USA > Kansas > Kansas : the prelude to the war for the union > Part 18
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DURING THE WAR FOR THE UNION.
print. Skillful adaptation to time and place ; sure tact in humoring the prejudices and firing the passions of an audience; unmeasured invective ; an intensity of utterance that sometimes reached the verge of frenzy ; grotesque, extravagant, ring- ing turns of phrase, and what, in the absence of a better word, is called magnetism, seem to be the capital elements of Lane's singularly effective speech.
That the harm which such a man does to a commonwealth must largely exceed the service goes without saying. Lane's energy, enthusiasm, and eloquence were serviceable in the territorial struggle, but even then these admirable qualities had a serious offset in his restless jealousy, in- trigue, and rashness. The free-state cause would not have been safe in his hands an hour at any critical juncture. But if the evil was checked and mitigated at first by the necessities of the situation, when Lane reached the United States Senate and gained the ear of the administration, then his wretched policies and ambitions had ample sea-room - policies and ambitions that de- bauched the political morals of the commonwealth and drew upon it a grievous train of calamities.
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CHAPTER XIV.
AD ASTRA.
IT is often difficult, some one has said, to man- age the future of an heroic action - a problem no more formidable for individuals than for states. An exceptional, brilliant past demands a present and a future that shall not be out of harmony or fall into anti-climax. Kansas has a significant and memorable history ; the territorial struggle converted a wilderness, which had little claim upon the interest of mankind, into historic ground.
But now we reach a different epoch. From the date of settlement until the close of the war for the Union, though in the later stages it broke down into discreditable political intrigue and mur- derous bushfighting, the history of Kansas pur- sued a single theme. The war for the Union caught up and nationalized the verdict of the ter- ritorial broil.
In the large influx of colored people from the South in 1878-79 there was indeed a striking af- ter-piece of the border conflict. Out of the unset- tled condition of affairs in the South, out of the frictions and hardships unavoidable in a radical
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reconstruction of society, an extensive colored ex- odus sprang. Reports were rife that in Kansas - a name glorified in their minds as having some vague connection with emancipation - better homes, larger opportunities, kindlier treatment, awaited them than could be expected elsewhere. A colored convention, attended by delegates from fourteen states, met at Nashville, Tennessee, May 7th, 1879, and advised colored people of the South to " emigrate to those states and territories where they can enjoy all the rights which are guaran- tied by the laws and constitution of the United States." The excitement, fanned by outrages and demagogues, became intense. Notwithstanding the conciliatory efforts of Southern planters and the warnings of prominent colored leaders, who op- posed migration as a remedy for grievances, not less than forty thousand negroes reached Kansas in every stage of destitution. These fugitives re- lief societies took in charge ; provided with shel- ter, clothing, and food ; organized into new colo- nies, or distributed among the older communities. On the whole, they seem to have improved their circumstances by the flight, though at the expense of much temporary discomfort. It was dramat- ically befitting -a fact not destitute of pathetic and poetic suggestion - that Southern negroes, in the extremities of reconstruction, should have turned their eyes toward the state where the first blow was struck for their freedom.
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KANSAS.
The people of Kansas in 1865 dropped the sword and grasped the plow. " A happy nation," says Ruskin, " may be defined as one in which the husband's hand is on the plow and the housewife's on the needle." Though embarrassed from 1864 to 1870 by Indian hostilities, in which at least a thousand citizens lost their lives and much prop- erty was destroyed ; though scorched by occasional droughts ; though visited in 1874 by plagues of lo- custs which desolated large districts, devouring fruits, vegetables, and grains with inexhaustible voracity, so that the familiar story of destitute, starving Kansas was heard once more, yet few American commonwealths have ever made so much material progress in twenty years.
This progress appears the more remarkable when we consider the geographical notions cur- rent fifty years ago, not to mention those that Senator Green, of Missouri, avowed so late as the Lecompton debate. Fifty years ago no agricul- tural future was thought possible for Kansas. It belonged to that vast Mediterranean tract, the greater part of which Irving thought would " form a lawless interval between the abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the deserts of Arabia. ... Here may spring up new and mongrel races, like new formations in geology, the amalgamations of the débris and abrasions of for- mer races civilized and savage; .. . the descend- ants of wandering hunters and trappers ; of fu-
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gitives from the Spanish and American frontiers ; of adventurers and desperadoes of every class and country, yearly ejected from the bosom of society into the wilderness."
Irving's prophecy went wide of the mark. No mongrel races, the detritus of neighboring civili- zations, overrun Kansas. The wastes have disap- peared or are disappearing. And recent writers do not hesitate to pronounce the Great American Desert a myth.
Little was done, as has been said before, to test the material resources of Kansas until the close of the Rebellion. The Indians, it is true, dab- bled in agriculture. They succeeded in raising slender crops of corn, beans, and pumpkins. Rev. Thomas Johnson and other missionaries tried in- effectually to deepen their practical interest in the soil. During the territorial period political inter- ests compelled a paramount attention. When the war for the Union broke out there followed a still greater diversion from farm industry. " One half of our entire population, between the ages of eigh- teen and forty-five," Governor Robinson wrote September 1st, 1862, "is in the army."
The population of Kansas in 1865 was 135,807. In the two succeeding decades the increase reached nearly a million souls, an immigration scarcely precedented in volume. A corresponding agricul- tural development followed, which placed Kansas, according to the census of 1880, seventeenth on
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KANSAS.
the list of states in value of farm products, and eighth in value of live stock. In 1884 the wheat crop was 48,050,431 bushels against 25,279,884 in 1880. The corn crop rose from 101,421,718 bushels in 1880 to 190,870,686 in 1884. Other branches of farm industry advanced proportionally during the years 1882-84, so that in 1884 Kansas ranked among the foremost states in agricultural products.
Meteorological changes have accompanied the settlement of Kansas. However the fact may be explained, whatever agency the sudden and ex- tensive agriculture or the planting of artificial for- ests, which, including fruit-trees, were estimated in 1884 at 171,810 acres, may have exerted, the amount of annual rain-fall, according to the fore- most Kansas authority in such matters, Professor Snow, of the State University, shows an increase of five inches in Eastern Kansas during the last twenty years compared with a like pre-settlement period. In this augmented precipitation the west- ern third of Kansas has shared, but so moderately as to promise little for agriculture. Apparently successful farming in that region must await the introduction of some practicable system of irriga- tion.
The creation of a great state in the wilderness of Kansas since 1865 is mainly a feat of the rail- road. "If this invention," said Emerson, "has reduced England to a third of its size by bring-
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ing people so much nearer, in this country it has given a new celerity to time, or anticipated by fifty years the planting of tracts of land." With- out the adventurous forecast and push of railway corporations, which drew public attention to the resources of Kansas and put them within reach, its settlement, like that of older states, would have stretched over a much longer period. By a sys- tem of advertising which skillfully seized upon avenues of communication - newspapers, pam- phlets, traveling agents, national and interna- tional exhibitions - these corporations greatly abridged the ordinary course of events. Rail- ways now penetrate every part of the state, -
" And thatch with towns the prairies broad."
At the last national census Kansas had reached the ninth place among the states in railway mile- age. January, 1885, the amount of main track exceeded four thousand miles.
Certainly Kansas is assured of whatever star- ward energy may reside in numbers or in ma- terial prosperities. That their tendency is not altogether ennobling and uplifting social philoso- phers have been careful to point out. Matthew Arnold ventures his hope for the future on rem- nants in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Carlyle sneers at political economy, and disparages Americans in particular as a genera- tion of dollar-hunters.
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KANSAS.
" Oh, better far the briefest hour Of Athens self-consumed whose plastic power Hid beauty safe from Death in words or stone ; Of Rome, fair quarry where those eagles crowd Whose fulgurous vans about the world had blown Triumphant storm and seeds of polity ; Of Venice, fading o'er her shipless sea, Last iridescence of a fading cloud ; Than this inert prosperity
This bovine comfort in the sense alone !"
Mere bigness will not do much for a state or nation except in politics, where heavy weights tell. Holland, with limited area and population, is the mother of illustrious statesmen, soldiers, and scholars, and at one time championed the cause of freedom for the world. But while industrial and numerical progress does not necessarily imply progress in culture, yet it lays broad foundations upon which culture may build. It enlarges the scope of possibilities. The outcome of a splendid material development will turn on the question whether high moral, intellectual, æsthetic, and idealizing forces mingle in it, -
" And set our pulse in tune with moods divine."
Kansas is not wanting in these superior forces. The New England colonists, though feebly influ- enced by motives of technical theology, gave im- mediate attention to the establishment of a church. October 1st, 1854, Rev. S. Y. Lum preached at Lawrence the first sermon delivered to white men in the territory. The Pioneer Hotel served as a meeting-house. "A few rough boards were
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brought for seats," Mrs. Robinson wrote, "and with singing by several good voices among the pioneers the usual church services were performed. . . The people then, as on many succeeding sab- baths, were gathered together by the ringing of a large dinner bell." Plymouth Congregational Church was organized October 15th, with seven members, and is the oldest in Kansas. Other denominations began work in the territory at an early day. But as the religious history of the commonwealth exhibits little that is exceptional, it will not now be set forth at large. To home missionaries -to their patient, self-denying, he- roic and sometimes perilous service - Kansas is heavily indebted. The State had 2046 church organizations in 1884, with a membership up- wards of 185,000.
Educational matters have awakened strong in- terest in Kansas and exhibit praiseworthy prog- ress, though the expectations of the Senate Com- mittee on Education for 1858-9 have not as yet been realized. "It should be the aim of the edu- cators of Kansas," said the optimistic committee, in a report recommending that the schools should be supplied with Webster's dictionaries, " to make this territory a model state in American lit- erature. In this new territory we have all the requisite elements for building up a system of universities, colleges, schools, and seminaries of learning unequaled by any other on the globe.
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KANSAS.
Your committee believe it is the province of the people of Kansas to inaugurate an educational system which shall perfect the English language as well as English literature." It may have been sympathy, more or less conscious, with these lib- eral expectations that induced the territorial leg- islature in the sessions of 1855 -60 to incorporate eighteen universities and ten colleges! Out of these twenty-eight institutions, twenty-five have perished - a mortality unparalleled in the history of education.
Governor Reeder commended the subject of schools to the legislature assembled at Pawnee, saying, with admirable point, " It is always bet- ter to pay for the education of a boy than the punishment of a man." The first territorial legis- lature, which was more modest in the matter of universities than most of the legislatures that fol- lowed, since it incorporated only three, provided for the establishment of schools in each county, " which shall be open and free to every class of white citizens," and directed that half the fines paid into county treasuries should be applied to their support. When the legislature fell into the hands of the free-state men in 1857, they recon- structed and liberalized the school system, and created the office of territorial superintendent. Yet, as a matter of fact, almost nothing was done under territorial laws until 1859. January 1st, 1859, not more than five school districts had been
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organized in Douglass County which was better circumstanced in this matter than the other coun- ties. But before June, thirty additional districts were organized. And during this period consid- erable educational machinery was set up in the rest of the territory.
In Lawrence private schools began at an early date. "You have laid out grounds for a college," Mr. Lawrence wrote Governor Robinson, Novem- ber 21st, 1854, " and will have a good one, with- out doubt, in due time; but in the first place you must have a preparatory school." On the 16th of January, 1855, a private school - the ear- liest in the territory of any kind - was opened in the Emigrant Aid building. It continued four- teen or fifteen weeks, with an attendance of twenty scholars. From its close, three terms of private school, for three months or less, comprised all the educational facilities of Lawrence until the 30th of March, 1857, when a select school of larger pretensions was opened. It continued for two years, with C. L. Edwards as principal, and was called the "Quincy High School," in honor of Josiah Quincy, of Boston. " A school is now in progress under the Unitarian Church, with two teachers and about fifty scholars," said a letter- writer April 17th, 1857.
In the spring of 1857 Mr. Lawrence gave ten thousand dollars to the city of Lawrence, the in- come of which should be devoted to school pur-
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poses. Originally a memorial college seems to have been in mind. " You shall have a college," he wrote Rev. Ephraim Nute, of Lawrence, De- cember 16th, 1856, " which shall be a school of learning, and at the same time a monument to per- petuate the memory of those martyrs of liberty who fell during the recent struggles. Beneath it their dust shall rest. In it shall burn the light of liberty, which shall never be extinguished. It shall be called the ' Free State College,' and all the friends of freedom shall be invited to lend a helping hand." The dream had a touching, though accidental and shadowy realization. No free-state college was ever built, but in making excavations for the main building of the State University workmen disinterred the remains of a dead soldier.
For a time the income of the ten thousand dol- lars was applied to the support of the Quincy High School. This fund attracted the attention of religious denominations, among which no less than three - Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Episcopalians - lured by hopes of obtaining it as a nucleus for endowment, attempted the es- tablishment of a college in Lawrence. The Pres- byterians were first in the field, secured a site, and laid the foundations of a college building. In the spring of 1859 the "Circular of the Lawrence University " appeared, announcing that an " In- stitution of Learning of the first class has been
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chartered and established at Lawrence, Kansas. . . The institution will open on the 11th of
April next [1859], and continue for a term of three months." In the faculty "eminent teach- ers " and " distinguished educators " were found, so that the institution confidently promised to fur- nish the " culture and discipline essential to suc- cess and eminence in any walk of life." But the undertaking did not prosper. Denominational feuds hurt it, and failure to get possession of the Lawrence fund completed its ruin. " We did not feel justified as a board," wrote the secretary of the trustees to Mr. Lawrence, " to commence a university in Kansas at the present time without the benefit of your fund." In 1860 the Congre- gationalists took up the enterprise and proposed to build a " Monumental College." An act of incorporation was procured, a board of trustees elected, and a subscription paper circulated. The subscription paper met with some success. Money
and material to the amount of four thousand dol- lars, town lots, twenty acres of land in Lawrence and twelve hundred elsewhere were pledged, pro- vided thirty thousand dollars should be raised before January 1st, 1861. That sum could not be secured, and the effort failed. Finally the Episcopalians took the business in hand. They effected an organization, chose trustees, and so- licited funds to complete the " Lawrence Univer- sity." Governor Robinson writes May 22d, 1861,
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that the " Episcopal College trustees " have pur- chased the site and basement of the building com- menced last year by the Presbyterians, and are anxious to secure the Lawrence fund. But they did not get the money, and accomplished little beyond a partial completion of the unfinished building.
The much-sought ten thousand dollars fell at last to the State University, as did the assets of all the contemplated colleges in Lawrence that pre- ceded it, and had decisive influence in determin- ing where it should be placed. "The legislature has passed a law," Governor Robinson wrote Mr. Lawrence February 23d, 1853, " locating the State University at Lawrence, on condition that fifteen thousand dollars shall be paid into the treasury in six months, and forty acres of land given to the University. If these conditions are not complied with, then the University is [to be] located at Emporia. . .. It was with great difficulty that the location was secured here, and nothing saved us but the inducements of your fund."
The school system of Kansas does not require elaborate exposition in this place. In addition to primary and intermediate schools, the state sup- ports three higher institutions, which are in suc- cessful and progressive operation, the Normal School at Emporia, the Agricultural College at Manhattan, and the University at Lawrence. Seven religious denominations have established
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colleges or universities which constitute an im- portant factor of educational work in the state. Among Kansas teachers, it is due them to say, a commendable alertness, enthusiasm, and ambition prevail. Their work gives evidence that the very highest mission of education is not wholly unap- preciated. That mission cannot be accomplished by processes, however admirable, of drill and ac- quisition alone. Recognizing the fact that moral and sentimental problems are by no means the least important for a community; that the first order of citizenship is impossible without the ser- vice of the impassioned imagination to body forth living, vivid conceptions of ethical and æsthetical realities, the ideal education creates vitalized in- telligence, alive and responsive to whatever is nobly said or done.
In the ministry of physical environment, which, in its higher forms, is a perennial source of æs- thetic, idealizing, poetic inspirations for commu- nities as well as individuals, Kansas at once has drawbacks and advantages. Expanses of rolling prairie, flattening on the western border into level plains, sparingly watered with brooks and riv- ers, unbroken by great mountain ranges, without the shadows, recesses, and deep seclusions of pri- meval forests, exposed and bare to all the garish sunshine of the year, have obvious limitations of scenic power. Yet there are compensations. Some phases of beauty shine in magnificent exhibition.
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There may be seen gorgeous splendors of cloud- glory; lustrous starlight and moonlight in com- parison with which northern heavens seem faded and withdrawn; the winter greenery of wheat fields; the faint, delicate blush of maple buds that sometimes give signs of life in February ; the brilliant bloom of wild crab-apple and Judas trees, greeting the spring ; expanses of landscape rich with half tropical vegetation, figured with infinite interplay of light and shade, -
" Vast as the sky against whose sunset shores,
Wave after wave the billowy greenness pours."
It only remains to note the eager, restless, pro- gressive spirit which distinguishes Kansas. This spirit has appeared and is appearing variously. It is exhibited in the great and as yet unsettled tem- perance agitation, which amended the organic law of the state by the introduction of a prohibitory clause ; in the admission of both sexes to the State University from the date of its foundation; in the service of women as county superintendents of schools and as university regents and professors ; in literary and art circles, which form an interesting feature of various towns ; in the Woman's Social Science Club, an organization that embraces Kan- sas and Western Missouri. and holds semi-annual meetings for the discussion of social, domestic, hygienic, and literary topics. Such an aggressive and ambitious temper, which has the nerve to venture, to experiment, if need be, at the expense
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of tradition and precedent, promises effectual de- fense against enervating influences -against the insidious lethargy of fierce summer heats and that "bovine comfort" of broad and teeming acres which Lowell deprecates.
The history of Kansas which began three dec- ades ago with a wilderness, with the fence and skirmish that preluded a tremendous civil war, closes with a great commonwealth rich in the material and immaterial things essential to life.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY.
THE following publications have been of service in the prepa- ration of this volume. The list does not include newspaper files, nor does it include to any considerable extent pamphlets and magazines : -
Agriculture, Biennial Reports of the State Board of. Topeka, Kansas.
Arnold, I. N. Life of A. Lincoln. Chicago, 1885.
Bartlett, D. W. Contested Elections in Congress, 1834-65.
Bowles, Samuel. Across the Continent. Springfield, 1865. Boynton, C. B. A Journey through Kansas. Cincinnati, 1855. Brevier, R. S. History of the 1st and 2d Missouri Brigades from
Wakarusa to Appomattox. St. Louis, 1879.
Brewerton, G. D. A Rough Trip to the Border. New York, 1856.
Briggs, C. W. Reign of Terror in Kansas. Boston, 1856.
Britton, Wiley. Memoirs of the Rebellion on the Border. Chi- cago, 1882.
Brown, G. W. Reminiscences of Old John Brown. Rockford,
Ill., 1880.
Burke, W. S. A Military History of Kansas Regiments. Leaven- worth, 1870.
Canfield, J. H. A History of Kansas [in Berand's School History of the United States]. Philadelphia, 1884.
Clarke, J. F. Anti-Slavery Days. New York, 1884.
Colt, Mrs. M. D. Went to Kansas. Watertown, N. Y., 1862.
Copley, Josiah. Kansas and the Country Beyond. Philadelphia, 1867.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Curtis, G. T. Life and Letters of James Buchanan. New York, 1884.
Debates, Political, between Lincoln and Douglas.
Columbus, 1860.
De Bow's Review. New Orleans.
Democratic Review, The. New York.
Dictionary, U. S. Biographical. Kansas edition, 1879.
Douglas, S. A., Life of. New York, 1860.
Doy, Dr. John, The Thrilling Narrative of. Boston, 1860.
Edwards, J. N. Shelby and his Men. Cincinnati, 1867. Emerson, R. W. Miscellanies. Boston, 1884.
Executive Documents, 33d Congress, 2d Session. Nos. 1, 31, 45, 73. -, 34th Congress, Ist and 2d Sessions. Nos. 4, 23, 28, 33, 53, 66, 106. -, 34th Congress, 3d Session. Nos. 1, 2, 5, 7, 10, 34, 45, 60, 111.
- -, 35th Congress, Ist Session. Nos. 2, 8, 11, 12, 17, 21, 22, 80, 103, 111, 114, 118, 128.
-, 35th Congress, 2d Session. Nos. 37, 46, 66, 96.
Fisk, John. American Political Ideas. New York, 1884.
French, B. F. Historical Collections of Louisiana.
Gihon, J. H. Governor Geary's Administration in Kansas. Phil- adelphia, 1857.
Gladstone, T. H. Kansas; or, Squatter Life and Border Warfare in the Far West. London, 1857.
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