among the excited people
of Kansas, and is directly at war, therefore, with the peaceful policy
of the Administration. For this reason he has felt it his duty to
remove him."

Walker, already in Washington on leave of absence, could no longer
remain silent. He was as pointedly abandoned and disgraced by the
Administration as was his subordinate. In a dignified letter
justifying his own course, which, he reminded them, had never been
criticized or disavowed, he resigned the governorship. "From the
events occurring in Kansas as well as here," he wrote, "it is evident
that the question is passing from theories into practice; and that as
governor of Kansas I should be compelled to carry out new
instructions, differing on a vital question from those received at the
date of my appointment. Such instructions I could not execute
consistently with my views of the Federal Constitution, of the Kansas
and Nebraska bill, or with my pledges to the people of Kansas." "The
idea entertained by some that I should see the Federal Constitution
and the Kansas-Nebraska bill overthrown and disregarded, and that,
playing the part of a mute in a pantomime of ruin, I should acquiesce
by my silence in such a result, especially where such acquiescence
involved, as an immediate consequence, a disastrous and sanguinary
civil war, seems to me most preposterous."[13]

The conduct and the language of Walker and Stanton bear a remarkable
significance when we remember that they had been citizens of slave
States and zealous Democratic partisans, and that only hard practical
experience and the testimony of their own eyes had forced them to join
their predecessors in the political "graveyard." "The ghosts on the
banks of the Styx," said Seward, "constitute a cloud scarcely more
dense than the spirits of the departed Governors of Kansas, wandering
in exile and sorrow for having certified the truth against falsehood
in regard to the elections between Freedom and Slavery in Kansas."

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[1] January 12, 1857, Wilder, p. 113. Bell, Speech in Senate, March
18, 1858. Appendix "Globe," p. 137.

[2] Geary to Marcy, Feb. 21, 1857, Senate Ex. Doc. No. 17, 1st Sess.
35th Cong. Vol. VI., p. 178.

[3] Bigler, Senate Speech, Dec. 9, 1857. "Globe," p. 21. See also
Bigler, Dec. 21, 1857. "Globe," p. 113.

[4] Walker, Testimony before the Covode Committee. Reports of
Committees H.R. 1st Sess. 36th Cong. Vol. V., pp. 105-6.

[5] "These fifteen counties in wh