Should this book be read in any European country the reader will know just what Kansas is, and the greater his familiarity with the history of other lands and peoples, the greater will be his surprise and delight. Kansas has added a new page to the progressive history of humanity, and is still marching on.
Topeka, May 16, 1888.
ADDRESSES.
PENNSYLVANIA AND KANSAS.
Address at a Reunion of the Pennsylvania Society of Atchison County, held at Atchison, March 1st, 1878.
Mr. President: The reunion of Pennsylvanians held in our city to-day is a meeting to be commended, not alone because it affords opportunity for acquaintanceship among citizens native of the same State, and promotes social friendships among them, but because it is favorable to the development of that individual and National sentiment which, while reverencing birthplace and old home, has a still higher reverence and love for the broad country which stretches from ocean to ocean. Whether in Kansas or in Pennsylvania, the same brave old flag floats over us; our new home and our native State are parts of the same good land; and the Union, which takes in its wide, and strong, and loving embrace the wheat-fields of Kansas and the coal-fields of Pennsylvania, is the dearer to us because away off there near the Atlantic are the graves of our forefathers, and here by the Missouri, half-way across the Continent, are our homes, our wives, and our children.
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. The voice of Massachusetts, then as during the Revolution of our forefathers, was eloquent and courageous, and her action swift, vigorous and determined. But Sam and John Adams, a century ago, had Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris, representatives of the “Old Keystone State,” as their most efficient coadjutors, and so in the struggle which made Kansas free, the zeal, the courage, and the constancy of Pennsylvania’s sons were conspicuously illustrated.
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; combining the sturdy independence, firm convictions and all-conquering energy and industry of the North with the intense enthusiasm and fine courage of the South. It is difficult to estimate what the result of such fusing of bloods and temperaments will be in the future, but I believe it will produce as strong, intelligent and vigorous a manhood as this Continent or the world ever saw.
I do not intend, however, to discuss physiological questions. This is Pennsylvania’s Day in our city, and I want to trace the connection of Pennsylvania and her sons, as briefly as may be, with the history and development, political and material, of Kansas. But first let me ask, did any of you ever notice the striking similarity in the appearance of the two States, Pennsylvania and Kansas, as shown upon the map? In size, shape and general outlines, this resemblance is remarkable. In no other two States of the Union is the conformation of outlines and appearance so noticeable. Three sides of each, and the same three sides—north, south and west—are squarely cut, while the eastern boundary of each is irregular and formed mainly by the course of a river. Pennsylvania has a territorial area of 46,000 square miles, and is 315 miles east and west by 160 miles north and south. Kansas is a larger State, having a territorial area of 81,000 square miles, and being 400 miles east and west by 200 north and south. Both are longer, in about equal proportions, than they are wide.
Perhaps the resemblance between the two States on the map of our country—a resemblance as striking as that so often noticed in twin children—is the birth-mark which stamps them as of one blood and family, and accounts for the curious and interesting identification of Pennsylvania’s sons with events in Kansas, during the whole of that exciting epoch when this State was so prominent a figure in the history of the Nation.