recognized. His mother was a slave-holder. In Tennessee he had
been born and bred surrounded by slaves. His youth and manhood
had been spent in Nashville and New Orleans. He believed as
honestly, as fanatically in the right to hold slaves as did his father
in the faith of the Covenanters. To-day one reads his arguments in
favor of slavery with the most curious interest. His appeal to the
humanity of his reader, to his heart, to his sense of justice, to his
fear of God, and to his belief in the Holy Bible not to abolish
slavery, but to continue it, to this generation is as amusing as the
topsy-turvyisms of Gilbert or Shaw. But to the young man himself
slavery was a sacred institution, intended for the betterment of
mankind, a God-given benefit to the black man and a God-given
right of his white master.

White brothers in the South, with perhaps less exalted motives,
contributed funds to fit out Walker's expedition, and in October,
1852, with forty-five men, he landed at Cape St. Lucas, at the
extreme point of Lower California. Lower California, it must be
remembered, in spite of its name, is not a part of our California,
but then was, and still is, a part of Mexico. The fact that he was at
last upon the soil of the enemy caused Walker to throw off all
pretence; and instead of hastening to protect women and children,
he sailed a few miles farther up the coast to La Paz. With his
forty-five followers he raided the town, made the Governor a
prisoner, and established a republic with himself as President. In a
proclamation he declared the people free of the tyranny of Mexico.
They had no desire to be free, but Walker was determined, and,
whether they liked it or not, they woke up to find themselves an
independent republic. A few weeks later, although he had not yet
set foot there, Walker annexed on paper the State of Sonora, and to