The Ottawa Free Trader

Ottawa Free Trader.

OTTAWA, AUGUST 4, 1855.

Gov. Reeder Removed.

The telegraph on Wednesday announced from Washington that Gov. Reeder, of Kansas, had been removed, and John L. Dawson, of Pennsylvania, appointed in his place.

The announcement is not unexpected. Indeed, that such a step would be taken was plainly intimated to Gov. Reeder before his recent return to Kansas from his eastern visit.

This action on the part of the President can be regarded as unfortunate only in one view. It will furnish, unjustly we imagine, fanaticism at the north with another powerful means to fan the flames of sectional discord and strife; while the south, conceiving it a triumph on their part, may be still more emboldened in their course of lawlessness and outrage in Kansas. Although other abundant and substantial reasons we doubt not, will be given for Gov. Reeder's removal aside from a wish to conciliate either party in Kansas, it will be impossible, to prejudiced and inflamed minds, to divest the act of the appearance of a surrender to the mob spirit of Missouri.

Yet, doubtless much of the force of this objection is broken by the character of Gov. Reeder's successor. The slave state men in Kansas demanded a man of their own—a mere tool whom they could handle at will. Instead of gratifying them, another man is appointed from a free state, a man in politics the counterpart of Gov. Reeder—but a man of talents, marked firmness and straightforwardness of character, and of all that sagacity and iron nerve that constitute the successful statesman. John L. Dawson is not a name to be sneered at as unknown to fame. As a member of Congress, the author of the Homestead bill and other important measures, his name has occupied such a prominence as to bring it at one time conspicuously before the country for the Vice Presidency. It is preposterous to suppose that such a man was chosen by the President to become the instrument or tool of any faction in Kansas.

But aside from considerations arising from the injurious inferences the removing of Gov. Reeder at this time may induce, the act will be the cause of little regret to any one. His career in Kansas has been singularly unfortunate. By his undisguised manifestations of sympathy, at one time, with the Eastern emigrant aid movements, he had the misfortune to incur the violent hatred of the slave state men in Kansas, while by his indecision, vacillation, and tameness in reference to the outrages accompanying the election of the present Kansas legislature, and his official recognition, and then refusal to recognize the legality of that body, he has brought upon him the distrust and hatred of the free state men. We find in almost every free soil paper undissembled expressions of this feeling on their part. Take for instance, the following from a correspondent of the Boston Advertiser:

“I am sorry to say that many of our free state friends are losing confidence in Governor Reeder. In the main his course has been high-minded and independent, indicating that he was at heart a free state man.—But his message is not satisfactory to us. He only squints at the daring invasion we have just suffered, and then turns truant by saying it was all incurred or induced by the abolitionists alone. This is impudence and insult combined.”

Similar extracts could be multiplied to several columns. So that the removal of Gov. Reeder will be regarded as an act to conciliate the free state as the slave state men.

But, doubtless, the gist of his offence was in his land speculations: and his refusal to recognize the legality of the Kansas legislature seems to have been the result only of these, as he recognized that body and was willing to act with them so long as they were willing to continue their session near his land purchases. We have conversed with free state men from Kansas who have been violent in their denunciation of Gov. Reeder on account of these operations in lands; and, indeed, we know of no mode by which a Governor could render himself more surely odious than by a career of such speculations, intending to use the power placed in his hands to promote them.

Upon the whole, we are not without much hope of improvement in the affairs of Kansas on the advent of Gov. Dawson. He will have a most delicate and responsible position—surrounded with inconceivable difficulties: but as the times are said always to produce the man for them, we are not without hope that Gov. Dawson will be found this man for the times in Kansas, which Gov. Reeder certainly was not.