us from the very beginning, with whom our personal and partisan associations have been so agreeable and so endearing, that we still adhere to the opinions and principles for the maintenance of which we struggled through many long and weary days of hope, of triumph, and of disappointment, We would state to them that our opinions are uncharged and that our predictions are those of which it is impossible for a man to divest himself. We would not therefore have our readers misconceive us. We do not pretend to rise above all those prejudices engendered through a long period of violent struggles between men and parties in East Tennessee, which finally degenerated into the organization of feuds which has no reference to the country's good.

There breathes not a sane man in East Tennessee who will not acknowledge that the tastes of our people have been corrupted; that a radicalism in politics and religion has not been engendered; that feuds have not been created by the violence and acrimony with which politicians and parties have conducted their struggles for the ascendancy in this portion of our State. We have been driven by the force of circumstances to give utterance to feelings embittered by the assaults of a press which once existed in this city, that did more to destroy the harmony of our people, to sow dissensions in churches and among families and friends than any publication ever issued in our country. It never addressed itself to the reason of its readers, but to the worst passions of men. It never addressed itself to the reason of its readers, but to the worst passions of its readers, but to the worst passions of men. It never argued any proposition, but was filed with the fiercest denunciations, the most ribald jests, and the vilest slanders. It spared neither the living nor the dead. The private character of no one escaped pollution; the very grave-stones of departed statesmen and heroes were lifted up, and the shafts of malice and hate leveled at the reeking corpses of the entombed.

These provocations to partisan violence and ill-feeling no longer exist and we would now obliterate their very memory. We would achieve a purpose nobler than the mere gratification of those prejudices flowing out of conflicts whose ends have to a great extent been accomplished. We would, if parties must exist, have their organization rest upon a basis of well-defined principles and not upon old antagonisms which have no reference to the political questions at present agitating the country. We would gave men believe, whatever may have been their former creed, that the only test of fellowship from this time forth is fidelity to the South and the institutions of the South.

If the prosecution of their purpose involves the elevation of men to place and power whom we have hitherto opposed and thwarted in plans of self-aggrandizement, if it place us in the anomalous position of favoring the pretensions of those whom we have formerly opposed, we can only say to the readers of the Register that we shall consult the interest of the country in the conduct of this journal and not that of any clique nor of any partisan organization, however much its leaders may be endeared to us by common toils and common triumph.

We understand thoroughly the difficulties and dangers of the task. We know that time and honest devotion to duty and right can alone insure success; but old party lines must be obliterated, the hates and jealousies and acerbates of the dead past must be forgotten, and all East Tennesseans must stand up as one man, proclaiming their devotion to the South and to the institutions of our fathers.

We can conceive of no mode of attaining the object we have in view other than that we have here suggested, and should we deviate at any time form the policy we now adopt our readers amy rest assured that the fault is not intentional, but arises from those weaknesses common