The Philadelphia Press calls attention to an article by Rev Dr Breckinridge, the loyal uncle of the great Kentucky traitor, published in the Danville Review, and entitled The “Civil War; its Nature and End.” A very striking portion of it describes the Union feeling existing in the mountain regions of Western Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, which Dr Breckinridge aptly terms “the mountain empire.”
A glance at the map will show the extent and importance of this empire. It is a projection of northern free territory into the very heart of the slave region. Stretching to the north-west, these mountains pass entirely through Tennessee, covering parts of North Carolina and Georgia, heavily invading the north part of Alabama, and making a figure even in the back parts of South Carolina and the western parts of Mississippi—having a course of perhaps seven or eight hundred miles, a breadth of three or four hundred, and running far south of the northern limit of profitable cotton culture.
It is a region of thirty thousand square miles, trenching upon eight or nine slave states, but nearly destitute of slaves, having a population whose interests are identified with free labor and free institutions, and whose support of slavery is the result of political prejudice. The large majority of the inhabitants of this mountain empire are firmly attached to the constitution and the Union, and eager to engage in the struggle for their defense. They are now for the most part unarmed, and powerless to resist the dominant treason; but they await their opportunity, and the rising already commenced in Tennessee and North Carolina, will extend through all the mountain region of the South, and will give most important aid in the suppression of the great rebellion.
Says the Press, in reference to Dr Breckinridge’s article:—
“You will see in this argument of Dr Breckinridge, the territorial and agricultural question which bids fair to occupy an important part in the termination of this rebellion; and when we speak of the men of Eastern Tennessee, and praise so lavishly their loyalty and self-sacrifice, we are but speaking of a people who occupy the heart of what Dr Breckinridge calls ‘the mountain empire.’ They give us from their midst men equally as great as Douglas of Illinois, Baker of Oregon, Broderick of California, or Webster of Massachusetts. In their society they have all the elements which go to make a free, happy, prosperous and permanent people. Andrew Johnson is the type of these mountaineers; and there is no other southern man who possesses to such a great degree the prevailing traits of the true northerner—courage, frankness, loyalty and energy—as this eminent and gallant senator.”
That the mountains are the chosen dwelling place and refuge of liberty, is truth as well as poetry, and if the slaveholding aristocracy persist in this struggle as obstinately as they threaten, this “mountain empire” will become the Switzerland of the South, and within its limits will bo fought the great battle of constitutional liberty. The dream of a slave confederacy can never be realized, with this great wedge of free mountains and free mountaineers running through its center.
Springfield Weekly Republican, Springfield, MA
Very interesting, describing the area that became Appalachia. The southern mountainous area didn’t exactly go on to become the “Switzerland of the South.”