is a fact which can not be disputed. And though none the less ardently did her sons spring to arms, and none the less generously and splendidly did her people sustain the great army that poured forth from her borders; though none the less patient endurance and obedience to the general government was theirs; yet it is also a fact, indisputable and on record, that North-Carolina was never allowed her just weight of influence in the councils of the Southern Confederacy, nor were the opinions or advice of her leading men either solicited or regarded. And therefore, nowhere as in the private, unreserved correspondence of her leading men, can her attitude at the beginning, her temper and her course all through, and her action at the close of the war, be so clearly and so fairly defined and illustrated, and shown to be eminently consistent and characteristic throughout.