Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/467

 466 Southern Historical Society Papers.

countries may require, subject, of course, to the approval of the President and the co-ordinate branch of the treaty making power. I have the honor to be, sir,

your obedient servant,

R. M. T. HUNTER.

ARCHIVE OFFICE, WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., March loth, 1879.

The above is a correct copy of a letter contained in a book belong- ing to the records of the State Department of the Confederate States, which book is in the possession of the Treasury Department, and was loaned to this office for this purpose.

A. P. TASKER, Chief Clerk Archive Office.

The Last Raid.

By Mrs. CLARA D. MACLEAN.

[Compiled from a Journal kept from 1859 to 1871.]

In the dim dawn of April i2th, 1861, I was awakened by a low, resonant peal as of distant thunder. It was the first gun of the war. Defiant Sumter was besieged. On the i2th of April, 1865, I heard the echoes of the last.

Such a lovely season it was ! We can all remember how the trees budded and the flowers bloomed that fateful spring. As regiment after regiment filed along the road, " under the boughs where early birds were singing," past our temporary home in Chatham county, North Carolina, my eyes grew dim, and my heart ached recalling those lines :

' And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves,

Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass ; Weeping, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning braves."

Scarcely two months before most of them had been transported southward, in box-cars or on flats in the crudest weather, to re- inforce Johnston, and keep back the advancing enemy a puny dyke