On the contrary, it is my deliberate conviction that Southern soldiers who remained faithful under the unspeakable pressure of letters and messages revealing suffering, starvation, and despair at home displayed more than human heroism. The men who felt this strain most were the husbands of young wives and fathers of young children, whom they had supported by their labor, manual or mental. As the lines of communication in the Confederacy were more and more broken and destroyed, and the ability, both of county and public authorities and of neighbors, to aid them became less and less, the situation of such families became more and more desperate, and their appeals more and more piteous to their only earthly helpers who were far away, filling their places in "the thin gray line." Meanwhile the enemy sent into our camps, often by our own pickets, circulars offering our men indefinite parole, with free transportation to their homes. I am not condemning the Federal Government or military authorities for making these offers or putting out these circulars; but if there was ever such a thing as a conflict of duties, that conflict was presented to the private soldiers of the Confederate army who belonged to the class just mentioned, and who received, perhaps simultaneously, one of these home letters and one of these Federal circulars; and if ever the strain of such a conflict was great enough to unsettle a man's reason and to break a man's heart strings these men were subjected to that strain. THE OLD DRAKE'S TERRITORY [J. L. Underwood.] When Sherman's army was making its celebrated "march to the sea," it cut a swath of fire and desolation from Atlanta to Savannah and on through the Carolinas. What food was not seized for the army was consumed by fire. Mills and barns and hundreds of dwellings were consigned to the flames. Most of the people fled from the approach of the Federals and especially were the old men, who might be thought by negroes and bummers to have money concealed on their persons or premises, afraid to fall into their hands. Somewhere not far from Milledgeville, a well-to-do farmer lay hid in the woods where he saw the Federals enter his premises and carry off everything of any use or value. Not a strip of bedding, not an ear of corn, a hough of a cow nor the tail of a pig did they leave him. Before the Yankee brigade got entirely out of sight the old farmer came into his desolate home. One glance at the wreck and away he went in pursuit of the Federals. "Oh, General, General, stop your command," was the cry. On they marched without hearing him. On he rushed and cried as he ran, "Oh, General, oh, General, stop your command." Finally when he was nearly out of breath the cry was heard and the brigade halted. "What's the matter, man?" said the soldiers, as he passed on by them, his face all flushed with excitement. "Where's the General?" "Yonder he is, sitting on that black horse."