The support of the _New York Tribune_ perhaps did Considerant more harm than good, as the Southern papers were suspicious of anything with which Greeley was connected. The mere fact that Brisbane and Greeley favored the colony was enough to convince most people in the South that the colony was organized for the sole purpose of establishing Free-soilers and Abolitionists in the slave states. In fact, all the papers, even those supporting Considerant, were unanimous in their condemnation of the anti-slavery sentiment as expressed by Considerant. The _State Gazette_ on October 13, 1855, says: It is a matter of deep solicitude to all Southern men, that these Socialists should know in advance the opinions and views of our people. We are far from being fit subject for the transcendental theorists of the North and of France. The thousand isms of the day find no congenial soil in the South, and besides this, the hatred of the Slave Institution, cherished by these Socialists and avowed openly by them in our State, must only the more remind us of our duty and awake us to action. It was said in the same issue that socialists were to be emptied upon Texas by the thousands, and already that their surveyors were working through several counties in which the colony had secured nearly every available piece of ground. Rumor had it that the slave-holders who lived near these people thought it opportune to dispose of their slaves, and many Southerners were disposed to leave their homes and seek plantations farther West.[19] Such statements apparently were wide of the mark as investigation fails to produce a single protest from people in the vicinity of the colony; such exaggeration merely represents the usual effort of some editors and newspapers to carry their points in any sensational issue and should not be given credence here. The incongruous statements of the _Washington Sentinel_ are amusing: We have a great country, interminable in extent, blessed with every variety of climate, and adapted to every kind of production. We have vast uninhabited wilds that resound oftener with the tread of the buffalo or the howl of the wolf than with the step or the voice of the man. We have room for the oppressed, the enterprising, the industrious and the patriotic of every clime and country. They are welcome. We would say to them, come—our arms are open to receive. Come ... and be naturalized into our free American brotherhood. Yet when an effort is made to plant amongst us, and that, in a slave State (Texas) a colony of French Socialists and abolitionists (they are endorsed by the _New York Tribune_) then we demur, most positively and absolutely. We want no abolition _plantations_ or _colonies_ here, whether they are foreign or native. We want no European ideas of liberty. We carved out, by our own strong arms, the independence of this country, and we want nothing of foreign origin infused into our system.