change could be productive of injury,-men who really had every thing to gain and nothing to lose, even by so violent and destructive a revolution.

And whilst many of the substantial men of the country entered the army,-for the most part as officers, contractors, wagon-masters, and furnishers of supplies in various forms,-a much greater number entered the service who were pusillanimous and worthless, lazy and sensual, having no visible means of support. Many of these were known to me in East Tennessee and other portions of the South; and I can safely say that when they entered the service, and were fitted out with suits of coarse jeans and supplied with army-rations, they were better dressed and fed than they ever had been before. Not a few of these entered the Rebel service with a view to get rid of their wives and children, who were looking to them for a support, and whose bread and meat were guaranteed by those who urged them to volunteer, but who, after they were gone, left their families to shift for themselves.

It was a common thing to hear men of this class, dressed in uniform, and under the influence of mean whiskey, swearing upon the streets that they intended. to have their rights, or kill the last Lincolnite north of Mason & Dixon's line! Ask one of them what rights he had lost and was so vehemently contending for, and the reply would be, the right to carry his negroes into

the Territories. At the same time, the man never owned a negro in his life, and never was related, by consanguinity or affinity, to any one who did own a negro! Nay, I have heard captains of Rebel companies bluster in this way, who could not get credit in a Secession. store for a pair of shoes or a pound of coffee.

And, as if resolved to keep up a show of consistency and carry out the same spirit, society was disjointed, and was everywhere thrown into the loosest state in which it could exist, upon the inauguration of Secession. There were no regular magistrates, no laws, no judges, no tribunals to protect the weak and innocent or to punish the guilty. Take for example the case of a Union man in Knox county, who was tied upon a log, his back stripped bare, and cut all to pieces with hickories, as one of my engravings will show. When he was brought into the court-house, and his back exhibited, he was told that these were revolutionary times, and that he had no remedy. Every man had to assert his own rights and avenge his own wrongs, or, as most were compelled to do, submit to insult and injury. Squads of six and ten Rebel troops, upon their own responsibilities, scoured the country, arrested whom they chose, and treated them as their malice and beastly habits of life suggested. Take the case of Captain Bill Brown, of Bradley county, who, at the head of a company of cavalry, arrested Union men, and forced from them sums of money to pay him

for their release, until he boasted of having two thousand dollars. This charge was brought before the military authorities at Knoxville, and again dismissed without a reproof to this robber.

As a general thing, these outlaws, who were operating all over East Tennessee, were neither restrained by a sense of shame, the dictates of humanity, nor the fear of God. Hence, many innocent persons fell victims to their malevolence, and had their property either shamefully abused or recklessly destroyed. Tennessee is a greatly-damaged State,-thousands of the men having escaped into Kentucky, leaving their homes and crops, all of which have since been destroyed by the Rebel troops. This is especially so in the several counties along the south side of the Cumberland Mountains. Kentucky and Missouri will both feel the effects of this devastating war,-a war which the Cotton States artfully contrived to transfer to the border States, but which, thanks to the energy of the heads of the Federal army, is falling back to where it ought to have begun, and where it should end.

Virginia is a ruined State. Poor old Virginia! her children yet unborn will feel the effects of this wicked revolution. Indeed, I pause in the midst of my labors to moralize upon the condition of my native State, which but yesterday

"might have stood against the world; Now none so poor to do her reverence."

Mother of heroes and statesmen, the birthplace of Presidents, the burial-place of the greatest American,— it seems but yesterday that she had the strongest claims upon the great Republic, on account of her dignity, her retrospect of noble labors, her frontier position,— holding as it were the balance of power,—and the noble future which hung upon the expected assurance of her loyalty. But, urged and incited by her maddened and vile leaders, such as Wise, Mason, Pryor, and a host of desperate men whose names can never be mentioned but with disgust, she was hissed on until she was out of her senses, and she fell from her high estate into the disgraceful ranks of rebellion. New dominions must arise upon her ruins, a new race of men must people her soil, and the "Old Dominion" be but a historic cognomen in all time to come. What a fate, and what a retribution! Let loyal Maryland legislate for a part, let New Virginia control the West, let East Tennessee teach the extreme southwestern counties loyalty, and to little Delaware let Accomac and Northampton be annexed!

This may seem to be a terrible fate; but such would be a merited degree of punishment for the leading demagogues of Virginia, and for the masses who followed them to perdition. The way of transgressors may be hard, but the retribution is none the less logical and their punishment none the less just.

All these evils were brought upon the country by