The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1906-06-13

To,
blood of heroes: nor yet forgetting a
proverb the Chinese have that it needs
a hundred men to name a fortress, but
only a woman can make home'-for
they were quick to go back for their
women; their wives and their sweet
hearts; our grandnOthers, who stood by
their side, beautiful and dauntless, to
load their fowIing- pieces, to dress their
wounds, to cheer them on to battle,
singing their simple requiem over the
dead at Boones borough and bringing
water from the spring at Bryan's Sta
tion heartbToken only when the news
came back from the River Raisin.
Il am here to welcome you in the
name of all the people of the renowned
commonwealth. to welcome you as kith
and kim but you viii not expect me,
1 am sure, to add thereto more than
the merest outline of the history Of
Kentucky, as 1t is known to each and
every one of you, from the time when
the pathfinders. under the lead of Har-
rod and Henderson. of Boone and Ken
ton, blaZed their way through the for
est, and the heroes, led by Logan and
Shelby, by Scott and Clark. rescued the
land from the savage, to the hour which
smiles upon US here this day; a history
resplendent with illustrious names and
deeds: separating Itself into three
great epochs and many episodes and
adventures in wood-craft and war craft
and state craft; the period of the Clays
the Breckinridges and the Crittendens.
with its sublime struggle to preserve the
union of the states, as it had come
down to them from the Revolution,
with always the Marshals and the
Wickliffes, the Boyles and the Rowans.
the Johnsons and the Browns the
Adairs. the Deshas and the McDow-
ellis, somewhere at the fore-'Old Ben
Hardin having a niche all to himself
none of them greater than he; the per-
iod of the war Of sections when even
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Breckinridges were divided, when for a
season the skies were hung in sable and
all was dark as night the very sacri-
fees that had gone before seeming to
have been made in vain, the dark and
bloody ground OF barbarie fancy, come
into actual being through the passions
and mistakes of Christian men; and
finally the period after the war of Sec
tons, when the precept once a Ken
tucl1ian, always Kentucki9n. was
met by the answering voice, blood is
thicker than water and the Goodies,
the Billiards. and the Speeds, the Har-
land. the Frys and the Murrays, clasp
ed their hands across the breach and
made short shrift of the work of re-
construction with the Buckners. the
Prestons and the Dukes. This is it that
here, at least, the peIplexed grandchild
cannot distinguish between the griz-
zled grandfather who wore the blue and
the grizzled, grandfather who wore the
grey.
Home of Lincoln and Davis.
Kentucky. which gave Abraham Lin
coin to the north and Jefferson Davis
to the south. contributing very nearly
equal quota of soldiers to each of the
contending armies OF that great con-
hict-in point of fact, as many fighting
men as had ever voted in any election
a larger percentum of the population
than has ever been furnished in time
of war by any modern state-Kentucky
thus rent by civil feud, was first to
know the battle was ended and to
draw together in reunited brotherhood.
Kentucky struck the earliest blow
for freedom, furnished the first mar
tyrs to liberty in Cuba. It was a Crit
tenden, smiling before file of Spanish
musketry, refusing to be blindfolded or
to bend the knee. for the fatal volley,
who uttered the keynote of his race a
Kentuckian always faces his enemy and
kneels only to his Cod It was another
Kentuckian, the gallant Holman, who,
undaunted by the dread decimatiOn the
cruel death-by-lot having drawn a
white bean for himself brushed his
friend aside and drew another in his
stead. All, yes: we have our humOrs
along with our heroics. and laugh anon
at ourselves. and our mishaps and our
jokes. bur we are nowise blOOdy-mind
ed people; rather a sentimental. hos
pitable, kindly people. caring perhaps,
too much for the picturesque and too
little for consequences Though our
tests be sometimes rough, they are ro-
bust and clean. We are a provincial
people. and we rejoice in our provincial
ism We have always piqued ourselves
upon doing our love making and our
| lawrna king as we do our blowing, in a
straight furroW: and yet It is true that
Kentucky never encountered darker
days than came upon US when the worst
that can befall commonwealth seemed
passed and gone Tht stubborn war be-
tween the Old Court party and the New
Court party was bitter enough; but it
was not so implacable as the strife
which strangely began with the discus
sion of an honest difference of opinion
to-.ching a lurely economic question, of
national. not state, policy. Can there
be one living Kentuckian who does not
look back with horror and amazement
upon the passions and incidents of
those evil laws2
All Perfect Gentlemen.
General Grant once said to me: You
Kentuclxians are a c1annish set. Whilst
7 was in the White House if a Ken
| tlIclxian happened to get in harms way
or wanted an office. the Kentucky con-
tingent began to pour in; IN case he
was a Republican the Democrats said,
he was a perfect gentleman. in case
! Democrat the Republicans said the
same thing: can it be that you are ali
perfecf gentlemen With unblushing
candor. I told him that we were, that
we fought our battles as we washed
our linen. It home but that outside
when trouble came il was Kentucky
/ against the Universe Mr.. Tilden said
of a lad in the Bluegrass country, who
i had fallen from a second story window
/ upon a stone paving without hurt and
and run away to his play, that It fur
fhea q