The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1896-07-17
KANSAS" BY INGALLS,.
The EX-SenatOr's Contribution
to the Souvenir
Prepared by Secretary of State
Edwards.
It is Poetry in Prose-The Senator's
Pen Has Lost None of It's Power
and BriIliancy.

and Brilliancy.
[From the Kansas Souvenir by Per
mission of w. c. Edwards.l
Kansas is the nucleus of our political
system, around which it's forces assem-
BILE to which it's energies converge,a and
from which its energies radiate to the
remotest circumference.
Kansas is the focus of freedom, where
the rays of heat and light concen-
trated into fame that melted the mana
cles of the slave and cauterized the
heresies of state sovereignty and dis
union.
Kansas is the core and kernel of the
country. containing the germs of its
growth and the quickening ideas es-
sentiaI to its perpetuity.
The history of Kansas is written in
capitals. It is punctuated with excla-
nation points. It's verbs are impera-
ative. Its adjectives are superlative.
The commonplace and the prosaic are
not defined in its lexicon Its statistics
can be stated only in the language of
hyperbole.
The aspiration of Kansas is to reach
the unattainable; its dream is the reaIi-
cation of the impossible. Alexander
wept because there were no more
worlds to conquer. Kansas having
conquered all competitors, smiles com
placently as she surpasses from year
to year her own triumph in growth and
glory.
Other states could be spared without
irrepara bic bereavement, but Kansas is
indispensable to the joy, the inspira-
ton and the Improvement of the world.
It seems incredible that there was
time when Kansas did not exist; When
it's name was not written on the map Of
the United States; when the Kansas cy-
clone, the Kansas grasshopper, the Kan
sas boom and the Kansas Utopia were
unknown.
was a student in the junior class
at Williams college when President
Pierce, forgotten but for that signature
approved the act establishing the terri
tory of Kansas. May so, 1854 I recall
the inconceivable agitation that pre-
coded, accompanied and followed the
event. It was an epoch. Destiny clos
ed one column of our annals and open
ing another, traced with shadow of fin
ger upon its pages a million epitaphs,
ending with "Appomattox."
Kansas was the prologue to q trag-
edy whose epiOgue has not yet been
pronounced; the prelude to fugue of
battles whose reverberatiOns have not
yet died away.
Floating one night over
waters a high, clear voice singing:
TO the west! To the west! To the land
of the free,
Where the mighty Missouri rolls down
to the sea;
Where a man is a man if he's willing
to toll
And the humblest may gather the
fruits of the soil.
A few days later my studies being
! completed, I joined the uninterrupted
and resistless column of volunteers
that marched to the land of the free.
| St. Louis was a squalid border town
| the outpost of civilization The rail-
road ended at jefferson City. Trans
continental trains with sIeepers and
| dining cars annihilating space and
time We're the vague dream of a fu-
| ture century.
Overtaking at Hermann fragile
| steamer that had left her levee the day
| before, we embarked upon q monOt-
onous voyage of four days along the
! treacherous and tortuous channel that
| crawled between forests of cottonwood
| and barren bars of tawny sand to the
] frontier of the American desert.
| It was the mission Of the pioneer
| with his plow to abolish the frontier
I and to subjugate the desert One has
| become a boundary and the other an
| oasis. BUI with so nucn acquisition,
| something has been lost for which there
/ is no compensation or equivalent He
! is unfortunate who has never felt the
! fascination of the frontier; the temp
/ tation OF unknown and mysterious soli-
! tudes;the exultation of helping to build
/ d state, of forming its institutions and
/ giving direction to its career.
/ Kansas, in it's rudimentary stage, ex-
| tended westward 658 miles to the crest
| of the Rocky mountains, the eastern
! boundary of Utah. BY subsequent am
! putation and curtailment, it was shorn
! to its present narrow limits of 50
million acres-3,0 600 square miles in ex-
cess of the entire area of New England.
! Denver, Manitou, Pueblo, Pixies Peak
/ and Cripple Creek are among its treas
| ures which the state makers of 1883,
| like the base Indian, richer than all his
| tribe, threw unconsciously away.
! Thirty years ago. along the eastern
margin of the grassy quadrangle which
geogra piers called Kansas, the rude
| forefathers Of Atchison, LeaYenworth,