n prospect their
forges on the falls of the Potomac, or like the Illinois regiments who
have been introduced to the valleys of Tennessee or of Arkansas, will
furnish men enough, well skilled in political systems, to start the new
republics, in regions which have never known what a true republic was
till now.

To carry out the President's plan, and to give us once more working
State governments in the States which have rebelled,--to give them,
indeed, the first true republican governments they have ever
known,--would require for Virginia about 12,000 voters. They can be
counted, we suppose, at this moment, in the counties under our military
control. Indeed, the loyal State government of Virginia is at this
moment organized. In North Carolina it would require 9,500 voters. The
loyal North Carolina regiments are an evidence that that number of
home-grown men will readily appear. In South Carolina, to give a
generous estimate, we need 5,000 voters. It is the only State which we
never heard my man wish to emigrate to. It is the hardest region,
therefore, of any to redeem. At the worst, till the 5,000 appear, the
new Georgia will be glad to govern all the country south of the Santee,
and the new North Carolina what is north thereof. Georgia will need
10,000 loyal voters. There are more than that number now encamped upon
her soil, willing to stay there. Of Florida we have spoken. Alabama
requires 9,000. They have been hiding away from conscription; they have
been fleeing into Kentucky and Ohio: they will not be unwilling to
reappear when the inevitable "first step" is taken. For Mississippi we
want 7,000. Mr. Reverdy Johnson has told us where they are. For
Louisiana, one tenth is 5,000. More than that number voted in the
elections which returned the sitting members to Congress. For Texas, the
proportion is 6,200; for Arkansas, 5,400. Those States are already
giving account of themselves. In Tennessee the fraction required is
14,500. And as the people of Knoxville said, "They could do that in the
mountains alone."

We have no suspicion of a want of latent Southern loyalty. But we have
brought together these figures to show how inevitable is a
reconstruction on the President's plan, even if Southern loyalty were as
abject and timid as some men try to persuade us. These figures show us,
that, if, of the million Northern men who have "prospected" the Southern
country, in the march of victorious armies, only seventy-three thousan