Reign of Terror in Tennessee.
A Fearful State of Affairs—The Rebellion Still Prevails.
A CORRESPONDENT of the Cincinnati Gazette writing from Nashville, draws the following gloomy picture of the affairs in that State: There is not a rebel in Tennessee to-day, and by rebels I mean those who voluntarily took part in the rebellion, that will admit the rebellion was in any sense a crime or even a wrong. There is not a man who was by surrounding circumstances forced into the rebellion, and now ventures to deplore it, who is not overwhelmed with torrents of abuse, and stigmatized as a traitor to the Southern cause. There is not a locality where a rebel officer, guerrilla or bushwhacker, offering himself as a candidate for office, would not receive the united and enthusiastic support of the rebel party, simply on account of his devotion to the rebel cause. Even in the city of Nashville, there is not a day passes in which men are not heard to deplore the downfall of the Confederacy, to curse the Government for overturning it, and to hope for its re-establishment. Even in the city of Nashville you may traverse the streets, as I have done, and you shall not be able to find a dozen portraits of Washington or Lincoln, while in almost every place where any kind of business is transacted, from the wholesale dry goods store to the drinking saloon and the hall of the private boarding house, you shall see conspicuously displayed badly executed and disgusting pictures of Stonewall Jackson and Lee. Even some Union men engaged in business, pitifully yield to the pressure, and exhibit the portraits of men who are known only for a causeless and gigantic effort to destroy their country, and whose infamy, set forth in the pages of impartial history, will make bright by contrast the names of Arnold and Burr. FRIGHTFUL CONDITION OF THE FREEDMEN.
The freedmen are oppressed, wronged and outraged to a degree that almost exceeds belief. The officers of the Bureau have details of hundreds of cases, showing that from rebel courts and rebel juries these poor people, except in cases so rare that the rebel prints make a great parade over such exception, find it absolutely impossible to obtain justice. However much wronged they may be, they have ceased to appeal for protection against white men to the courts, knowing that if by some rare chance a decision is rendered in their favor, they will be pursued and hunted to the death by the vengeance of the party against whom the suit was brought. From such justice in Nashville, where everything is open to inspection, and under the very eye of the Bureau, the miserable lot of the freedmen in those portions of the State, where they have absolutely no protection, may be inferred. The condition of white Union men is no better—rather worse—for, pursued with a more deadly hatred than the freedmen, they are foully murdered rather than imprisoned and robbed. Within the last day or two, I have read several scores of letters, written by Union men in different parts of the State, to loyal members of the Legislature, who sent to inquire the state of affairs. In all of these letters the writers pen their words as if in deadly fear, and to almost every line repeat the earnest entreaty not to let their names be known, for if it were ascertained by their rebel neighbors that they had communicated with a loyal member of the Legislature, their fate would inevitably be death. The guerrilla Harper still roams at large, plundering, murdering and exiling Union men and freedmen. In Robinson county a gang of desperadoes, armed to the teeth, have overturned civil law; established a code of their own, one article of which is that no white man in the county shall employ a colored laborer; are burning the houses of those who disobey their bloody mandates; are carrying things with such a high and terrible hand that even the Union and Dispatch, of this city—a journal thoroughly committed to the reaction—either because it is really shocked at these monstrous deeds, or fears its friends are going too fast (we give it credit for the better motive), calls upon them for God's sake to desist, and invokes the assistance of all parties to put a stop to their career. But why further particularities, till both heart and brain grow sick with the story? The loyal members of the Legislature are about to pass a militia law to protect themselves and the ballot box. So fierce have been the rebel threats, in consequence, that murder stares them in the face on their return home, and some feel that even in traversing at night the streets of Nashville they take their lives in their hands. A leading journal of Nashville, through one of its correspondents, threatens death to any Northern speaker who shall come to advocate the cause of freedom and nationality in Tennessee. Even to-day the Supreme Court of the State is badgered with long arguments by men whose hands are stained with treason, to prove that traitors have lost no rights, that the rule of loyal men is a usurpation, and that the hordes of guilty miscreants who endeavored to destroy the Government, are the rightful depositaries of political power.