In the Union camps of East Tennessee, there are numerous volunteers from Watauga and other adjacent counties over the border. At the only popular election suffered to be held upon the question of Union and secession, the Union majority was as two to one; and even after the storm of Sumter, the vote in the convention of North Carolina on a proposition to submit the ordinance of secession to a vote of the people, received thirty-four yeas to seventy-three nays. I have confidence that those thirty-four names, representing one-third of the State, were given by delegates from the western counties,—the Alleghany counties,—from the base and sides of the Blue Ridge,—from a land of corn and cattle, not of cotton. Again, when the news of the capture of Hatteras was announced in the legislature of North Carolina, it is evident from the language of the Raleigh newspapers that an irrepressible explosion of Union feeling—even to an outburst of cheers, according to one statement—occurred. Nor is such a state of feeling surprising, when we remember that not even in Kentucky is the memory of Henry Clay more a fireside treasure of the people. In this respect, the quiet, unobtrusive 'North' State was in striking contrast to its immediate neighbors—South Carolina in one direction, and Atlantic Virginia in the other. Politically, when the pennons of Clay and Calhoun rode the gale, the vote and voice of North Carolina were ever given for the great Kentucky leader. Let us accept these omens for the winter campaign, which will open with the triumph of the Union and the Constitution on the Cumberland heights of East Tennessee.

'In one-fifth of Georgia, over an area of 12,000 square miles, slavery only exists by the usurpation of the cotton aristocracy of the lowland districts of the State.' In all of them, slaves, though in a greater proportion than in the rest of Alleghania, are very greatly in the minority, as appears from the following table:—

COUNTIESFREESLAVE
Madison,3,763 1,933
Hart,*
Franklin,9,0762,382
Jackson,6,8082,941
Banks,*
Hall,7,3701,336
Habersham,7,6751,218
Rabun,2,338110
Towns,*
Union,6,955278
Lumpkin,7,995939
Dawson,*
Forsyth,7,8121,027
Milton,*
Cherokee,11,6301,157
Pickens,*
Gilmer,8,236200
Faunin*
Murphy,*
Whitefield,*
Gordon,5,156828
Cass,10,2713,008
Floyd,5,2022,999
Chattoga,5,1311,680
Walker,11,4081,664
Catoosa,*
Dade,2,532148

* Counties marked with an asterisk, organized after the census of 1850, of which the foregoing are returns.

Last in the list we have North-east Alabama, in which we find the following counties:—

COUNTIESFREESLAVE
Cherokee,12,170 1,691
DeKalb,7,730506
Marshall,7,952868
Jackson,11,7542,292
Morgan,6,6363,437
Madison,11,93714,329
Limestone,8,3998,063
Lawrence,8,3426,858

'It will be observed,' says Mr. Taylor,

That the three counties last named have a slave population, in the case of Madison exceeding, and in Limestone and Lawrence nearly equal to the number of free inhabitants. They would seem to be an exception to our former generalization, and are only included because there is other evidence that Athens, in Limestone County, and Huntsville, in Morgan County, were to the last possible moment the head-quarters of resistance to the Montgomery conspirators. It was the Union vote of these highland counties, notwithstanding the number of slaves in some of them, which would inevitably have been rolled down in condemnation of an ordinance of secession. This was well known by Yancey and his associates, and it was to avoid this revelation of their weakness over a compact and populous area of the State, which was in direct communication with East Tennessee, that they refused the ordeal of the ballot upon the consummation of their treason to the Union.

I estimate that the district which could readily be rallied in support of a loyal organization of the government of Alabama, with its capital at Huntsville, to be equal to the area of New Jersey, or 8,320 square miles. With the occupation of the Alleghanies by an army of the Union, and such a base of operations, civil and military, in North Alabama, a counter-revolution in that State would not be difficult of accomplishment.[2]

It will thus be seen, that, in the South itself, there exists a tremendous groundwork of aid to the North, and of weakness to secession. The love of this region for the Union, and its local hatred for planterdom with its arrogance towards free labor, is no chimera; nor do we make the wish the father to the thought when we assert that a Union victory would light up a flame of counter-revolution which would in time, with Northern aid, crush out the foul rebellion. And relying on this fact, we grow confident and exultant. If Europe will only let us alone—if England will refrain from stretching out a helping hand to that slaveocracy for which she has suddenly developed such a strange and unnatural love, we may yet be, at no distant day, great, powerful, and far more united than ever.