Prospects of a Free-State in Texas

Prospects of a Free-State in Texas.

From the New-Orleans Crescent.

It is not altogether a new thing to our reader that, while a portion of the Southern people have been making strenuous efforts to introduce Kansas into the Union as a Slave State, the rapidly-growing Anti-Slavery influence in one of the Southern States has been almost entirely overlooked.  We allude to Texas, the western portion of which is rapidly filling up with emigrants from Germany and other parts of Europe.  To know that this class of emigrants is populating Western Texas almost exclusively, is sufficient to satisfy any well-informed and unprejudiced mind that there exists in that section an Anti-Slavery sentiment.  That these emigrants are opposed to the institution of Slavery is no secret: they publicly proclaim their opposition to that institution.  But because they do not agitate the question of abolition, the party with which these foreigners act affect to believe that no harm can come of their simple feeling of dislike for the institution of Slavery.

This foreign vote is already sufficiently large to control the election in Texas; for, besides the Europeans settled in the western part of that State, there is quite a large Mexican population.  The facts, that the immense German population of Western Texas are radically opposed to the institution of Slavery and that the Democratic party owes its success to their votes and takes them to its bosom, are patent to every intelligent resident of that State.  It is not so much those facts to which we wish to direct public attention as to the duplicity or criminal blindness of that party in urging these foreigners, as they arrive by hundreds, and thousands, into organized political prominence, for the sake of temporarily profiting by their votes, regardless of whatever consequences may ensue.

In addition to this foreign Anti-Slavery element in Western Texas, there are many natives who will unite with the foreigners in a crusade against Slavery, so soon as they are sufficiently strong to promise success.  Many of those now occupying prominent positions in the ranks of the national Democracy will be found among the leaders whenever an Anti-Slavery movement is made.  They are men who are not actuated by principle, but by a love for the spoils, and to secure these they are content to act with any party that promises success.

This state of things exists in a Southern State, and no notice is taken of it, while no effort nor expense has been spared to extend Slavery into Kansas.  This is giving up the substance for the shadow.