inconsistency, is flying to falsehood as a remedy, and expiring from the venom of its own fangs. The night of TREASON has passed away in Tennessee; the purple morn of PATRIOTISM has dawned. Already do the tints of truth appear, while the gloomy mists rising from the swamps of a polluted Southern Confederacy fade in the distance, and sink below the horizon to rise no more! A cloudless day is breaking around us in Tennessee; emerging from the ocean of the UNION, the sun of American liberty is rising along the whole line of the border States, refulgent in light, brilliant with patriotism, and resplendent in glory! The hallowed name of the AMERICAN UNION, more fragrant than the spicy gales of Arabia, more balmy than Gilead's air, thrills the bosom of the patriot, where despair once revelled, and whispers good tidings for all lovers of the Union! Trophies of victory, in smiles and peace, deck the brows of those who were once saddened with doubt and uncertainty and sunk with sorrows to the depth of hell.

Parent of good, these are thy works! Thou art the great mover in the minds of deluded and distracted men, and wilt turn them "as the rivers are turned," until they shall see thy glory, bask in the sunshine of our national prosperity, and drink living waters at the wells of American salvation!

Finally, sir, when you put forth your batch of villainous falsehoods, through the brawling Jacobin jour

nals of a demoralized Southern Confederacy, have the candor and charity to accompany them with this reply, and I will remain the defiant opponent of a wilful and despicable South Carolina rascal!

W. G. BROWNLOW,

Editor of the Knoxville Whig.

Knoxville Whig, Feb. 16, 1861.

CHAPTER VII.

POSITION OF BORDER-STATE UNION MEN-THE AUTHOR'S VIEWS OF SLAVERY GIVEN BY REQUEST-BLOW UPON FORT SUMTER STRUCK WITH A VIEW TO FORCE VIRGINIA TO SECEDE-NORTHERN ANT SOUTHERN CLERGY-REIGN OF TERROR IN THE SOUTH-VIRGINIA STATESMEN ALL DEAD-FOR THE UNION UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES.

Position of Union Men.

THE following correspondence will explain itself. We will only say that the writer of the letter from Albany resides in the city of New York, is a Marylander by birth, and was a Breckinridge Democrat in the late Presidential election :

"W. G. BROWNLOW, Esq.:

"ALBANY, N.Y., May 8, 1861.

"I send you by mail the Albany Evening Journal, containing Hon. Benj. Nott's speech on the crisis. Judge Nott is a life-long Democrat, of the Hard-Shell school, and an avowed advocate of the Dred Scott decision.

"I read your paper with great interest, and your course is the subject of conversation in every circle North, meeting the approval of all parties, for all parties here are for the Union. We understand you to be a pro

Slavery man, but for the Union, opposed to Secession, -not even regarding the election of Lincoln as any just cause for dissolving the Union. Can't you give us a leading editorial on these points, and at the same time state the position of the Union men in the border Slave States in the event the Administration were to interfere in any way with the institution of slavery?

"The masses of the Northern people have no feelings but the most friendly towards their brethren of the South, and are ready to concede to them all their rights. They are even for returning to them their slaves who have escaped, as the law requires. This Administration would protect Southern rights, and if it would not of choice, the public would require it to be done. And, in saying this, I assure you I am no Lincoln man. this you very well know.

But

"Hoping that you may be sustained, and live to see the Stars and Stripes float on every hill-top, and in every valley, from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande, I remain, very truly, L. M. E."

To L. M. E. :—

KNOXVILLE, May 14, 1861.

I have your letter of the 8th, and also the Evening Journal. I have perused the speech of Judge Nott: it is able, conservative, and eminently patriotic. Had you more Notts in the North, and fewer Slavery agitators, and had we fewer Rhetts, Yanceys, and Davises,

in the South, none of these troubles would now be upon the country.

You correctly interpret the Union men of the border Slave States when you pronounce them "pro-Slavery men." I think I correctly represent them in my paper, as I shall do in this brief epistle, except, perhaps, that I am more ultra than most of them. I am a native of Virginia, and so were my parents before me, and, together with a numerous train of relatives, they were and are slave-holders. For thirty years I have lived in Tennessee, and my wife and children are native Tennesseeans. My native State did more to form the old Confederacy and to form the Constitution of the United States than any other State; her soil is now the resting-place of the honored dead, the most ultra old Unionists dead or alive,-Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Marshall, Henry, and a host of others. I am sorry to have to record that it has, in the mysterious providence of God, been reserved to Virginia to do more towards overthrowing the Confederacy and the Constitution than any other State, South Carolina not even excepted. It took the Virginia Convention of 1861 to overthrow her State Government,-changing her organic political status contrary to the expressed direction of her people at the ballot-box when they elected the men who perpetrated the deed! Virginia, I am sorry to say, if I may be allowed to use an humble illustration, is like a hill of potatoes,-the best part under