towards Yorktown; and Cornelius Harnett's house, the Harnett whom Josiah Quincy called the Samuel Adams of North Carolina, was standing near by the north boundary of the city only a few years ago.
After those stormy and bitter days Wilmington saw many years of prosperity and peace. There had been a distinctly literary element here in Colonial days. The first American drama, The Prince of Parthia, by Thomas Godfrey, was written here in 1759, and was years afterwards produced on the stage by a company of local amateurs. Its author lies buried in St. James's churchyard. When peace had brought again plenty and prosperity, and when commerce began to change the provincial town into a bustling mart of trade, social refinement and intellectual culture revived, and under changed conditions democratic institutions the Cape Fear section asserted again its old pre-eminence.
During the war between the States, Wilmington was specially noted as the centre of the important intercourse between the Confederate States and foreign countries by means of the "blockade-runners." A hundred steamers are said to have been engaged in this traffic
