The Western Virginia portion of Alleghania, which in the counter-secession programme of its inhabitants was to have formed the State of ‘Kanawha,’ embraced in its total population of 284,796 only 10,820 slaves.  Its area is 4,211 square miles larger than the entire State of Maryland.  With this we have ‘Middle Virginia,’ in the valley of the Shenandoah, which extends east of the main Alleghany range to the Blue Ridge.  This region also is broadly distinguishable in respect to slavery from the Atlantic counties.  With 200,262 freemen according to the census of 1850, it has only 44,742 slaves, and there is reason to believe that this population has largely diminished in favor of freedom.  Yet again we have the mountain district of South-western Virginia, where in its ten counties the proportion of freemen to slaves is nearly ten to one, or 76,892 to 8,693.  As regards internal resources, beautiful scenery, and all that conduces to pleasant life and profitable labor, this portion of Virginia far surpasses the eastern division, and will eventually attract the great mass of immigration.

The reader is aware that Eastern Kentucky, embracing the counties along the western base of the Cumberland Mountains, ’has nobly responded to the cause of the Union.’  ’They represent a population which from the first outbreak have been on fire with loyal zeal, repudiating all sympathy with this war of slavery against the Union.’  The proportion of slaves to freemen in these counties, according to the census of 1850, is as follows:—­

Counties free slave
Letcher, 2,440 62
Floyd, 5,503 149
Harlan, 4,108 123
Whitley, 7,222 201
Knox, 6,238 612
Perry, 2,972 117
Clay, 4,734 515
Breathitt, 3,603 170
Morgan, 7,305 187
Johnson, 3,843 30
Lawrence, 6,142 137
Carter, 5,000 257

In contrast to this healthy, temperate Eastern Kentucky, ’a portion of the great central district of mountain slopes and valleys,’ let the reader turn to the secession hot-bed of the State.  He will find it the largest slaveholding district of Kentucky.  It is worth noting that secession is matured in the slave regions, for though it is popularly identified with slavery, they are not wanting among its leaders—­no, nor among their traitorous and cowardly sympathizers here at the North—­who constantly assert that secession is simply a geographical necessity, and slavery only a secondary cause—­that the South will, in fact, eventually emancipate, and that race and latitude are the great fundamental causes of national difference, constituting us in fact ‘two peoples.’  How completely false and puerile are all these assertions, appears from an examination of the mountain region now under discussion.