Tennessee, cover the back parts of North Carolina and Georgia, heavily invade the northern part of Alabama, and make a figure even in the back parts of South Carolina and the eastern parts of Mississippi, having a course of perhaps seven or eight hundred miles, and running far south of the northern limit of profitable cotton culture.  It is a region of 300,000 square miles, trenching upon eight or nine slave States, though nearly destitute of slaves itself; trenching upon at least five cotton States, though raising no cotton itself.  The western part of Maryland and two-thirds of Pennsylvania are embraced in the north-eastern continuation of this remarkable region.  Can anything that passes under the name of statesmanship be more preposterous than the notion of permanent peace on this continent, founded on the abnegation of a common and paramount government, and the idea of the supercilious domination of the cotton interest and the slave-trade over such a mountain empire, so located and so peopled?

As a further proof of the utter impossibility of peace except under a common government, and at once an illustration of the import of what has just been stated, and the suggestion of a new and insuperable difficulty, let it be remembered that this great mountain region, throughout its general course, is more loyal to the Union than any other portion of the slave States.  It is the mountain counties of Maryland that have held treason in check in that State; it is forty mountain counties in Western Virginia that have laid the foundation of a new and loyal commonwealth; it is the mountain counties of Kentucky that first and most eagerly took up arms for the Union; it is the mountain region of Tennessee that alone, in that dishonored State, furnished martyrs to the sacred cause of freedom; it is the mountain people of Alabama that boldly stood out against the Confederate government till their own leaders deserted and betrayed them.

It is not a strong point, but it is worth noting, that even in South Carolina there is an Alleghanian area of 4,074 square miles, equal to the State of Connecticut, in which the diminished proportion of slaves, with other local causes, are sufficient to indicate the Union feeling which indeed struggles there in secret.  These counties are:—­

FREE.         SLAVE. 
Spartanburgh,     18,311         8,039
Greenville,       13,370         6,691
Anderson,         13,867         7,514
Pickens,          13,105         3,679

Slavery is here large, as compared to the other counties of ‘Alleghania,’ but the great proportion of free inhabitants, as contrasted with the districts near the Atlantic, makes it worth citing.  In accordance with a request, I give from Jas. W. Taylor’s collection, illustrating this subject, the table of population in East Tennessee:—­

    The following table, from the census of 1850, presents the slave
    and cotton statistics of this district, in their relation to the
    free population: