The memorial of the undersigned, citizens of East Tennessee, and of South Western Virginia would respectfully represent : That your memorialists consider themselves as suffering an inconvenience and a grievance from the present arrangement for the transportation of the United States mail from Blountsville to Knoxville, upon the Great South Western Mail Route, as now in force, under the regulation the post office department since July 1846. They beg leave briefly to present to the attention of congress, some of the considerations which seem to them to render the passage of the law which they desire, proper and expedient. under the present arrangement, the mail is contracted to be transported between the points above indicated, in two-horse Hacks. thrice a week in each direction. This limited and reduced mode of transmission diminishes the rapidity, and destroys the regularity and certainty of the delivery of the mail: whilst, at the same time, it has totally destroyed the line, as a convenience and accommodation for the purposes of public travel Failures of the mail are now frequent by this line: and travel by it, there is none. But the inconvenience and the prejudice to the public are not merely partial or local. It will be observed that this route from Blountsville to Knoxville forms the only broken link in the mail line by Four Horse post coaches from Winchester and from Lynchburg in Virginia, to Nashville, and even to Memphis, in Tennessee. By this route, mail facilities, and travelling [means?] were wont to be afforded between the East, and Virginia, and a portion of North Carolina on the one part, and Tennessee, a large portion

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of Kentucky, Northern Alabama, mississippi, and the “Far West,” on the other. This line has been a Four Horse Coach line for upwards of forty years. Within that period, there has been a vast increase in the population, wealth, commerce, Travel, and of course, and by necessity, an increased requirement ^for^ speed and certainty in the transmission of the mail and in the accommodation of travel by its means. But apart from these general considerations, there are others applying with stong force in favor of the extension of further facilities of this character, upon this route, rather than the withdrawal, or contraction of such as we have heretofore enjoyed. Knoxville already the head of a steamboat Navigation upon the Tennessee River, , is very soon to become the Terminus of a Rail Road extending to that point from Chattanooga. This road is now under contract, and is in the rapid course of construction. when completed, Knoxville will be connected by her steamboat lines, with the whole valley of the Tennessee to the head of the Mussel shoals: and by Railway, with the South, by her connexion with the Georgia System of Rail Roads, at chattanooga; and with Nashville, and the West, by means of the Rail way, now in the rapid course of construction from Chattanooga to nashville. Upon the other part, Virginia is steadily engaged in the construction of a M^cAdamized Road from buchanan, upon James River, (to which ^point^ she is now extending her canal from Richmond) to the Tennessee Line, in the immediate vicinity of Blountsville. It would appear to your memorialists, that under this concurrence of circumstances, presenting so striking a prospect of incr^e^ased prosperity, of enlarged and extended commerce, and of more rapid and easy travel, in the region directly connected with this route from Blountsville to Knoxville, a rational expectation might have been entertained that