ct these changes had was the throwing out of
some of our best and bravest officers (there not being places for
all), but as a matter of fact this was to their advantage, as they
escaped the humiliation of surrender, and returned home a few days
earlier than the rest of the army.

After passing through South Carolina and venting its spleen on the
Secession State, the Federal Army, like a great forest fire, sweeping
over vast areas, stops of its own accord by finding nothing to feed
upon. The vandalism of the Union Army in North Carolina was confined
mostly to the burning of the great turpentine forests. They had burned
and laid waste the ancestral homes of lower South Carolina, left
in ashes the beautiful capital of the State, wrecked and ruined the
magnificent residences and plantations of the central and upper part
of the country, leaving in their wake one vast sheet of ruin and
desolation, so that when they met the pine barrens of North Carolina,
their appetites for pillage, plunder, and destruction seems to have
been glutted.

It was the boast of the Federal commander and published with delight
in all the Northern newspapers, that "where his army went along a crow
could not pass over without taking its rations along." Then, too, this
very country was to feed and support, while in transit to their homes
almost the whole of Johnston's and the greater part of Lee's Army. All
these, in squads or singly, were fed along the way from house to house
wherever they could beg a little meal or corn, with a morsel of meat
or molasses. A great number of negro troops also passed through this
country on their way to the coast to be disbanded. But the noble women
of South Carolina never turned a hungry soldier from their doors as
long as there was a mouthful in the house to eat.

Another terror now alarmed the people--the news of a great raid, under
Stoneman, being on its way through North Carolina and upper South
Carolina, coming across the country from East Tennessee, laying waste
everything in its track. General Sherman had concentrated his whole
army at Goldsboro, and was lying idle in camp, preparatory to his
next great move to connect with Grant. He had at his command the right
wing, under General Howard, twenty-eight thousand eight hundred
and thirty-four; its left wing, under General Slocum, twenty-eight
thousand and sixty-three. General Schofield had come up from Newbern
with twenty-six thousand three hundred and ninety-t