514 Nortu Carortina Troops, 1861-65.

or capture of Grant’s army before Petersburg and Richmond
by the combined forces of Lee and Johnston attacking him in
overwhelming numbers, in front and rear. In this view the
solid importance of the victory of Bentonville cannot be over-
estimated.”

After Bentonville, Johnston’s army was camped in the up-
per end of Johnston county, near Mitchener’s Station, till 10
April, 1865, when we began our last retreat. The first surren-.
der at the Burnett House near Durham, 14 April, proved
abortive. On 26 April the final surrender was signed and
the Sixty-first was paroled near High Point, 2 May, 1865.

After the lapse of so many long and weary years, it is a
difficult task, with the historical data obtainable incomplete as
they are, to do justice full and ample to this, or any other reg-
iment of North Carolina troops who did service in the Con-
federate army. No better soldiers are known in the history
of the world than the Confederates, and if any of them were
better than the others our love for North Carolina and her
common glory is my excuse for saying that the Tar Heels
were the very best. God bless the memory of all of them who
so freely offered up their lives upon the altar of their country
for a cause that was just in the sight of God and our own
conscience. And to the noble old veterans who still survive
of the gallant old Sixty-first, may they.yet live for many days
to instill into the hearts and minds of their descendants the
deepest love and veneration for the Confederate cause, which
was crushed not by the peple of the North but by the hun-
dreds of thousands of foreign trash, who fought for money
and not for the love of the union.

N. A. Ramsey.

Duruam, N. C.,
26 April, 1901.