That was surely a day to be remembered by us all; yet the first returning anniversary of that day brought the village of Chapel Hill an occasion as generally interesting, but invested with a tenderness of its own. On the sixteenth of April, 1866, the whole town poured out to receive two Confederate soldiers--two brothers--who had fallen in battle in our defense.[14] They came back home that day, and were placed side by side in that church, whose aisles their infant feet had trodden. The plain deal boxes that inclosed them were graced with garlands, and the emblem of the holy faith in which they had died "more than conquerors," woven of the flowers of their own dear native State. It was all that North-Carolina could do for her sons who had died in obedience to her laws. Come, Southern flowers, and twine above their grave; Let all our rath spring blossoms bear a part; Let lilies of the vale and snowdrops wave, And come thou too, fit emblem, bleeding-heart! Bring all our evergreens--the laurel and the bay, From the deep forests which around us stand; They know them well, for in a happier day They roamed these hills and valleys hand in hand. Ye winds of heaven, o'er them gently sigh, And April showers fall in kindliest rain, And let the golden sunbeams softly lie Upon the sod for which they died in vain. It was something--it was much, that we could lay them among their own familiar hills, pleasant in their lives and undivided in their deaths. And North-Carolina dust will lie lightly on their gentle and noble breasts. While the command of General Atkins remained in Chapel Hill--a period of nearly three weeks--the same work, with perhaps some mitigation, was going on in the country round us, and around the city of Raleigh, which had marked the progress of the Federal armies all through the South. Planters having large families of white and black were left without food, forage, cattle, or change of clothing. Being in camp so long, bedding became an object with the marauders; and many wealthy families were stripped of what the industry of years had accumulated in that line. Much of what was so wantonly taken was as wantonly destroyed and squandered among the prostitutes and negroes who haunted the camps. As to Raleigh, though within the corporate limits, no plundering of the houses was allowed; yet in the suburbs and the country the inscrutable policy of permitting unrestrained license to the troops prevailed to its widest extent. From the statements of several of the prominent citizens of Raleigh I make the following extracts, the first giving a general view, and the other simply one man's personal experience: