The Evansville Journal

Texas.—The Texas junto, which desires to get the Democratic party into its keeping, apply sundry phrases to those who oppose this precious project, the truth of which it may not be useless to examine. They are termed abstractionists, federalists, abolitionists and British emissaries. Now we propose to see who the gentlemen thus complimented are, and how far they deserve it.

In the first place, it is worth while to notice, that the whole movement on this subject is in the strictest sense a party juggle—and a very poor one. It would disgrace a thimble-rigger of the most ordinary pretensions.

We are informed by the Baltimore convention "that the annexation of Texas at the earliest practicable period," was a cardinal feature in modern Democracy. Now, we should be glad to know what the "earliest practicable period" means. Who objects to annexing Texas "at the earliest practicable period?" We see no reason why the moon should not be annexed "at the earliest practicable period"—that is to say, as soon as it can. As soon as the just claims of Mexico can be disposed of—as soon as the question of slavery can be got out of the way, we abandon our opposition to the annexation of Texas.

Such may be the interpretation of this phrase; and such may be the sense in which thousands of Democrats will take it; but such is not the sense in which the Texas hocus-pocusers mean it.

The annexation of Texas with them means nothing more than the extension and perpetuation of slavery at the risk of war and with war if it cannot be got without. It is the pure Southern Upshur-Tyler scheme; it is the pill without the gilding—the dose without the sugar.

It is plain enough to see, that if this question had been committed at the outset to men of mind large enough to take in all the interests of this great nation, Mexico would have been satisfied, the question of slavery avoided, and Texas annexed with honor and satisfaction to the entire people. But for our shame and misfortune the matter fell into the hands of a few fanatics as crazy on the subject of domestic institutions as the maddest Abolitionists in the Union—men who believe, or affect to believe, that the summum bonum of republican freedom lies in the possessing a few hundred slaves; and by these slave-holding fanatics was the question of Texas, a great question of extension of empire, dwarfed into one of enlarging the influence of that pernicious institution which defaces and disgraces our otherwise glorious country.

This abortion, rejected with contempt and disgust by the whole country, a few Northern Democrats are swaddling and nursing and trying to coax into life. Now we say it with mere reference to the interests of the party, interests which no wise person can overlook, that any Northern Democrat who seeks to identify the party with the extension of slavery, and to make that the rallying question, is only fit for bedlam; no greater political insanity can be imagined.

Slavery is an old, decrepit, worn out feudal institution. Shall the young Democracy, in its heroic youth, stifle its ardent nature by so unnatural an alliance? Where slavery and slave representation exist under the Constitution, let them exist. It is the bargain.—it is the bond. But to extend these evils to another portion of the Western hemisphere, and, above all, to make this the rallying cry of the party, is evidently suicidal.

Those sagacious gentlemen, therefore, who undertake to denounce such Democrats as are content with the old issues as abstractionists, &c., are acting perhaps with less sense than they may imagine.

With some people names have weight. Mr. Van Buren, Mr. Wright, Mr. Benton, to say nothing of the many prominent Democrats in this State, have declared their irreconcilable hostility to the Texas scheme, urged on the new ground of slavery and for the benefit of slavery.

Is it to be supposed that these gentlemen are all to come to the right-about face, because a few men in Baltimore see fit to pass a resolution in regard to which they received no mandate from the people? If the Democratic party has such ability to "jump about and turn about," as they would imply, not Mr. Polk but Jim Crow should have been our candidate.