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 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.

But we have, in addition to all these districts of Alleghania, a vast reserve in Texas—­that Texas which is now more than half cultivated by free labor, and which is amply capable of producing six times as much cotton as is now raised in the entire South.  An armed occupation of Texas, a copious stream of emigration thither, to be encouraged by very liberal grants to settlers, and a speedy completion of its railroads, would be an offset to secession, well worth of itself all that the war has cost.  With Texas in our power, with Cumberland Gap firmly held, with the negroes in South Carolina fairly disorganized from slavery, with free Yankee colonies in the Palmetto State, with New Orleans taken—­a blockade without and complete financial disorder within, what more could we desire as a basis to secure thorough reestablishment of power?  Here our superiority to the South in possessing not only a navy, but, what is of far more importance, a vast merchant marine containing all the elements necessary to form a navy of unparalleled power, appears in clearest light, giving us cause for much congratulation.  To effect all this, time is required.  Let those who fret, look over the map of a hemisphere—­let them reflect on the condition to which Southern perfidy and theft had reduced us ere the war begun, and then let them moderate their cries.  It will all be done; but the programme is a tremendous one, and the future of the most glorious country on earth requires that it shall be done thoroughly, and that no risks shall be taken.