Kansas

“ All Kansas was in its Maytime glory. From the freshly ploughed earth came up that sweet wholesome odor that like the scent of new-mown hay carries its own traditions of other days to each of us. The young orchards—there were not many orchards in Kansas then—were all a blur of pink on the hill slopes. A thousand different blossoms gemmed the prairies, making a perfect kaleidoscope of brilliant hues, that blended with the shifting shades of green. ”

“ Vague Old Quivira plants the feet of lusty young Kansas in the dim and misty fastnesses of the past to give dignity and beget pride in the history of a state. Hazy and distant Quivira is hoary with antiquity, but in young and buxom Kansas she becomes the beacon of modern energy to light up the ways of the world. Touched with the magic fire of Kansas, Old Quivira has become a flame that burns across the heavens—an inspiration, an ideal far superior in value to the crops or herds or mines embraced in all her borders. For ideals are more precious to mankind than material things. ”

“ Looking back over the records of our eventful, often stormy past, and contemplating the prosperous present and hopeful future of Kansas, it has seemed to me that one great duty this State of ours has forgotten. All nations, all States, have delighted to perpetuate, in the names they have given to their cities or counties, the memory of those who, in times of great trouble and danger, testified their devotion to the welfare of the people by a courageous, steadfast, self-sacrificing defense of their rights and liberties. ”

“ Attracting the best brain and brawn of the civilized world, Kansas has fused all into a homogeneous and cosmopolitan people, whose achievements have been a wonder and a model for all the generations of men. In less than three decades the men and women of Kansas have wiped a desert from the map of America and replaced it with eighty-two thousand square miles of cultivated fields, and fragrant meadows, and towering forests; have dotted the whole of this vast territory with prosperous cities, towns and villages; have sent a locomotive whistling through nearly every county ”

“ A million and a quarter of people, living in the richest and most prosperous State of the Union—a State gridironed by railways, dotted with school-houses and churches, and growing steadily, not only in wealth and power and influence, but in all the elements of the most advanced civilization—the Kansas of to-day is alike the pride of her own citizens, and the wonder and admiration of the whole civilized world. ”

“ Or asserting that the development of Kansas was without parallel in the history of American States? Or affirming that there were more railroads to the square mile, and more corn and wheat to the acre, and more prosperous and growing cities per county, and greater wealth per capita, in Kansas, than in any other section of the civilized globe? These facts are told in histories, census reports, geographies, and other official records, but you never hear a Kansan boasting about them! We are a modest people, and are not puffed up, even if we have the best and greatest State in the Union. ”

“ I appeal from Philip drunk with partisan prejudice, to Philip sober enough to realize the wonderful growth and to be proud of the splendid State we inhabit. Here is the Kansas of our love and our faith—look around you and see it. Every citizen of the State, no matter what his political opinions may be, is proud of Kansas. And yet Kansas, more than any other region under the shining stars, is the product, the child of the Republican party. ”

“ Kansas, State of tremendous crops and hardy, devout, natural men! Kansas of the historic Santa Fé Trail and the classic village of Emporia and the immortal editor of Emporia! Kansas, laid out in roads a mile apart, criss-crossing to make a great checker-board, roads that go on and on past endless rich farms and big farm-houses, though there is not a village or railroad for miles! Kansas, the land of the real country gentlemen, Americans who work the soil and own the soil they work; State where the shabby tenant-dwelling scarce appears as yet! ”

“ I have seen Kansas grow from a half-tilled, forlorn strip along the west bank of the Missouri, into a splendid, imperial State, with nearly a million and a quarter of inhabitants—a State with nearly eighteen million acres occupied as farms, with over four thousand miles of railway, seven thousand school-houses and a thousand churches, and with property aggregating in value nearly five hundred million dollars. ”

“ Fields and meadows are rich with herds and flocks. The face of the land has been transformed with forests, orchards and hedge-rows. Everywhere is growth, improvement, increase; everywhere are the evidences of culture, thrift, and enterprise; everywhere the promise of a larger, broader life, and a firmer, deeper faith in the greatness and glory of Kansas. Here is the Central State, the Sunflower State, the Soldier State, and within its borders prosperity and order, intelligence and sobriety, industry and enterprise, go hand in hand. ”

“ The air on Mount Oread is pure; the winds here are strong and free; and the young Kansans who have marched down from these heights to engage in the battle of life are active, stirring citizens, not only doing honor to their Alma Mater, but contributing their full share to the good work of making Kansas a strong, pure, liberty-loving, law-respecting, and preeminently intelligent American commonwealth. ”

“ A fertile soil, a healthful climate, an intelligent, enterprising and brave people—these are the enduring foundations on which has been built our great and prosperous Commonwealth. Kansas is, so to speak, “all wool and a yard wide.” Kansas is sound in wind and limb. Kansas is the electric light of the Union. Kansas is the State of great crops, great herds, great flocks, great railroads, great school-houses, great development and great prosperity. ”

“ If Kansas could properly be called the child of any State, she is the daughter of Pennsylvania. But Kansas is really cosmopolitan. The blood of all States and all Nations runs in her veins. The East and the West, the North and the South, all sections and all nationalities have sent their sons and daughters to swell her population and contribute to her development. There is a wonderful aggregation of peoples in the citizenship of this young Commonwealth; and out of these has grown a remarkable community—a people homogeneous, yet diverse ”

“ Rally around the old banner of Republicanism—the flag of Lincoln, and Grant, and Garfield, and Logan, and Blaine. Vote with and for the party that gave liberty to the slave, and restored the Union and brought back peace and prosperity to bless a distracted and impoverished land. Vote with the party that has made Kansas famous throughout the civilized world as a State where unexampled material growth has gone hand in hand with unexampled social and intellectual progress. Vote with the party that is striving to make every home in Kansas a prosperous and happy home. ”

“ And it is a just reproach to Kansas that not one of our counties bears the name of either of these three men—Reeder, Geary, or Walker. Kansas owes them much. Their memory should be honored by every Kansan. They have all passed away from the trials and troubles of this world. This State, the rights and liberties of whose people they defended with such self-sacrificing devotion and steadfast courage, cannot now reward them with substantial gifts. ”

“ Years ago, when the passions born of our Territorial troubles were yet fiercely burning, I heard it said that Kansas was “the child of Massachusetts.” The “Old Bay State,” it is true, contributed her full quota towards moulding that public sentiment whose enthusiastic impulses sent so many immigrants to people our prairies, and her firm friendship for Free Kansas did very much to break down the intolerant domination of slavery within our borders. ”

“ There is no State where so many men sit down every day to substantial meals, nor where so many wives and children are comfortably clad—no people anywhere on earth of whom so large a proportion are sober, intelligent and contented with their lot, as here in Kansas. And this great State, as I have said, is the child of the Republican party—bone of its bone, and flesh of its flesh. ”

“ Kansas is still in the bloom of her youth; she has only fairly commenced her great career. Loving Freedom and loyal to the core; believing in education and respecting law; striving to keep her young manhood sober, clean and healthy; never a feeble imitator, yet always willing to learn; not afraid to experiment, and always ready to lead ”

“ Life of the Early Settlers. In order that this great result might be accomplished, that the Kansas of to-day might be, a generation of men and women had to conquer these vast prairies that were swept by blizzards, parched by drouths, scorched by hot winds, and scourged by grasshoppers. A few of the pioneers gave up and returned to their old homes, but most of them were of the sturdy type and remained, always believing that the day of better things was to come. ”

“ That sturdy old Scotch statesman, Fletcher of Saltoun, writing to the Earl of Montrose, two hundred years ago, said: “I knew a very wise man that believed that, if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.” I welcome you, teachers of Kansas, as men and women who could say, with far more truth: “In educating the boys and girls of the State, we inspire its sentiment, control its business, direct its enterprise, and make its laws.” ”

“ Born in the storm and stress period of national political controversy, cradled in the tumult of civil war, and reared to full statehood in an era unparalleled in the arts of peace, the life of Kansas has been one of intense activity. Carved out of territory once known as part of the Great American Desert, by the industry of her people it has become one of the most productive and wealthy states of the Union in proportion to its population. From the political unrest of the early life has sprung a people alive to progressive forms of government. ”

“ Believe everything you have ever heard of the Kansas grasshoppers.
The heights of the header-barge are dramatically commanding. Kansas appears much larger than when we are merely standing in the field. We are just as high as upon a mountain-peak, for here, as there, we can see to the very edges of the eternities. ”

“ I am grateful, especially, to the thousands of earnest, enthusiastic young men whose torches, for weeks, turned night into day from Doniphan to Barber, and from Cherokee to Cheyenne, and who, with flashing flambeaux, blazing rockets and loud hurrahs, often did what neither the logic, the eloquence nor the wit of orators could do, to arouse the sluggish and convert the doubtful. I am grateful to the bright, enterprising, enthusiastic journalists of Kansas—and no State in the Union can boast of brighter or better newspapers than can Kansas—who so ardently and intelligently supported me. ”

“ Smiling and opulent fields, busy and prosperous cities and towns, are still attracting the intelligent, the enterprising and the ambitious of every State and country. The limits that bound the progress and development of Kansas cannot now be gauged or guessed. We have land, homes, work and plenty for millions more; and for another quarter of a century, at least, our State will continue to grow. ”

“ In the year of our Lord 1900, there will be two million people in Kansas, with cities like Providence and Worcester—perhaps like Chicago and Cincinnati. She will have more miles of railroad than Maryland, Virginia and both the Carolinas can now boast. Her land will be worth twenty dollars an acre, and her total wealth will be five hundred millions of money. Six hundred thousand children will learn in her schools. What schools, newspapers, libraries, meeting-houses! Yes, what families of educated, happy and religious men and women! ”

“ During the years of 1853 and 1854, most of the leading Northern newspapers were not only full of glowing accounts of the extraordinary fertility, healthfulness, and beauty of the territory of Kansas, then newly opened for settlement, but of urgent appeals to all lovers of freedom who desired homes in a new region to go there as settlers, and by their votes save Kansas from the curse of slavery. ”

“ The Kansas men who located towns were, as a rule, sanguine 198and cheerful persons, and no matter how bleak and desolate were their surroundings, nor how unpromising the future really was, the ground in which they planted their stakes seemed to them specially designed, from the beginning of all things, as the site for a prosperous city. Before the first rude frame building was completed, they had drawn on the map of Kansas numerous lines of railway that must and would be built, and they lay down at night to dream delightful dreams of fortunes that were to be realized from corner lots. ”

“ He should know when to sell, and he should have a place in which to store his grain until the right time to sell it comes. Kansas is to-day the most prosperous state in the Union. I make this statement deliberately, and am confident that statistical and census reports will sustain it. But Kansas would be far more prosperous if the barns of her farmers were as creditable to Kansas agriculture as our school houses are to Kansas intelligence. Kansas will never be as prosperous as the State ought to be, until every prairie slope within her borders is adorned with a Pennsylvania barn. ”