The majority of citizens in each of the border slave States of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri adhered to the United States, and their respective governments were administered accordingly. But their territorial and other important relations were altogether different from those of East Tennessee. Maryland lay contiguous to the district and capital, where the Federal Government must and did especially defend itself. It is separated from Virginia not only by the District of Columbia but by the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, and it had no nearness to any other seceded State; while Pennsylvania stretched all along its northern border, and the other loyal States of New Jersey, New York and Ohio were not far distant. Kentucky was bordered by the States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. And Missouri was almost surrounded by Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. A majority of the people of West Virginia were steadfast in their friendship for the Union, notwithstanding the State, of which they were citizens, seceded. But West Virginia bordered chiefly upon Pennsylvania, Ohio and Kentucky. It was easy of access to influences favorable to the Union. At the same time the armies of the United States could without great difficulties enter and occupy its territory, and this fact helped to confirm the loyalty of its people. East Tennessee was entirely removed from thoroughly loyal States. The only contiguous one that did not join in the work of secession was Kentucky, which was held to its place in the Union against the will of a considerable minority of its citizens. Otherwise, East Tennessee was bounded on the north and east by Virginia, on the east by North Carolina (lying between Virginia and South Carolina), and on the south by North Carolina and Georgia. High mountains surrounded it on every side, and on the west separated it from the other grand divisions of Tennessee, where prevailed a spirit of disunion that found sympathy and support in the adjoining Gulf States of Alabama and Mississippi.