Good for Governor Walker!

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GOOD FOR GOVERNOR WALKER!

What we said the other day about Governor Walker's course in Kansas is confirmed by the inaugural address of that functionary.¹ It is one of the most reasonable discourses we ever read—of course from the point of view of an "administration democrat."

There is something about an educated and traveled Southerner, (for we consider Robert J. Walker essentially a Southerner,) that is pleasingly fitted for directing and governing the American people. Jefferson was a specimen of that class. How different from these poor lank specimens the North often furnishes—Franklin Pierce for instance.²

Gov. Walker, we have no doubt, will hold the balance of justice with an even hand in Kansas. The great difficulty will be how to hold this balance, and still satisfy the fire-eaters, the hydrophobia gentlemen, who evidently expect Buchanan and all that inherit from him, to be their very good cousins, and loyal and obedient subjects.

We extract the following morceau from Gov. Walker's address, as something for the reader to think twice about:

"Those who oppose Slavery in Kansas do not base their opposition upon any philanthropic principles, or any sympathy for the African race. For in their so-called constitution, framed at Topeka, they deem that entire race so inferior and degraded, as to exclude them all forever from Kansas, whether they be bond or free, thus depriving them of all rights here, and denying even that they can be citizens of United States, for if they are citizens they could not constitutionally be exiled or excluded from Kansas. Yet such a clause inserted in the Topeka Constitution was submitted by that Convention for the vote of the people, and ratified here by an overwhelming majority of the Anti-Slavery Party. This party here, therefore, has, in the most positive manner, affirmed the constitutionality of that portion of the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, declaring that Africans are not citizens of the United States.³ This is the more important, inasmuch as this Topeka Constitution was ratified, with this clause inserted, by the entire Republican party in Congress, thus distinctly affirming the decision of the Supreme Court of the Union, that Africans are not citizens of the United States, for if citizens, they may be elected to all offices State and National, including the Presidency itself; they must be placed upon a basis of perfect equality with the whites, serve with them in the militia, on the bench, the Legislature, the Jury-box, vote in all elections, meet us in social intercourse, and intermarry freely with the whites. The doctrine of the perfect equality of the white with the black in all respects whatsoever, social and political, clearly follows from the position that Africans are citizens of the United States. Nor is the Supreme Court of the Union less clearly vindicated by the position now assumed here by the published creed of this party, that the people of Kansas, in forming their State Constitution, (and not Congress) must decide this question of slavery for themselves."

We say the above statement and argument are worth thinking twice about. It is very singular that the most important point in all those made by the Free State People of Kansas, is never talked about, hardly even known, in the stormy excitement raised through the momentous question. We mean the point of the determined exclusion of negroes from the territory and State, no matter whether they be free negroes or slaves.

The Free State theory is that the West is the white man's land—the land for free independent farmers, mechanics, and working men—and not the land to be interfused either on a large scale or small scale, with African blood—no mulatto, mestino, zambo, or "nigger" land. The Kansians refuse to have the black race introduced—especially refuse to warrant such a State government as will result in large plantations, full of African slaves, crowding out the white farmer, white emigrant, and white poor family. Yet these Kansians, and the backers of these, are called Black Republicans!

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