cut it in twain if successful; and, in order to defeat it, the Army
of Virginia would have to be withdrawn from its field of operations
and a force advancing in its track from the James would be enabled
to co-operate with the columns previously mentioned. It is
instructive to note that, upon the other side, the untrained instinct
of President Lincoln was always turning in the same direction.
In perusing the field of operations his finger would always stray
to the eastern coast of North Carolina as the vital point, and
no persuasions could induce him to give up the apparently useless
foothold which we kept there for more than three years without
material advantage. It was a matter of constant surprise to the
Confederate military authorities that this course was not adopted,
and the final result showed the wisdom of their premonition.

Among others, Colonel Desmit had obtained an inkling of this idea,
and instead of concentrating all his destructible property in
the region of his home, where, as it resulted, it would have been
comparatively secure, he pitched upon the "piney-woods" region to
the south-eastward, as the place of greatest safety.

He had rightly estimated that cotton and naval stores would, on
account of the rigorous blockade and their limited production in
other countries, be the most valuable products to hold when the
period of war should end. With these ideas he had invested largely
in both, and in and about a great factory at the falls of a chief
tributary of the Pedee, he had stored his cotton; and in the heart
of that sombre-shadowed stretch of soughing pines which lies between
the Cape Fear and the Yadkin he had hidden his vast accumulation
of pitch, turpentine, and resin. Both were in the very track of
Sherman's ruthless legions. First the factory and the thousands of