The Knoxville Register unites its congratulations with those of the press throughout the South and Southwest upon the completion of the East Tennessee and Virginia Railroad. It says:

"The last spike has been driven in this road, and trains are now running regularly through from terminus to terminus. The completion of this road marks one of the greatest epochs in our history: one to which thousands have long looked forward with anxiety, and over which our whole people have cause to united their rejoicings. The completion of this route is not merely the union of Knoxville with Bristol, but the binding together of the North and the South with a bond indissoluble. The great highway of the nation is at length opened up, and we unite our congratulations with those of our brethren of the press upon the consummation of so grand an enterprise. Let it be worthily celebrated on the 3d of June.

"The work on this road was commenced in March, 1851, at Strawberry Plains, and the completion of it in but little more than seven years, considering the limited resources of the country traversed by it, and the opposition encountered among our own people, is an achievement of which the company may justly feel proud. During the entire struggle of this company, Dr. Samuel B. Cunningham has been its President, and it must have been the proudest moment of his life when he drove the last spike home that finished the work for which he has toiled so faithfully. Undismayed by difficulties and reverses, and faithful amid reproaches, he has lived to enjoy his triumph in the final success of his enterprise."

The Register does not over-estimate the importance of this improvement. it is important, not only to Tennessee, but to Virginia. While it places East Tennessee -- one of the richest and most beautiful countries in the world -- in direct communication with the East and North, and with the Ocean at Norfolk, it also finishes the only link in the chain of roads which will cause the greater part of the travel between North and South to pass directly through the heart of Virginia.

Something yet remains to be done, however, by us of Virginia. We must complete the missing link between Lynchburg and Charlottesville -- sixty miles only -- which will give us almost an air-line road to Washington. Twenty miles of it, one-third of the distance, will be finished during the present year. The remainder, under the energetic management of the President of the company, will soon follow. And then the Southwest will not only be connected with Norfolk in all the relations of commerce, but with Washington in the relation to travel and the mails. This only is needed to make the system complete. -- Lynchburg Virginian

Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), Tuesday, May 25, 1858