should have his own again."

And here the author's task is ended--albeit far from completed; for so
little has been told, where there was so much to tell. But, there was
no longer a Rebel Capital, to offer its inside view; and what followed
the fall--were it not already a twice-told tale--has no place in these
pages. Disjointed sketches, these have perchance told some new, or
interesting, facts. Certes, they have omitted many more, well worth the
telling, noted during those four unparalleled years; but plainly not
compressible, within the limits of one volume.

Happily, the trials, the strain, the suffering of those years remain
with us, but as a memory. That memory is, to the South, a sacred
heritage which unreasoning fanaticism may not dim--which Time, himself,
shall not efface. To the North that memory should be cleared of
prejudice and bitterness, becoming thus a lesson priceless in worth.

Happily, too, the sober second thought of a common people, aided by the
loyalty of the South--to herself and to her plighted faith--has changed
into recemented union of pride and of interest, that outlook from the
crumbled gates of Richmond, which made her people groan in their
hearts:

_Solitudinem faciunt appellantque pacem!_

FINIS.

APPENDIX.

_FIRST AND LAST BLOOD OF THE WAR._

While the battle of Bethel is recorded in the foregoing pages as the
first decided fight of the war between the States, it may leave
erroneous impression not to note the date of "first blood" really shed
in action on southern soil. In the report of the Adjutant-general of
the State of Virginia, for 1866, occurs this entry:

J. Q. Marr, graduated July 4, 1846. Lawyer, Member of the Virginia
Convention. Entered military service as Captain of Virginia
Volunteers, April 1, 1861. Killed at Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia,
May 13, 1861. First blood of the war.

Naturally, many conflicting statements as to the last effective shot of
the long struggle were made and received as true. The most reliable
would appear to be the following, reproduced from a paper printed by
the boys of Mr. Denson's school, in the village of Pittsboro, N.C., in
1866:

The accomplished author of that series of interesting papers, "The
Last Ninety Days of the War in North Carolina," published in _The
Watchman_, New York, states that the last blood of the war was shed
near the Atkins plantation, a few miles from Chapel Hill, on the