The philosophy of history has not yet laid hold of the battle of Guilford, its consequences and effects. That battle made the capture of Yorktown. The events are told in every history: their connection and dependence in none. It broke up the plan of Cornwallis in the South, and changed the plan of Washington in the North. Cornwallis was to subdue the Southern States, and was doing it until Greene turned upon him at Guilford. Washington was occupied with Sir Henry Clinton, then in New York with twelve thousand British troops. He had formed the heroic design to capture Clinton and his army (the French fleet cooperating) in that city, and thereby putting an end to the war. All his preparations were going on for that grand consummation when he got news of the battle of Guilford, the retreat of Cornwallis to Wilmington, his inability to keep the field in the South, and his return northward through the lower part of Virginia. He saw his advantage--an easier prey--and the same result, if successful. Cornwallis or Clinton, either of them captured, would put an end to the war. Washington changed his plan, deceived Clinton, moved rapidly upon the weaker general, captured him and his seven thousand men, and ended the Revolutionary war. The battle of Guilford put that capture into Washington's hands; and thus Guilford and Yorktown became connected; and the philosophy of history shows their dependence, and that the lesser event was father to the greater. The State of North Carolina gave General Greene twenty-five thousand acres of western land for that day's work, now worth a million of dollars; but the day itself has not yet obtained its proper place in American history.
The military life of Mr. Macon finished with his departure from the camp on the Yadkin, and his civil public life commenced on his arrival at the General Assembly, to which he had been summoned--that civil public life in which he was continued above forty years by free elections--Representative in Congress under Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and long the Speaker of the House; Senator in Congress under Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams; and often elected President of the Senate, and until voluntarily declining; twice refusing to be Postmaster-General under Jefferson; never taking any office but that to which he was elected; and resigning his last senatorial term when it was only half run. But a characteristic trait remains to be told of his military life--one that has neither precedent nor imitation (the example of Washington being out of the line of comparison): he refused to receive pay or to accept promotion, and served three years as a private through mere devotion to his country. And all the long length of his life was conformable to this patriotic and disinterested beginning: and thus the patriotic principles of the future Senator were all revealed in early life and in the obscurity of an unknown situation. Conformably to this beginning, he refused to take anything under the modern acts of Congress for the benefit of the surviving officers and soldiers of the Revolution, and voted against them all, saying they had suffered alike (citizens and military), and all been rewarded together in the establishment of independence; that the debt to the army had been settled by pay, by pensions to the wounded, by half-pay and land to the officers: that no military claim could be founded on depreciated continental paper money, from which the civil functionaries who performed service, and farmers who furnished supplies, suffered as much as any. On this principle he voted against the bill for Lafayette, against all the modern Revolutionary pensions and land bounty acts, and refused to take anything under them (for many were applicable to himself).