The natural treasury of the country is an object of especial
interest. To break away peaceably is hardly possible. But slavery
needs more ground for the increasing blacks. It must be toward
the Pacific that the new Confederacy will gain ground. Gold, sea
frontage, Asiatic trade, forests and fisheries,--all these must
come to the South. It is the final acquisition of California. It
was APPARENTLY for the Union, but REALLY for the South, that the
complacent Polk pounced upon California. He waged a slyly prepared
war on Mexico for slavery.

As the restraints of courtesy and fairness are thrown off at
Washington, sectional hostilities sweep over to the Western coast.
The bitterness becomes intense. Pressing to the front, champions
of both North and South meet in private encounters. They admit of
neither evasion nor retreat.

Maxime Valois is ready to shed his blood for the land of the palmetto.
But he will not degrade himself by low intrigue or vulgar encounter.

He learns without regret of the extinction of the filibusters in
Sonora, on the Mexican coast, Cuba, and Central America. He knows
it is mad piracy.

Valois sorrows not when William Walker's blood slakes the stones
of the plaza at Truxillo. A consummation devoutly to be wished.

It is for the whole South he would battle. It is the glorious half
of the greatest land on the globe. For HER great rights, under HER
banner, for State sovereignty he would die. On some worthy field,
he would lead the dauntless riflemen of Louisiana into the crater