Part 20

I have not, my fellow-citizens, attempted to discuss those questions which divide the people in the larger domain of national politics. It has seemed to me that, on an occasion of this character, I should confine my remarks to a discussion of State affairs. But I am not indifferent, I could not be indifferent, to those issues of principle or of policies on which the Republican party bases its action and its faith. I am before you as a candidate of the Republican party. I have been a Republican from boyhood—an earnest, enthusiastic, loyal Republican; a Republican from conviction; a Republican who believes that the Republican party embraces in its ranks the best brain, and heart, and conscience of the American people. On every great question presented during the past thirty years, the Republican party has taken the side of justice, liberty, and eternal right. Never ashamed or afraid to espouse the cause of the poor, the ignorant, or the alien, and make their wrongs its own, it has never, on the other hand, pandered to vice or crime or cupidity for support. When it took control of the General Government, this country was a weak collection of discordant States on the verge of civil war and disunion. It crushed armed rebellion, brought the old flag back to the places from which it had been driven, and made the American Republic the greatest of civilized nations. It struck the shackles from 4,000,000 slaves, lifted them up, and enfranchised them. It opened the public lands to the people under the beneficent provisions of the homestead act. It spanned the continent with railways. It gave to the people a sound financial system and a stable currency. It revived and fostered American manufactures. It encouraged public education. It enriched our history with a long list of imperishable names that will be an inspiration and an example to our youth for generations to come—the names of Lincoln, and Grant, and Seward, and Thomas, and Garfield, and a host of others. And finally, when fraud and terrorism in the South and vilification and falsehood in the North had accomplished their ends, and this great party surrendered the trusts it had so long controlled, did its opponents and traducers, after the most patient and careful investigation, discover any facts or evidence to justify the ignorant and brutal accusations they had made against Republican honesty and competency? Not a single fact. Not a shadow of evidence. They “counted the money,” and it was all there—every penny of it. They investigated the books, they scanned every account, they scrutinized every item and figure, and they found nothing to criticise. And at last, one of the most prejudiced Democrats in the country was compelled to declare, and did declare, that he had been amazed at the perfect system, accuracy and integrity with which the business of his department had been conducted by the Republicans.

THE “RASCALS” WHO WERE TURNED OUT.

But they “turned the rascals out.” Oh, yes—that business has been attended to with promptness and regularity. An unending procession of “rascals” has been moving out for a year and a half. “Rascals” who had invaded the sacred soil of Virginia and Kentucky; who had stolen negroes and made them free; who had been with Grant at Vicksburg and in the Wilderness, and with Thomas at Mission Ridge, and with Sherman on the march to Atlanta and the sea, and with Meade at Gettysburg. Some of these “rascals” had grown old and gray; some limped out painfully, because of old wounds; some wore a vacant sleeve; some had voted against that great Democratic patriot, Vallandigham; and some had, years before, been guilty of singing a song about hanging a great Democratic statesman on a sour-apple tree. Men guilty of such “rascalities” as these of course deserved to be “turned out,” and they were promptly bounced.

DEMOCRATIC PATRIOTS AND MARTYRS WHO CAME IN.

In their stead, a long line of Democratic martyrs and patriots marched in—men who had “fought four years for their Democracy” under Lee, or Bragg, or Joe Johnston; men who had expatriated themselves to the wilds of Canada to avoid Lincoln’s “bastiles;” men who had wandered through the timbers of the Wabash or the Miami bottoms hunting their lodge of “Knights of the Golden Circle” or “Sons of Liberty;” men who had rejoiced over every disaster to the Union arms, and mourned over every Union victory; men who had denounced that gentle and loving Greatheart, Abraham Lincoln, as a “tyrant,” a “baboon,” and an “ape;” men who had assailed our great commander, Ulysses S. Grant, as a “bloody butcher” and a “drunken tanner”—these, in large measure, were the “honest patriots” who marched in, while the drums beat and the fifes whistled the old familiar tune, “Turn the rascals out;” and the Democratic party of Kansas, assembled in State convention, formally indorsed and approved this programme by adopting a resolution that “the soldiers and sailors of the late war”—not Union soldiers, not loyal soldiers, mind you, but “soldiers of the late war,” Confederate as well as Union—“are entitled to the first consideration in appointments.”

CONCLUSION.

My fellow-citizens, the issues of this campaign are of vital importance to the prosperity and happiness of this State and this Nation. Republicans of Kansas, remember that in less than two years from this time we will be in the midst of a Presidential campaign. Do your duty now, and the result then will be assured. Support with voice and pen and vote, the candidates of your party—the men who represent convictions, principles, and policies approved by your judgment, and dear to your hearts. There has never been a time, from 1860 down to the present moment, when the Republican party more fully deserved the support of all loyal and just-minded men than it does now. 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. Vote for the party that is always and everywhere the party of good government, of social order, of liberty and law. Do this, do it earnestly and faithfully, and the benediction of an approving conscience will fall upon and abide with you forever.

SPEECH.

Before the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, Topeka, May 28th, 1885.

MR. MODERATOR, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE ASSEMBLY: When the Rev. Mr. McKirahan kindly invited me to meet the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church, I accepted his invitation with mingled reluctance and pleasure. On the one hand, I shrank from appearing before so august an assemblage; on the other, I was glad to greet and to welcome to the capital city a congregation of men representing a religious body so numerous and so influential.

I should, however, have stipulated, in accepting the invitation, that I might be permitted to remain a silent spectator of your proceedings. In the presence of so many trained and gifted speakers, one who makes no claim to the graces of oratory ought to be permitted to remain silent. I could neither instruct nor entertain you, and certainly I have no desire to interrupt, even for a moment, the important business you are here to transact.

The Christian minister occupies a most important position, and the duties devolving on him are at once delicate and responsible. In one sense, this is an age of unbelief; and yet never in any other age was the appeal for light, for faith, for instruction, so widespread and so strong. Weak men cannot make answer to this demand, and the churches of all denominations ought to fill their pulpits with the most vigorous and aggressive intellects in their ranks.

Daniel Webster once said: “I thank God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit that is able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down.”

In this spirit, at least, I can greet and welcome you, and bid you Godspeed in your mission and your work.

I beg you, therefore, to accept my hearty congratulations on the prosperity of the denomination you represent, and my cordial well-wishes for your individual welfare and happiness. I sincerely trust that your sessions may be pleasant and profitable, and that you may each and all return to your homes refreshed and strengthened by this fraternal meeting.

ADDRESS.

Delivered at Clay Center, at a meeting to celebrate the completion of the water works, June 6th, 1885.

MR. MAYOR, AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I have no doubt that the founders of Clay Center confidently predicted a rapid and substantial growth for the town they had established. The Kansas men who located towns were, as a rule, sanguine and 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.

For nearly thirty years I have been noting these town-building experiments, and at times it has seemed a reckless waste of energy and of enthusiasm. But the wildest anticipations of the town-builders have, in most instances, been more than realized. The map of Kansas is dotted all over with prosperous, steadily-growing towns and cities, where beautiful homes abound, where pleasant school rooms welcome throngs of eager children, where church bells chime, where the roar and clatter of mills and factories blend with the clangor of hurrying trains, where the streets are noisy with commerce, and where business and industrial thrift, and the charms of congenial and intelligent society, unite to make life opulent and happy.

And we are yet at the threshold and in the morning of it all. The Kansas of to-day only foreshadows the Kansas that is to be. Within our favored borders, soil and climate combine to give to an enterprising and intelligent people the best reward for toil and skill, for energy and thrift. No disaster, no calamity, can permanently check the development of a country so rich in natural resources. So the growth of Kansas, through the terrors of civil war, through drouths and grasshopper invasions, through evil and good report, has been constant and often phenomenal. The growth and prosperity of Clay county and of Clay Center afford a splendid illustration of the possibilities of Kansas. I can remember when the general judgment, even of our own people, condemned all the territory west of the Blue river as unfit for agriculture. Yet to-day, among the eighty-four organized counties of the State, Clay ranks as the fifteenth corn-producing and the sixteenth wheat-producing county; and here, the natural result of this agricultural development and wealth, is this beautiful and prosperous city of five thousand contented and intelligent people.

You have assembled to-day to celebrate the completion of one of the most important enterprises that has ever enlisted your energies and your enthusiasm. Byron said that “till taught by pain, men really know not what good water’s worth.” Perhaps the drouths of 1860 and 1874 have taught our people the worth of water, for it is certain that every thrifty Kansas town is ambitious to have a generous and unfailing supply. Indeed it may be said that the construction of water works in a Kansas town marks the dividing-line between hope and certainty. Every prosperous and growing Kansas community looks forward with ardent hope to the coming of the day when it can afford such a luxury, and when that day does come it may be accepted as indisputable evidence that the town is no longer an experiment; that its future is no longer doubtful; that it has attained such wealth, population, business and strength as will enable it, in the future, to defend its interests and its rights against all rivals or enemies.

I congratulate you, citizens of Clay Center. All that makes life enjoyable you have here. A lovely and fertile country surrounds you. Your streets are thronged with business, and your numerous commercial houses indicate a growing and prosperous trade. Your industrial establishments are increasing, in importance as well as in number. Railways give you speedy and direct connection with the markets of the country. Pleasant and inviting homes welcome you to their comfort and repose after the toils of the day are ended, and churches and schools abound. And now you have secured what thousands of older and more populous towns have not, a permanent and abundant water supply.

You have a right, therefore, to rejoice. You have just reason for the pride you feel in your fair city, for within its gates business thrift and industrial activity, municipal growth and individual enterprise, the joy of beautiful homes and the charms of an intelligent society, combine to benefit and to delight. As a citizen of Kansas I share in your pride; I rejoice with and I congratulate you. For I know that what you have already accomplished is but an augury of what is to be; is but the prophecy of a larger growth and greater influence in the years to come.

SPEECH.

At a banquet given the Mexican Editorial Excursion, Topeka, June 24th, 1885.

GENTLEMEN: Until within the past five or six years, Mexico was, even to a well-educated citizen of this country, an unknown and mysterious land. Its government, its people, its cities, its resources and products, were regarded very much as are those of India—as matters of historical or critical interest, perhaps, but of no direct or material concern to the people of the United States. American journalists are generally as well informed as any other class of our citizens, and yet I doubt whether, among them all, there were a dozen who could name half a dozen Mexican newspapers. Yet here with us to-day, are a large number of Mexican journalists—men of education, intelligence and character, who have come to study, in the school of travel, the lessons taught by personal observations and individual exploration.

The railroad, the modern diplomat, as well as guide and pioneer, has made the distant and unknown, near and familiar; has introduced neighbors who were strangers; has broadened the horizon of national view; has brought the United States and Mexico into more intimate and friendly relations with each other; and has conveyed you here, to be our guests and our friends.

It gives me pleasure to meet and to greet you. I welcome you to Kansas. I hope your brief visit to our State will be to you an enjoyable one, and that you will carry with you, on your return to your homes, only pleasant memories of your journey. I greet you as journalists of a sister Republic; I welcome you as neighbors and as friends. And in thus saluting you, I am sure that I only give voice to the general sentiment of the citizens of our Capital city, and those of the State of Kansas.

AN ANNIVERSARY.

ATCHISON, KANSAS, November 2, 1885.

REV. LINUS BLAKESLEY—_My Dear Sir_: When you so kindly invited me to be present at the anniversary exercises of the Congregational Church, I did not remember that Monday evening was the eve of annual election. I must, therefore, either forego a pleasure I had promised myself, or fail in discharging that highest duty of American citizenship, attendance at the polls on election day. I think you will agree that I ought to do what I have decided to do—remain at home until after election.

“The Thirtieth Anniversary of the First Congregational Church of Topeka!” That antedates the State nearly six years. Topeka was then little more than a name on the map, if, indeed, it had yet attained that distinction. And Kansas, a strange, unknown country, representing an idea more than the metes and bounds of a future great State, was just beginning to be discussed, written about and wondered at, as it has been during all the years that have since come and gone. Mr. Whittier was a prophet when, a year before your church was established, he sang:

“We go to plant her common schools On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbath of the wild The music of her bells.

“Upbearing, like the ark of old, The Bible in our van, 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.

Disregarding all these assertions, you people of the West came here. The loneliness and immensity of the plains had no terrors for you. You invaded their solitudes. You pushed the frontier steadily westward. You plowed and planted, digged and sowed. You were determined to conquer the land, by irrigation if necessary; by faith, and work, and courage, in any event. The invisible sentinels of danger and privation waited and watched every step of your advance, and the vastness and loneliness of the far-reaching prairies, always more melancholy than the ever-changing and always-murmuring woods, only intensified their terrors. But you came to stay, and you conquered. You saw the wilderness vanish; you conquered your own doubts and fears, and inspired others with your hopefulness and courage; until at last every doubting Thomas was silenced, and the whole world realized the fact that here, on the western borders of Kansas, was as rich, as beautiful, and as productive a land as the sun, journeying from continent to continent, looks down upon and warms with his genial rays.

After the battle of Mission Ridge, Gen. Gordon Granger rode along the lines of his victorious soldiers, whose courage and enthusiasm had carried them, without orders, up the blazing heights, and said, substantially: “Here you are, but how did you get here? You were ordered to take the line of works at the foot of the Ridge, and you have taken those on its summit! You ought to have known you couldn’t take this position! You are here in defiance of all military rules, of tactics, and of orders, and I am going to have every one of you court-martialed!”

In very much the same spirit I say to you, people of Finney county and of the Southwest: “Here you are, in defiance of all predictions and hope! The prophets all said the western third of Kansas would never produce crops. Public sentiment agreed that this was a grazing country, unfit for general farming. Yet here you are, holding an agricultural fair, and exhibiting corn and wheat, oats and rye, potatoes and pumpkins, and everything else the farmers of any other section plant and harvest or gather. You have contemned the prophets! You have blotted the ‘Great American Desert’ from the map of the Continent! You have established gardens in the wilderness! You have confounded the scientists! And you should all be court-martialed!”

Your triumph over the adverse forces of nature is as marvelous and complete as was that won at Mission Ridge, and, as a Kansan, I rejoice over and am proud of it. There is something splendid in the march of civilization into and over an unpeopled land—something grander, even, than the advance of a victorious army. It is better to build up than to destroy—better to redeem a desert than to make one. The impulse which sent millions of men into the field to defend the honor of our flag, will be celebrated, in song and story, as long as the world shall endure. The march of the armies of industry and peace across the plains, peopling their solitudes, conquering the wilderness, and forcing from a reluctant soil its fatness, is an achievement equally romantic and inspiring. And you, people of Western Kansas, are the heroes of this conquest—the leaders in this great victory of peace, no less renowned than those of war. I congratulate you on your unparalleled triumph; I come here to mingle my rejoicings with yours; to thank you sincerely and heartily for what you have done; and to express my confident belief that your success will be as permanent as it has been brilliant.