Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Union Tennesseeans Against Slavery

A Cincinnati correspondent of the New York Tribune, says:

“Several loyal Tennesseeans have lately reached the Union lines who declare that the mass of Union men in East Tennessee and N. Carolina are anti-slavery men.  It is said to be a rare thing that any of them own slaves, and those who do have no anxiety whatever concerning the fate of slavery, but a great deal concerning the strength which that institution adds to the rebellion.  Indeed, says the writer, all the advices received indicate this fact: that all along the great mountain ranges traversing the South there are but few slaves, and that where there are few slaves there is loyalty, not that kind of loyalty so rife in Maryland and Kentucky, which loves their country well, but slavery more.  We trust, if this be the case when our armies get down into Tennessee, and the Union men there have a chance to be heard, they will do something to neutralize the bastard Kentucky policy which would hold everything secondary to the cursed institution.”

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 22, 1862, p. 2

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