viii REVIEW AND CONCLUSION.

life since the war but those who have occupied every civil office
from U. §. Senator and Governor to constable. Farmers,
lawyers,- preachers, physicians, manufacturers, teachers, edi-
tors, day laborers have each and all freely contributed their
time and labor to preserve herein the memorials of what
their comrades did and suffered at the command of North
Carolina during those four eventful years the memory of
which can never be forgotten.

Among the brave men who have traced the lines in these
volumes are soldiers who heard the first shriek of shell at
Bethel in the first real battle of the war 10 June, 1861, and
whose ears caught the patter of minies as Cox’s brigade fired
the last volley at Appomattox 9 April, 1865 and who missed
but little of the music of war between those dates. Among
these writers are some who heard the opening guns at Sum-
ter 13 April, 1861; many who heard the crash of A. P. Hill’s
musketry on that sultry summer’s eve as he drove back Burn-
side at Sharpsburg and who listened to the long, low mono-
tone of artillery at Gettysburg so steady and unbroken as to
seem the prolonged reverberation of a single broadside; eyes
now dim saw the Southern night lightened with shell and mor-
tar over doomed Vicksburg; limbs now stiff stepped fast and
cheerily as the echoes of Jackson’s cannon rolled along the
silver Shenandoah. Such another gathering can not be
found in any other work and could not be duplicated now for
nearly one in every ten has passed beyond the pale since
their articles were penned. Their comrades of whose deeds
they wrote sleep, many of them, where the Georgian pines
are bare, others by the Mississippi, the Cumberland, the
Ohio, the Kanawha and where Potomae’s breezes whispering
low soothe many a soldier’s endless sleep.

With a devotion to duty, only to be expected of such men,
they have written these volumes and deserve the grateful re-
membrance of their countrymen for this scarcely less then
for the gallant deeds they aided to perform and which but for
their pens would have been unrecorded.

While these articles have been necessarily written from
the standpoint of each writer which by a natural law makes
each object and event near us seem larger and more impor-

REVIEW AND CONCLUSION. 1x

tant than those farther off, still there has been a strenuous
and painstaking effort to be accurate and truthful to the
smallest detail. ‘The work of such men could not be other
than reliable. Any errors come from the lack of perspective
incident to every narrative by an eye witness.

The articles are 254 in number exclusive of 165 pages em-
braced in the three Indexes, i. e. Index to Appomattox Pa-
role List, Index to Illustrations and the General Index.
‘These Indexes include some 17,000 names, a very large part
wf which are cited more than once.

The history of each of our 84 regiments (which includes the
“Bethel” Regiment) is written by a member thereof except
the sketches of four of the Senior Reserves Regiments and
two of the Detailed men of which no survivors could befound.
The history of each of our twenty-six Battalions is also given.
The history of each brigade is written by a member thereof
und a valuable series of Battles, giving North Carolina’s
part therein is furnished by participants on the respective
occasions. The articles on Gettysburg by Major W. M.
Robbins, Captain Louis G. Young, Captain S. A. Ashe
and Lieutenant-Colonel John T. Jones as to the assault
on Cemetery Ridge and by Captain N. W. Ray on the
capture of Cemetery Hill are of exceptional value. An ac-
count of North Carolina’s share in the Navy is herein pre-
served including the story of the cruise of the Shenandoah,
commanded by a gallant North Carolinian who flew the
Confederate battle emblem at her mast head till 6 Novem-
ber, 1865, nearly seven months after Lee’s surrender.

The experience of prisoners of war is graphically told in-
cluding an account of those who were exposed to the fire of
our own batteries at Morris Island. Governor Vance’s
memorable speech narrating the State’s record in the war,
also the report of our agent sent to England to procure sup-
plies are reproduced. The history of the State’s steamer, the
“ 4d-Vance” and a most interesting story by Mr. Sprunt of
the incidents of the system of Blockade-running by which
we were so long enabled to continue the war are printed for
the first time.

Every subject is touched upon save the story of the sacri-