company of rebel cavalry, and, in favorable circumstances, would disperse them and capture their booty. With the exception of Columbia alone, every town in South Carolina through which the army passed was first entered by the bummers. At Chesterfield they were two days and a half ahead of the army, the whole corps having congregated at this point. At Robertsville we struck the Savannah and Augusta Railroad, and in obedien to the "file left" order, turned towards Augusta. Half a mile out I noticed the smouldering ruins of Colonel Lawton's fine plantation, the fence and negro shanties alone remaining undisturbed. The plantation hands were all at home, but before the column had disappeared but one or two of Lawton's blacks remained to tell the tale of devastation, when the rebel lord returned to his deserted grounds. CHAPTER XV. SHERMAN'S CAMPAIGN IN THE CAROLINAS. IN THE HEART OF NORTH CAROLINA-RESULTS OF THE In the last chapter we left General Sherman and his splendid army, after their successful march, at Goldsboro, North Carolina. One thousand miles triumphantly traversed, brought the captors of Atlanta, Milledgeville, Savannah, Charleston, Columbia, Fayettville and Goldsboro, into the very heart of North Carolina. Some of the results of this campaign were fourteen cities captured, hundreds of miles of railroad destroyed, thousands of bales of cotton burned; 85 cannon, 4,000 prisoners and 25,000 animals captured, and over fifteen thousand white and black refugees were set free. Thousands of stands of small arms were secured at various places on the march, and large quantities of machinery, ammunition and stores. The Richmond Sentinel pronounced the grand march of Sherman, "simply the flight of a bird through the air.” Jefferson Davis admitted, that having conquered the West, Sherman seriously threatened Richmond itself. "Recent military operations of the enemy," he says, "have been successful in capturing some of our seaports; in interrupting some of our lines of communications and in devastating large districts of our country. These events have had the natural effect of encouraging our foes and dispiriting many of our people." The Sentinel, however, in common with the Army and Navy Gazette, the leading military publication of England, persisted in uttering the prediction that Sherman would be "annihilated." "Bonaparte," said this rebel organ, "found at last a Moscow and a Waterloo, and a Swedish madman a Pultona and a Frederickshall. Sherman, though he plays at a less important game, dares a greater danger and shall surely share their fate." While these extracts show that the papers of the South were false prophets, they indicate plainly that Sherman has accomplished what to them seemed an impossibility. After Sherman had destroyed the arsenal, machinery and other property that might be of service to the enemy-without resting his army at Fayetteville, as he would have been excused for doing, and as any other commander would have donemarched across the country to Goldsboro! With his habitual but astonishing fearlessness, he moved for the north and rear of Goldsboro for the purpose of flanking it. The move was a perfect success. Bragg and Johnston moved back on Raleigh. The flanking of Goldsboro at once relieved the pressure which kept Schofield at Kinston. Sherman's army moved forward, and without much serious opposition captured Raleigh, the capital of the State. "The unfailing success of Sherman in driving the rebel army before him, from point to point, until he had reached a position so threatening to Richmond, compelled General R. E. Lee to send reënforcements to Johnston from Richmond. The enemy knew that unless Sherman could be checked both armies would be caged inside the fortifications of Richmond. But to reënforce Johnston was to present a strong temptation to General Grant to attack Richmond. The experiment was tried, "ex necessitate." Grant, with his eagle eye saw the prey, darted down upon it and seized it. Richmond, the nest of traitors and treason, and Petersburgh fell after a desperate conflict, and great was the fall thereof. On the 3d day of April, 1865, they were occupied by the United States forces. The retreating army of Lee was rapidly pursued until he was completely surrounded in the vicinity of Appomattox Court House, about twenty-two miles east of Lynchburg and one hundred and three miles west of Richmond. Here it was that General Lee surrendered the army of Northern Virginia to General Grant, April 9th, 1865, on such conditions as were regarded as very lenient, even by Lee himself. The details of this great event, as given by an eye witness, will be read with interest: It will be recollected that General Grant's first letter to Lee was dated on the 7th, Friday, the day of the battle of Farmville, and the correspondence was kept up during the following day and up to 11 o'clock on Sunday, as already published. In response to General Grant's last letter, General Lee appeared on the picket line of the Second Corps, Miles' division, with a letter addressed to General Meade, requesting a cessation of hostilities while he considered General Grant's terms of surrender. General Meade replied that he had no authority to accede to the request, but that he would wait two |