The Continental Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 3, March 1862 | Page 3

to send the
army into winter quarters, remarking with much significance that 'a

glance at the map will perhaps astonish those who have never reflected,
how short is the distance from East Tennessee to Port Royal Harbor,
and may suggest the possibility of cutting a great rebellion into two
small pieces.'
In the mountain region of North Carolina we have 'the Piedmont of the
Alleghanies.' Its seventeen counties embrace a larger area (11,700
square miles) than the whole of Vermont. Its scenery is of
extraordinary beauty, its peaks are the highest east of the Rocky
Mountains. There is full ground for the belief that in North Carolina a
majority of the people are Union at heart. The following extract from
'Alleghania' will be read with interest as illustrating the assertion:
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:--
COUNTIES FREE SLAVE Madison, 3,763 1,933 Hart,* Franklin,
9,076 2,382 Jackson, 6,808 2,941 Banks,* Hall, 7,370 1,336
Habersham, 7,675 1,218 Rabun, 2,338 110 Towns,* Union, 6,955 278
Lumpkin, 7,995 939 Dawson,* Forsyth, 7,812 1,027 Milton,*
Cherokee, 11,630 1,157 Pickens,* Gilmer, 8,236 200 Faunin*
Murphy,* Whitefield,* Gordon, 5,156 828 Cass, 10,271 3,008 Floyd,
5,202 2,999 Chattoga, 5,131 1,680 Walker, 11,408 1,664 Catoosa,*
Dade, 2,532 148
* 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:--
COUNTIES FREE SLAVE Cherokee, 12,170 1,691 DeKalb, 7,730
506 Marshall, 7,952 868 Jackson, 11,754 2,292 Morgan, 6,636 3,437
Madison, 11,937 14,329 Limestone, 8,399 8,063 Lawrence, 8,342
6,858
'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,