While the Federal armies lay at Goldsboro, trains were running day and night from Beaufort and from Wilmington, conveying stores for the supply and complete refit of Sherman's army. The Confederate army, lying between Goldsboro and Raleigh, having no supplies or reënforcements to receive, waited grimly and despairingly the order to fall back upon Raleigh, which came as soon as General Sherman, having effected his interview with General Grant, had returned to Goldsboro, with his future plan of action matured, and once more, on the tenth of April, set the grand army in motion. The scenes in Raleigh during the first week of April were significant enough. The removal of government stores, and of the effects of the banks; the systematic concealment of private property of every description; the hurried movements of troops to and fro; the doubt, dismay, and gloom painted on every man's face, told but too well the story of anticipated defeat and humiliation. If there were any who secretly exulted in the advance of the Federal army, they were not known. The nearest approach to any such feeling in any respectable man's breast was probably the not unnatural sense of satisfaction with which men who had long seen their opinions derided and execrated now felt that their hour of vindication was arriving, the hour which every thoughtful man in the State had long since foreseen. The united North was too strong for the South, and the weaker cause—whether right or wrong—was doomed. I repeat, not a thoughtful or clear-headed man in North-Carolina but had foreseen this result as most probable, while at the same time not a thoughtful man or respectable citizen within our borders but had considered it his duty as well as his interest to stand by his State and do all in his power to assist her in the awful struggle. Till the Northern people, as a body, can understand how it was that such conflicting emotions held sway among us, and can see how an honorable people could resist and deplore secession, and yet fight to the last gasp in support of the Confederacy, and in obedience to the laws of the State, it is idle to hope for a fair judgment from them. This, however, contradictory as it may seem to superficial observers, was the position of North-Carolina all through the war, from its wild inception to its sullen close, and as such was defended and illustrated by her best and ablest statesmen. Foremost and most earnest in her efforts to maintain peace and preserve the Union—for she was the only State which sent delegates to both the Northern and Southern peace conventions—she was yet foremost also in the fight and freest in her expenditure of blood and treasure to sustain the common cause, which she had so reluctantly embraced; and now the time was fast approaching when she was again to vindicate her claims to supreme good sense and discretion, by being among the first to admit the hopelessness and sin of further effort, and the first to offer and accept the olive-branch.
Frequently during the winter of 1864-65, had the eyes of our people been turned toward our Senator in the Confederate Congress, anxious for some public expression of opinion as to the situation from him, waiting to see what course he would indicate as most proper and honorable. For of those who stood foremost as representative North-Carolinians, of those who possessed the largest share of personal popularity and influence in the State, it is not too much to say that Ex-Governor Graham was by far the most conspicuous and preëminent—the man of whom it may be said more truly than of any other, that as he spoke so North-Carolina felt, and as he acted, so North-Carolina willed. And now, in the approaching crisis, there was no man by whose single deliberate judgment the whole State would have so unanimously agreed to be guided.
It may be well to pause here and glance at Governor Graham's antecedents and associations, the better to understand his claims to such prominence and such influence.
In a country such as ours, where hereditary distinctions do not exist, it is peculiarly pleasant to observe such a transmission of principles, and virtues, and talents, as is exhibited in the Graham family. The father of Governor Graham was General Joseph Graham, of Revolutionary fame, than whom there did not exist a more active and able partisan leader in North-Carolina. In the affair at Charlotte in 1780, referred to in a preceding number, when one hundred and fifty militia, under Colonel Davie, gave the whole British army under Cornwallis such a warm reception, most efficient aid was rendered by Major Joseph Graham, who commanded a small company of volunteers on that occasion. He was covered with wounds, and his recovery was considered by his friends as little short of miraculous. But he was afterward distinguished in many heroic exploits, and commanded in no less than fifteen different engagements.
His youngest son, William Alexander, was born in 1804, in Lincoln county, graduated at the State University in 1824, chose the profession of the law, and entered upon public life as member of the General Assembly in 1833, three years before the death of his venerable father. The talents, patriotism, and energy which had distinguished the Revolutionary patriot, were transmitted in full measure to his son, and North-Carolina evinced her appreciation of his abilities by retaining him in public office whenever he would consent to serve, from the time of his first entrance. And Governor Graham has never failed, has never been unequal to the occasion, or to the expectations formed of him, however high. His very appearance gives assurance of the energy, calm temper, high ability, and nerve which have always characterized him. As a lawyer and advocate, his reputation is eminent and his success brilliant; but it is as a statesman that his career is particularly to be noted now. He was United States Senator in 1840, elected Governor of the State in 1844, and reëlected in 1846. His immediate predecessor in this office was the Hon J.M. Morehead, previously referred to as a member of the Peace Convention at Washington; and his successor was the Hon. Charles Manly—all Whigs—and Governor Manly, the last of that school of politics elected to that office, previous to the civil war. Governor Graham was appointed Secretary of the Navy in 1850, by President Fillmore, which he resigned in 1852 on receiving the nomination for Vice-President on the ticket with General Scott. He was repeatedly member of the General Assembly, and in all positions has merited and enjoyed the fullest and most unhesitating confidence of the people he represented, worthy of them and worthy of his parentage.
His connection in politics having been ever with the Whig party, he was thereby removed in the furthest possible degree from any countenance to the doctrines of Nullification and Secession. Hence he had concurred with Webster's great speech in reply to Hayne in 1830, with the proclamation of Jackson in 1832, with Clay in 1850, and with the entire policy of President Fillmore's eminently national administration. In February, 1860, he visited Washington City to consult with such friends as Crittenden of Kentucky, Hives of Virginia, and Granger of New-York, on the dangers then environing and threatening the country, the result of which was a convention nominating Bell and Everett for the Presidential ticket, with the motto, "The Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the laws." He canvassed the State on his return home, for these candidates and principles, warning the people, however, that there was a likelihood of Mr. Lincoln's election; and that in such a case it was evidently the purpose of the Secessionists who supported Breckinridge, to break up the Government and involve the country in civil war. Party, however, was at that time stronger than patriotism, and Breckinridge carried the State. On Mr. Lincoln's election, Governor Graham made public addresses, exhorting the people to submit and yield due obedience to his office. When the Legislature that winter ordered an election to take the sense of the people on the call of a convention, and at the same time to elect delegates, Governor Graham opposed the call, and it was signally defeated in the State. He was proposed as a Commissioner to the Peace Convention at Washington, but was rejected by the secessionist majority because of his decided and openly expressed Union sentiments.
After the attack on Fort Sumter, and the secession of Virginia and of Tennessee, leaving North-Carolina perfectly isolated among the seceded States, and with civil war already begun, Governor Graham decided to adopt the cause of the Southern States, but with pain and reluctance, not upon any pretense of right, but as a measure of revolution, and of national interest and safety. He was a member of the convention which in May, 1861, carried the State out of the Union, and from the date of the secession ordinance he endeavored in good faith and honor to sustain the cause of the Confederate States, but without any surrender on the part of the people of the rights and liberties of freemen. In the Convention of 1862, he delivered an elaborate speech in opposition to test oaths, sedition laws, the suspension of the privilege of habeas corpus, and all abridgments of the constitutional rights of the citizen, either by State conventions, or by Legislatures, or by Congress, which may be safely pronounced the clearest and ablest vindication of the cardinal principles of civil liberty presented in the annals of the Confederacy.
The expression of such views, such an evident determination that the country should be free, not only in the end, but in the means, coupled with great moderation of opinion as to the final result of the struggle, and a total absence of all fire-eating proclivities, drew down upon him the free criticism of the secession press and party, many of whom did not hesitate to brand him as a traitor to the cause, notwithstanding the assurances he gave of five sons in the army, some one of whom was in every important battle on the Atlantic slope, except Bull Run and Chancellorsville; two being present when the flag of Lee went down on his last battle-field at Appomattox, while a third then lay languishing with a severe and recent wound at Petersburg. Governor Graham's sons derived no advantage from their father's distinguished position in North-Carolina. They received no favors or patronage from the Government, but were engaged in arduous and perilous service all through, in such subordinate offices as were conferred by the election of their comrades, or in the ordinary course of promotion.
No families in the State gave more freely of their best blood and treasure in the support of the war than the Graham family and its connections. Governor Graham's younger sister, Mrs. Morrison, wife of the Rev. Dr. Morrison, of Lincoln county, the first President of Davidson College, had three sons in the service, and four sons-in-law, namely, Major Avery, General Barringer, General D.H. Hill, and O præclarum et venerabile nomen, Stonewall Jackson! Perhaps no two families entered upon the rebellion more reluctantly, nor in their whole course were more entirely in unison with the views and feelings of the great body of our citizens.
Major Avery, the youngest of Dr. Morrison's sons-in-law, was one of five brothers, sons of Colonel Isaac T. Avery, of Burke; grandsons of Colonel Waightstill Avery, who commanded a regiment during the revolutionary war, and was a member of the Mecklenburg Convention, and a colleague there of Major Robert Davidson, Mrs. Morrison's maternal grandfather. Three of these five brothers fell in battle. The youngest, Colonel Isaac T. Avery, named for his father, fell at Gettysburgh. He survived his wounds a few minutes, long enough to beckon to his lieutenant-colonel for a pencil and a scrap of paper, on which with his dying fingers he assured his father that he died doing his whole duty. His father, approaching his eightieth year, received the note, stained with his son's life-blood, and died a few weeks afterward. The oldest of the brothers, Waightstill, named for his grandfather, and the pride of the family, was a son-in-law of Governor Morehead, and his colleague in the first Confederate Congress. He fell in Kirk's raid near Morganton. Governor Morehead,[13] who was, with the exception of the distinguished President of the University, Governor Swain, the oldest of the surviving ex-governors of the State, had two sons and two sons-in-law in the army; the two latter were killed. Governor Graham's immediate successor as governor—Charles Manly, of Raleigh—had three sons in the army, all of whom saw hard service; and three sons-in-law, two of whom were killed. There were not wanting those in the dark hours of the contest who spoke of it as "the rich man's war, and the poor man's fight." These examples show that it was the war of all. The rich and the poor met together, and mingled their blood in a common current, and lie together among the unrecorded dead. The history of many families may be traced whose sacrifices were similar to the above instances. And it is now the imperative duty of those fitted for the work, to gather up these records for posterity, and for the future historian and annalist of the country. Many striking coïncidences and connections in family history, many most affecting instances of unselfish devotion and of irreparable loss, are yet to be preserved by hands eager