Part 21

This is a great State. It is the heart of the American Continent. Its history is a romance of the most thrilling interest; its development has been without parallel in the record of American Commonwealths. It has absorbed, in its population, the best blood and brain of all the civilized nations of the earth. During a campaign of thirty years, waged by the peaceful forces of civilization on the prairies of Kansas, seventy-nine thousand square miles of territory have been planted in crops. Six hundred cities and towns dot the map of the State; nearly six thousand miles of rail are kept bright by the constant friction of a mighty commerce; property worth fully six hundred million dollars has been accumulated; seven thousand school houses welcome throngs of eager children; crops valued at over one hundred million dollars are annually harvested; and fully a million and a half of intelligent, enterprising and prosperous people have homes within the borders of this State. The black banners of industry float from thousands of mills and factories. Fields and meadows are rich with herds and flocks. The face of the land has been transformed with forests, orchards and hedge-rows. Everywhere is growth, improvement, increase; everywhere are the evidences of culture, thrift, and enterprise; everywhere the promise of a larger, broader life, and a firmer, deeper faith in the greatness and glory of Kansas. Here is the Central State, the Sunflower State, the Soldier State, and within its borders prosperity and order, intelligence and sobriety, industry and enterprise, go hand in hand.

And we are yet at the threshold and in the morning of it all. Kansas is still in the bloom of her youth; she has only fairly commenced her great career. Loving Freedom and loyal to the core; believing in education and respecting law; striving to keep her young manhood sober, clean and healthy; never a feeble imitator, yet always willing to learn; not afraid to experiment, and always ready to lead; full of energy, courage and enthusiasm—this is the Kansas of our love and our faith, this the fair mistress of our hearts, to whom, adopting the language of Ruth to Naomi, we say: “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.”

ADDRESS.

Delivered at the opening of the Floral Festival, Library Hall, Topeka, November 9th, 1886.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: In responding to the request of the Misses Bristol, to formally open this beautiful festival, I am fully aware of the fact that I have assumed a difficult _role_. My botanical education was sadly neglected, and I had better confess, at once, that I know very little about flowers. I delight in their beauty. I have always believed that, where plants are blooming in gardens or windows, it is an indication of a sweet and beautiful home life—of taste, of refinement, of hopefulness and aspiration. I have visited several of the most noted gardens in this country, and found rare pleasure in their treasures of bud and blossom, of leaf and foliage. And yet, if I were asked, I could tell the names of very few of the plants in any garden.

I am, however, glad to do whatsoever I can to promote the success of this novel and beautiful festival of flowers, and especially to aid and encourage the ladies who have arranged it. They have not only furnished the people of the Capital City with a lovely exhibition, but have answered, practically, a question often asked: “What is there for woman’s hands to do?” Here is one occupation, at least, in which two women have achieved a signal success; have supplied something a community wants, and have done it well; have found something to do which enlists at once their taste, their intelligence and their energies, and in doing it have benefitted the city in which they live as well as themselves.

I very gladly, therefore, comply with their request, that I should formally open this festival. It is a beautiful display of flowers—creditable alike to the ladies whose skill and taste and enterprise devised and arranged it, and to the city in which it is held. And now, speaking for them, I bid you one and all welcome, and declare the flower show formally opened.

DEDICATION OF SNOW HALL.

Address at the dedication of “Snow Hall,” State University, Lawrence, November 16th, 1886.

MR. CHAIRMAN: In the stirring poem read by our Kansas poet, Eugene F. Ware, at the Quarter-Centennial, it is said:

“States are not great Except as men may make them. Men are not great except they do and dare. But States, like men, Have destinies that take them— That bear them on, not knowing why or where.”

The wonderful growth and marvelous prosperity of Kansas, unprecedented in the history of American States, is not alone due to soil, climate, resources, and topography. Other States have soils as productive, climates as healthful, resources more varied, and landscapes as lovely, as ours. The unexampled development and prosperity of Kansas is the logical result of her splendid citizenship, and of the intellectual and moral forces this citizenship has set at work in every township of the State. Our pioneer settlers laid the foundations of a school house and a church by the side of their first rude homes, and from that day to this the idea thus planted has grown and spread and flourished with the development of the commonwealth. The people of Kansas may have been parsimonious in some things, but they have never stinted their expenditures to provide, for all the children of the State, the most ample educational facilities.

A few days ago the oldest and most richly endowed college in this country celebrated the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its foundation. For more than two centuries Harvard has been the pride of the great State within whose borders it is located, and yet it has never received, from Massachusetts, as much money as the young State of Kansas has appropriated, during the past twenty-five years, to establish and support this University.

The older generations of Kansans, however, hold a divided allegiance. They love and are proud of the State of their adoption, but memories of the fields and hills and streams of their birthplace are still singing in their hearts. The young men and women who come up to Mount Oread to be equipped for the battle of life, will be, as a rule, natives of the State, and attached to it by the undivided ties of childhood’s memories and the pride and faith of maturer years. Generation after generation of these sons and daughters of Kansas will be inspired, within these walls, with higher aims, nobler motives, and larger and broader views of human life and endeavor.

We meet, to-day, to formally celebrate another step in the growth and progress of the State University—to dedicate this beautiful building, the home, for all future time, of the Department of Natural History. Very properly the building is to bear the name of the learned, devoted and enthusiastic teacher to whose energy, industry and zeal the State is indebted for the treasures that are gathered within its walls. I discharge a very pleasant duty, gentlemen of the Board of Regents, when, in the name of the State, I commit to your keeping this stately edifice. See that the purpose of the Legislature, in ordering it, is fully carried out. Study the needs of this great educational institution, and make them known. Strive to keep it, in all its departments, fully abreast with the growth and progress of the State. In this endeavor you can, I am confident, rely on the cordial and generous coöperation of the intelligent people of Kansas, and the hearty support of their chosen representatives in the Legislature.

ADDRESS.

Address of welcome to the State Teachers’ Association, delivered in Representative Hall, Topeka, December 28th, 1886.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Readers of Kansas newspapers and students of Kansas affairs cannot have failed to notice the fact that, during the hot and dusty months of July and August, many vocations in this State are practically abandoned. Courts adjourn, and judges and lawyers flit away to the mountains, the woods, or the lakes; churches are closed, and ministers seek the peace and quiet of rural sights and scenes; physicians discover that their patients can get along without them for a while, and take a vacation; and men engaged in every department of commerce or industry abandon, if it is possible for them to do so, the cares, perplexities and toils of their employments, for a brief summer sojourn amid fresh fields and pastures new.

But during this season of sweltering heat and stifling dust, as the same readers or observers must also have noticed, there is one class of men and women who, having then a legal holiday, do not utilize it to “loaf and possess their souls.” In every county of Kansas these men and women assemble, not to rest, but to work; not for pleasure, but to study; not to get away from the worries, the troubles and the tasks of their profession, but to fit themselves more thoroughly for its duties and responsibilities.

I hear it said, now and then, Mr. President, that the profession of the educator is not progressing as are many other vocations, or that the schoolmasters and mistresses of twenty-five or fifty years ago were more proficient or competent than are those of to-day. Against such thoughtless or reckless assertions, I put the convincing fact of these midsummer schools, in which the teachers of Kansas assemble to study, to compare notes, and to be instructed in the best methods of instructing others. Men and women capable of such devotion to their work as these meetings illustrate, need no excuse or defense.

And these are the men and women I am now to welcome to the capital. I discharge the duty assigned me, Mr. President, with sincere pleasure. Very few, if any, of the meetings held in this room are composed of people who occupy so important a place in the every-day work and growth of the State as do those now assembled here, and none, I am sure, represent a more useful or honorable calling. Teachers of Kansas, I believe you understand these facts. I believe you appreciate, in full measure, the dignity and importance of your vocation, and that you are striving, earnestly and laboriously, to fit yourselves for its great duties and vast responsibilities. I trust your sessions will be alike pleasant and profitable, and that you may one and all return to your work refreshed and benefitted by this fraternal intercourse with one another. In this faith and in this hope, I greet you, and most cordially welcome you to the capital of the State.

THE GOVERNORS OF KANSAS.

Second Inaugural Address, delivered in Representative Hall, Jan. 9th, 1887.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I heard a gentleman say recently: “I have known all the Governors of Kansas.” I asked: “How many Governors has Kansas had?” He thought a moment, and replied: “Nine.” I presume a very large majority, even of those best informed in the political history of the State, would make the same wrong reply. For Kansas has had sixteen real and four acting Governors, and since its admission into the Union the State has had ten. I am glad the committee having charge of the ceremonies to-day did not forget this fact, and so did not omit to invite the Hon. Nehemiah Green, who was Governor of Kansas from November 4, 1868, to January 11, 1869.

It is not inappropriate, I think, on an occasion of this character, to briefly recall some facts connected with the incumbents of the Executive office of Kansas. I have known all of our Governors, Territorial and State, except two, Reeder and Geary; and all of the acting Governors except one, Woodson. The Territorial period extended from June, 1854, to January, 1861, and during these six years and a half, seven Governors, and five Secretaries who at times acted as Governor, were appointed by the President. Kansas had a small population then; but then, as now, the voice of Kansas was heard in the land, and it was no puling infant’s cry! So the President sent out, to govern this lusty young giant of the American desert, strong men, distinguished men, men who had had a large and valuable training in civil affairs, and they were, one and all, glad to come and to link their names and fames with that of Kansas.

The Territorial Governors appointed were, in succession: Andrew H. Reeder, John L. Dawson, Wilson Shannon, John W. Geary, Robert J. Walker, James W. Denver, and Samuel Medary; and the Secretaries were Daniel Woodson, Frederick P. Stanton, James W. Denver, Hugh S. Walsh, and George M. Beebe. All came to Kansas and served in the positions to which they were appointed, except one, Mr. Dawson, who declined. Of these seven Governors, all were lawyers except two—Geary, who was a merchant, and Medary, who was a printer by trade. Five were born in Pennsylvania; one, Shannon, in Ohio, and one, Denver, in Virginia.

As I have stated, these Territorial Governors were generally distinguished men.

Governor Reeder, previous to his appointment as Governor, had never held an office, but he had been for many years one of the most eminent lawyers of Pennsylvania.

Wilson Shannon had been twice elected Governor of Ohio, and had also served as Minister to Mexico, before coming to Kansas.

Robert J. Walker had been a United States Senator from Mississippi, and Secretary of the Treasury during President Polk’s administration.

James W. Denver had represented California in Congress, and served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Samuel Medary was an editor of national reputation, and had been Governor of Minnesota.

All except Geary were over forty years of age when appointed, and he, the youngest of them all, had been a soldier in the Mexican war. After leaving Kansas he rose to the rank of Major General in the Union army, and was later elected Governor of Pennsylvania.

Thus three of our Territorial Governors have been the Chief Executives of three other States.

All of the Territorial Governors appointed except one, Denver, are dead; but the Secretaries of the Territory, all of whom acted as Governor during their terms of office, are all living except one, Hugh S. Walsh.

Kansas has also elected three Governors who never served, viz.: Charles Robinson, elected under the Topeka Constitution; George W. Smith, chosen under the Lecompton Constitution; and Henry J. Adams, elected under the Leavenworth Constitution. My honored predecessor, Charles Robinson, thus enjoys the distinction of having been elected under two Constitutions. He is the first Governor of Kansas in a double sense—he was chosen to that office under the first and last Constitution framed for the State.

Of the Governors of the State, four were under 35 when elected; all except two are now past 50; and the oldest was first chosen. All have been residents of Kansas for more than twenty years; two, the first and the present Governor, for over twenty-nine years; and all except one, Governor Harvey, are still citizens of the State. Eight of the ten served in the Legislature previous to their election to the Executive office, and the other two, Governors Robinson and Anthony, have since served as members of the law-making branch of the State government. One, Governor Robinson, is a native of Massachusetts; three, Carney, Green, and Glick, are natives of Ohio; two, Osborn and Martin, of Pennsylvania; one, Harvey, of Virginia; one, Anthony, of New York; and two, Crawford and St. John, of Indiana. Governor Robinson was a physician; three, Crawford, St. John, and Glick, were lawyers; one, Carney, a merchant; two, Osborn and Martin, were printers; Green was a clergyman, Harvey a surveyor, and Anthony a tinsmith. All except four, Robinson, Carney, Osborn, and Glick, served in the Union army during the war. Only one of our Governors, Green, graduated at a college or university. One, Governor Harvey, was elected to the United States Senate after the expiration of his term as Governor, and Governor Osborn represented the country as United States Minister to Chili and Brazil.

Twenty-six years have come and gone since the first Governor of the State took the oath of office, and he and all of his successors are with us yet. Here are the Executives who organized the splendid regiments young Kansas sent out to battle for the honor of the flag. Here are those who saw the dawn and morning of that marvelous development which began with the close of the civil war, and has since spread over four hundred miles of fair and fertile country. Here are those who were called upon to protect our frontiers against repeated invasions by merciless savages. Here are those who witnessed the still more dreadful desolation wrought by insects whose baleful flight darkened the light of the sun at midday. Here are those who have occupied the Executive chair during the later years of peaceful prosperity and unexampled growth.

We greet them, one and all, cordially and gratefully. We salute them as citizens whom the people of Kansas have deemed worthy of their highest trusts. We honor them as men who have guided the State through difficulties and dangers, onward and upward to the shining stars. We testify, willingly and thankfully, our appreciation of the courage and fidelity with which they discharged their always laborious and often difficult and perplexing duties. We receive and welcome them as honored guests of this occasion. And, speaking in the name of the people of Kansas, and expressing, as I am sure I do, the sentiment which fills all hearts, I fervently pray that their days may be long and peaceful, and that prosperity may abide with and bless them to the end.

MEMORIES OF THE MARCH.

Response, made February 3d, 1887, at the meeting of the “Military Order of the Loyal Legion,” in Topeka, to the toast, “Reminiscences:”

“Words that bring back the feelings of our youth, The words of men that walked in war’s red ways, The simple words that, giving blame or praise, Ring down the echoing avenues of life.”

I do not expect, Mr. Chairman, that any words of mine can “bring back the feelings of our youth.” Time takes something from us, as the years come and go, that it never gives back, and the lights and shadows of twenty-five eventful years have fallen upon us since we first “walked in war’s red ways.” But I may, perhaps, interest you for a brief time by a description of one of those walks—the march of a day, which had its counterpart in the marches of all armies, on many, many days.

A column is moving along a dusty road, with a long, free, swinging stride, that seems as easy as it is masterful. It started out, before it was light, in compact order, each man in his place, each company, regiment, brigade and division following in its appointed order. It is the middle of the forenoon now, and the solid formation is somewhat disordered. The men have fallen into irregular groups; some hunt the smoothest places in the road, and the paths thus formed, single or double, are not always straight. Some are following the cow-paths along the roadside; others keep the center of the highway. At intervals are little groups of horsemen—the commanding officer, the adjutant, and an orderly, at the head of the regiment; the next in command, with the surgeons, in the rear. Midway between these mounted officers, always in line, and always surrounded by a little group of non-commissioned officers, are two soldiers carrying, not guns, but what seem to be long poles encased in black oilcloth. They are the flags of the regiment—the battle-flag and the regimental banner.

Sometimes, for hours, only the steady tramp of feet is heard. The men are as silent as if they were dumb. Then something sets all their tongues awag, and the woods and fields echo with their shouts and laughter. They comment on everything—on the houses, the fields, the trees, the road; they jibe at and joke with one another; they are a moving mass of blue interrogation points, questioning everyone they see about distances, country, and people; and their laughter is as care-free and contagious as that of happy children.

Then a clear bugle-note comes floating down the line, and the column dissolves on the road-sides. In an instant, almost, the men assume all varieties of postures—some sitting, some lying down—for the bugle-call meant a rest of five or ten minutes. The stragglers come up, one by one, and drop in with their commands. Then the bugle sounds again, and all start to their feet. They fall into line with the precision of a machine, and move on, to again, in a few moments, fall into their old, irregular, go-as-you-please step and route.

The hours come and go, and the miles slip by, five, six, ten, perhaps, and then the bugle sounds another call—a welcome one, for it is greeted with a shout. But this time the moving column does not dissolve so quickly. It closes up in compact order, and the guns are stacked in groups of four; on these are hanged cartridge boxes, blankets, and other incumbrances. A few moments later, little volumes of smoke—hundreds or thousands of them, as far as the eye can reach along the road—roll up, and the atmosphere is filled with the perfume of burning pine, the aroma of coffee, and perhaps the savory smell of bacon.

With what crude and meager utensils—at most, a tin pot or cup, and a small skillet—it is all done; and yet how quickly and deftly. But no dinners these men have ever since eaten were more enjoyed than those their own hands prepared as they halted by the roadside a quarter of a century ago.

The dinner cooked and eaten, the march begins again, with the same routine of shouting and laughter, or silence and meditation. It is business, all of it—simply moving along, hour after hour, and mile after mile, until the sun drops low in the west, or perhaps for hours after the night has gathered and darkness has fallen upon the earth. Fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and occasionally thirty miles—these were the distances frequently covered by these long blue columns, each man carrying his house on his back, like a snail, and in addition, his gun, forty rounds of ammunition, three days’ rations, his cooking utensils, and his bed.

Sometimes these marches were made in pleasant weather, when the air was full of the perfume of flowers and melodious with the songs of birds. Sometimes they were made when the skies were leaden, and the clouds hung low; when rain poured down, hour after hour, and the roads became quagmires, and the men were soaked and chilled to the bone. Sometimes they were made in midwinter, when the ground was frozen, and the north wind cut like a knife, and at every step the road was stained with the blood of bruised and broken feet. Sometimes the route lay along pleasant lanes, or dim old country roads, or through quiet and shadowy woods, rich with odors of fir and pine; sometimes it followed, for days, the hard, white pikes, over which the dust hung like a cloud, thick, heavy, stifling. But no matter what the weather or the roads might be—whether the rain poured down in torrents, or the sun beat upon the column like a fiery furnace, or the cold of winter chilled and froze—the regiments formed and marched whenever orders came.