We go to test the truth of God
Against the fraud of man.”
My earliest recollections of the Congregational Church of Topeka date back to the spring of 1861. The first Legislature of the State assembled on March 26th of that year, the Senate meeting in the third story of a building that stood on the southeast corner of Kansas avenue and Sixth street, and the House in a building some distance south of this. There were rumors that the building in which the House met was unsafe. These, however, did not seriously disturb the members; but when the rains came, and not only beat upon it, but poured through a leaky roof, the honorable Representatives of the State of Kansas concluded it was time to move. And so, on the 11th of May, the House adjourned, to meet the following Monday in the Congregational Church. There its sessions were held until the final adjournment, June 4th.
And in and around the old church flamed and burned the fierce enthusiasms kindled by the assault on the life of the Republic. A company was formed, composed of members and officers of the Legislature, and day after day, during the recess, it was drilled by a young member who had attended a military school and knew something of tactics. It was a curious sight to see the squads of men moving about on the prairie near the church, and to remember that these awkward soldiers were the law-makers of the young State.
But I must not “wake remembrance with all her busy train,” or this letter will spin out to an inexcusable length. I only intended to explain why I could not be with you this evening, and to beg you to present my regrets and apologies to the company assembled, for my necessary absence.
Yours, very truly, John A. Martin.
THE KANSAS PIONEER.
Address delivered at Garden City, at the opening of the Southwestern Exposition, October 12th, 1886.
Fellow-Citizens: It affords me peculiar pleasure to be with you to-day, and to discharge the duty assigned me of formally opening this great fair and festival. Under any circumstances it would be a pleasure to fulfill such an appointment, but, upon this occasion, it is doubly delightful. I wanted to come here, first, because I wished to see the material evidences of the marvelous growth and development of Southwestern Kansas; and, second, because I wanted to take off my hat, in the presence of the men and women who have wrought these miracles, and thank them, personally and in the name of the State, for doing what the most sanguine and enthusiastic Kansan never dreamed, ten years ago, could be done.
When I came to Kansas, now nearly thirty years ago, it was the universal belief of the people of the Territory that agricultural development was not possible west of the Blue and the Neosho. Ten or twelve years later, this line of possible productiveness was moved westward to the Republican and the Arkansas, and ten years ago it was advanced to the hundredth meridian. Beyond that, all said, crops could not be produced; the country was a good grazing region, but the idea of growing wheat, or corn, or any cereals, in the sterile and rainless counties of the western third of the State, was preposterous. Men were foolhardy, the prophets said, to attempt agricultural pursuits in the western third of the State. The soil was barren, the altitude too great, and the whole region was rainless.