girls still held their regular meetings for knitting soldiers' socks, all unconscious of the final crash so near, while the peach-trees were all abloom and spring was putting on all her bravery. CHAPTER X. GENERAL JOHNSTON PREPARING TO UNCOVER RALEIGH--URGENT LETTER PROM GOVERNOR SWAIN TO GOVERNOR GRAHAM--GOVERNOR GRAHAM'S REPLY--A PROGRAMME OF OPERATIONS AGREED UPON--FINALLY GOVERNORS GRAHAM AND SWAIN START FOR SHERMAN'S HEADQUARTERS. When the intention of General Johnston to uncover the city of Raleigh became generally known, and when the retrograde movement of his army commenced in the direction of Chapel Hill, and along the line of the Central Railroad; when General Wheeler's troopers, followed hard by Kilpatrick's command, poured along our country roads, and the people gave half of their provision to the retreating friends, and were stripped of the other half by the advancing foe; there were few thoughtful persons in Orange county whose waking and sleeping hours were not perturbed and restless. What could be done? Whither were we tending? What was to be the result? An hour or two of anxious reflection on such questions before day on the morning of April 8th, induced Governor Swain, President of the University of North Carolina--than whom, though immured in the cloisters of a venerable literary institution, no man in the Confederacy took a keener interest in the progress of public events, surveyed the action of parties with more sagacious apprehension, or was oftener consulted by leading men--induced him to rise at an early hour and make another effort to influence the public authorities of the State to adopt immediate measures for saving what remained of the country from devastation, and the seat of government and the University from the conflagration which had overwhelmed the capitals of our sister States. He wrote the subjoined letter to Governor Graham, at daylight; but such was the apprehension of the time, that it was difficult to find a messenger, and still more difficult to procure a horse to bear it from the University to Hillsboro. By ten that morning it was on the way, and by six in the evening Governor Graham's reply was received. CHAPEL HILL, } Saturday Morning, April 8, 1865. } My Dear Sir: Since the organization of the State government, in December, 1776, North-Carolina has never passed through so severe an ordeal as that we are now undergoing. Unless something can be done to prevent it, suffering and privation, and death--death in the battle-field, and death in the most horrible of all forms, the slow and lingering death of famine, are imminent to thousands, not merely men, but women and children.