I estimate that the district which could readily be rallied in
support of a loyal organization of the government of Alabama, with
its capital at Huntsville, to be equal to the area of New Jersey,
or 8,320 square miles. With the occupation of the Alleghanies by
an army of the Union, and such a base of operations, civil and
military, in North Alabama, a counter-revolution in that State
would not be difficult of accomplishment.[B]

It will thus be seen, that, in the South itself, there exists a
tremendous groundwork of aid to the North, and of weakness to
secession. The love of this region for the Union, and its local hatred
for planterdom with its arrogance towards free labor, is no chimera; nor
do we make the wish the father to the thought when we assert that a
Union victory would light up a flame of counter-revolution which would
in time, with Northern aid, crush out the foul rebellion. And relying on
this fact, we grow confident and exultant. If Europe will only let us
alone--if England will refrain from stretching out a helping hand to
that slaveocracy for which she has suddenly developed such a strange and
unnatural love, we may yet be, at no distant day, great, powerful, and
far more united than ever.

But we have, in addition to all these districts of Alleghania, a vast
reserve in Texas--that Texas which is now more than half cultivated by
free labor, and which is amply capable of producing six times as much
cotton as is now raised in the entire South. An armed occupation of
Texas, a copious stream of emigration thither, to be encouraged by very
liberal grants to settlers, and a speedy completion of its railroads,
would be an offset to secession, well worth of itself all that the war
has cost. With Texas in our power, with Cumberland Gap firmly held, with