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Kansas

About This Item

  • Title: Kansas
  • Date: 26 September 1857
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00830
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 26 September 1857: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Kevin McMullen Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Kansas." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00830.xml (TEI)
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KANSAS.

According to this correspondent of the Tribune1, Kansas is doomed to be a Slave State; but this writer has cried "Wolf, Wolf," so often, when there was no occasion for alarm, that it is doubtful whether he will succeed in giving an effectual warning, even if the danger be actually at hand. Certainly, the tone of the Pro-Slavery leaders, in the few speeches of theirs, which have been published latterly, appears to have lost none of the confidence which betokens inevitable success; and the sudden lull in the storm of indignation raised against Gov. Walker2 by the secessionists of the South, would seem to imply that the Governor has contrived to satisfy them that he is really working for the interests of slavery.

Yet if, as is asserted by the correspondent above referred to, the number of Free State men in Kansas exceed the Pro-Slavery men as ten to one, there need be no fear of the ultimate destiny of the territory. Slavery cannot exist in any Territory for any length of time, under such adverse influences; and a slave State constitution, if made by fraud and stealth, would be amended by the people in less than three years.

Notes:

1. Horace Greeley's Tribune (founded in 1841) was a reform-minded New York newspaper that quickly became the most widely read papers in the country. For more information, see Susan Belasco, "The New York Daily Tribune," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]

2. Robert J. Walker (1801–1869) served as a Mississippi Senator between 1835 and 1845 and Secretary of Treasury between 1845 and 1849. During a contentious period between abolitionists and anti-abolitionists regarding slavery, Walker was appointed as the fourth territorial governor of Kansas from May to November of 1857. [back]

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