I am not, however, the historian of this occasion. Very properly the committee assigned to my honored predecessor, the first Governor of the State—who has been with and of it during all the lights and shadows of thirty-one revolving years—the duty of presenting an historical sketch of the difficulties and dangers through which Kansas was “added to the stars,” and became one of the brightest in the constellation of the Union. To me was allotted another task—that of presenting, as briefly and as clearly as I am able, the material development of Kansas, and her present condition and position. It is at once a delightful and a difficult task. The growth of Kansas is a theme which has always enlisted my interest and excited my pride. But I cannot hope to present any adequate picture of the Kansas you know so well—the Kansas of your love and of your faith; the imperial young State, at once the enigma and the wonder of American commonwealths.
THREE PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT.
The development of Kansas, it seems to me, has had three periods, which may properly be called the decades of War, of Uncertainty, and of Triumph. From 1855 to 1865, Kansas was an armed camp. The border troubles, outbreaking late in 1854, continued until the Rebellion was inaugurated. Kansas, in fact, began the war six years before the Nation had fired a shot, and the call to arms in 1861 found here a singularly martial people, who responded with unparalleled enthusiasm to the President’s demands for men. In less than a year ten full regiments were organized, and before the close of the war Kansas had sent over twenty thousand soldiers to the field, out of a population of but little more than a hundred thousand. Fields, workshops, offices and schools were deserted, and the patient and heroic women who had kept weary vigils during all the dark and desolate days of the border troubles, now waited in their lonely home for tidings from the larger field of the civil war.
It is doubtful whether Kansas increased, either in population or wealth, from 1861 to 1864. But the young State grew in public interest and reputation, and when the heroic men, whose valor and patriotism had saved the Republic, began to be mustered out, Kansas offered an inviting field for their energy, and they came hither in great numbers. The population of the State, which was 107,206 in 1860, had increased to 140,179 in 1865. The assessed value of its property increased from $22,518,232 to $36,110,000 during the same period, and the land in farms from 1,778,400 to 3,500,000 acres. It was not a “boom,” nor was it stagnation and decay. Yet it is probable that nearly the whole of the growth shown by these figures dates from the spring of 1864.
The real development of Kansas began in 1865, and it has known few interruptions since. The census of 1870 showed a population of 364,399—an increase of 124,220 in five years, or nearly double the population of 1865. Railroad building also began in 1865, and 1,283 miles were completed by 1870. The home-returning soldiers and the railroads came together. Immigrants to other States came in slow-moving canal boats or canvas-covered wagons, but they came to Kansas in the lightning express, and most of them went to their claims in comfortable cars drawn by that marvel of modern mechanism, the locomotive. Our State has never had a “coon-skin cap” population. It is the child of the prairies, not of the forest. It has always attracted men of intelligence, who knew a good thing when they saw it. They brought with them the school, the church and the printing-press; they planted an orchard and a grove as soon as they had harvested their first crop; and if they were compelled to live in a dug-out the first year or two, they were reasonably certain to own a comfortable house the third.
THE PERIOD OF UNCERTAINTY.
The period from 1865 to 1875 was, however, a period of uncertainty. Kansas remained an experiment. The drouth and grasshopper invasion of 1860, a menacing memory for many years, had just begun to grow dim when the drouth of 1873 and the still more disastrous drouth and locust invasion of 1874 revived its recollection, and intensified the uncertainty it had inspired. The intervening years were not, it is true, without their exaltation and triumphs. Luxuriant harvests followed the disaster of 1860, year after year in unbroken succession, until 1873, and we indulged in much jubilant boasting and self-gratulation over our fruitful soil, our benign climate, and our gracious seasons. But over and through it all brooded and ran a feeling of question or uncertainty, which manifested itself in many ways. The newspapers, while affecting to sneer at those who did not believe Kansas to be a country where rains always came just when they were wanted, nevertheless recorded every rain with suspicious prominence. Even the corner-lot speculator watched the clouds while he was denouncing the slanderers who asserted that Kansas was “a dry country.” “Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” might have been said of the Kansans who, from 1865 to 1875, vehemently maintained that the normal condition of Kansas was that of a quagmire.
And in the midst of it all came 1873 and 1874, with their twin devastations and calamities. A fierce sun rose and set for months in a cloudless sky; the parched earth shrank and cracked; and the crops withered and shriveled in winds as hot as the breath of a furnace. But as if the destruction thus wrought was not enough, out from the northwest came clouds of insects, darkening the sun in their baleful flight, and leaving the very abomination of desolation wherever they alighted. It was then that the bravest quailed, and our sturdiest farmers abandoned all hope. Thousands of people, now among our most prosperous citizens, would have sold everything they possessed for one-sixth of its value, during the year 1874, and abandoned the State forever. But they could find no purchasers, even at such a price.
Somehow—and I mention the fact to their everlasting credit—many of the newspapers of Kansas never lost heart or hope during that distressful season. They lauded the State more earnestly, if possible, than ever before. They asserted, with vehement iteration, that the season was exceptional and phenomenal. They exhorted the people to keep up courage, and confidently predicted abundant harvests next year. And to their influence more than any other, is due the fact that Kansas survived the drouth and grasshopper invasion of 1874 with so little loss of population.