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

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, civil and military, in North Alabama, a counter-revolution in that State would not be difficult of accomplishment.[B]
It will thus be seen, that, in the South itself, there exists a tremendous