The army took up quarters for a while around Smithfield.  The troops were as jolly and full of life as they ever were in their lives.  Horse racing now was the order of the day.  Out in a large old field, every day thousands of soldiers and civilians, with a sprinkling of the fair ladies of the surrounding country, would congregate to witness the excitement of the race course.  Here horses from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and North and South Carolina tried each others mettle.  They were not the thoroughbreds of the course, but cavalry horses, artillery horses, horses of Generals, Colonels, and the staff—­horses of all breeds and kinds, all sizes and description—­stood at the head of the track and champed their bits with eagerness, impatient to get away.  Confederate money by the handfuls changed owners every day.  It was here that Governor Zeb Vance, of North Carolina, visited us, and was a greater favorite with the soldiers than any man in civil life.  It was here, too, our old disabled commander, General James Connor, came to bid us an affectionate farewell.  General Kennedy formed the brigade into a hollow square to receive our old General.  He entered the square on horseback, accompanied by General Kennedy and staff.  He had come to bid us farewell, and spoke to us in feeling terms.  He recounted our many deeds of valor upon the field, our sufferings in camp and upon the march, and especially our supreme heroism and devotion in standing so loyally to our colors in this the dark hour of our country’s cause.  He spoke of his great reluctance to leave us; how he had watched with sympathy and affection our wanderings, our battles, and our victories, and then envoking Heaven’s blessings upon us, he said in pathetic tones, “Comrades, I bid you an affectionate farewell,” and rode away.

While in camp here there was a feeble attempt made to reorganize and consolidate the brigade by putting the smaller companies together and making one regiment out of two.  As these changes took place so near the end, the soldiers never really realizing a change had been made, I will do no more than make a passing allusion to it, as part of this history.  The only effect 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.