who, in a
recent interview with certain eastern capitalists, disclaimed on behalf
of the Government and of General M'Clellan any purpose to send the army
into winter quarters, remarking with much significance that 'a glance at
the map will perhaps astonish those who have 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