After that date, the sentiment of aversion to slavery survived and in various ways was manifested, and although it was eventually counteracted by the political strife which grew out of the subject, it never ceased to exist firmly in many minds. A home in the great valley of East Tennessee was not formerly adapted to the cultivation of pro-slavery sympathies in persons of humane disposition and healthy sensibilities. For along the highway through that valley, slave-dealers transported negroes whom they had bought in Virginia and intended to sell in Southwestern States. The sales of these unfortunates, often because of their masters’ necessities, had in some instances separated families: and lest the men, moved by sorrow over the disruption, by aversion to their destined market, or by desire for freedom, should escape on the way, the dealers fettered them two and two to a strong chain running lengthwise between. It was pathetic to see them march, thus bound, through the towns, and to hear their melodious voices in plaintive singing as they went. By-standers then saw slavery without the disguise, with which Laurence Sterne pronounced it “still a bitter draught,” and the spectacle was apt to create or strengthen antipathy to the institution in unbiased minds. Knoxville, the central town of this entire region, stands on the northern bank of the Tennessee River, four miles below the junction of the Holston and French Broad rivers, which rise, the first in Virginia and the second in North Carolina. From 1792 to 1796 it was the capital of the “Territory south of the river Ohio,” and from 1796 to 1816, that of the State of Tennessee. Its society had at that time a relative distinction for character and influence which it has never lost In 1865 the town received a strong impulse to growth, from which its population in 1870 was 8,682, in 1880 it was 9,693, and in 1886 it was about 30,000. The great, and of late, rapid increase is largely owing to immigration from Northern States. Thrifty and enterprising new-comers have added in a marked degree to the trade and prosperity of the place. Like results have followed more or less throughout East Tennessee, especially at Chattanooga, since the war disclosed the natural advantages of the whole region to the knowledge of the world outside of it. So obvious are the benefits that will accrue to it from worthy immigrants, that even the most zealous sectionalists have yielded their prejudices so far as to give even “Yankees” not only a welcome, but an invitation to dwell in the land. [Illustration: LLOYD P. SMITH.]