The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-08-30
JOHN BROWN DAY.


Hedpeu III lnelr- 'front.'; they met num-
ger, thirst and wounds; some were to |
die, and all were to go through the /
furnace fires of affection. The presi- |
dent of the United States was their
malignant enemy. the congress was
their foe. the army of the United |
States was marshaled against them,
and the supreme court of the United |
States, as If in swift response to the |
exacting and imperative demands of
the South, attempted to halt and turn |
them back by its decision in the bred |
Scott case, which declared slavery ma |
tional, protected by the constitution in
the territories and beyond the power |
of the people. by unfriendly legisla-
today we would be justified in saying
that the supreme court more jealousy |
guarded property right in that de-
cision than it did human one. From |
this decision there was no appeal; that |
was the ultimate tribunal There could
be no relief except by revolution in |
some one of its effective forms. Not |
withstanding these obstacles, which
seemed nigh insurmo1ntable, the free
state men poured over the border and
from Massachusetts to Kansas. an un-
broken chain of roadside camp fires
blazed their ways. ~-
From Neighboring States.
While Emigrant Aid Societies and
New England newspapers, were her
aided as the means of making Kansas
a free state. I make this statement,
unobtrusively, SO that there shall be
no debasement of our Puritan origin,
that three-fourths of all the new COM
ers from the North were from the
neighboring free states. They came,
endured, suffered, bled and died.
The land gave no token or hope of
promise, the skies were brass. and far
as the eye could see. the naked plain
upheaved its dreariness to the Rock
les; part of an elemental waste, SOL
itude and desolation yelling its i'm
mense potentialities, only the scars of
its cataclysms upon it's breast, and
other than the dropped boulder from
the glacier drift, a tongueless past,
without history; no milk in its dried
mammaries; drought or torrent, hot
winds fresh from the ovens of inferno
or all nature frigid in the throes of a
borean blizzard; the flower without
scent and the birds without song; the
skulking coyote staIked the denuded
soil living famine. the buffalo grid
ironed it with trails to its water. holes
and the prairie dog, its only home
steader, bewailed the day it took steer
age passage and set sail for such an
uhhospitable, sterile region. Surely,
man must be enamoured with death
less passion to fight for the possession
of such a sweetheart. These frontier
settlers had a high love for freedom
and offered their lives, the full meas
ure of all devotion and duty, to its
cause; they were of exalted purpose,
the SuDllIQeSI u large HUE
pendence and had a courage that had
no definition for disaster; they had the
determination to fly their flag as long
as a foeman confronted it, and then
place their lookouts on the heights of
the turreted wall watching the distant
horizon for any peril that might lift
| it's 1ances to the sky line. They be-
| lfeved there should be no temporiz-
| ing with a wrong, that there could
be no diplomacy where a right was at
CT OBJ a nd hof mo
dealt with as Napoleon artilleried
mob.
The blood of these men hued the
grass and incarnadined the streams. a
veritable chrism of liberty. The spirit
of these men. what they did. or dared
or suffered, has erept into the blood
i of our people and is transmissfble
| strain of heredity making the veins of
Kansas flow red today 1t is not the
| spirit Of a crusader seeking the yes
sells of the holy grail, nor that of the
! fanatic, who in a spasm of religious
| frenzy attempts the repossesson of the
| untenanted tomb from alien or vandal
/ but is a spirit for the fray, wherever
humanity may be assailed. liberty inn
peri1ed or despair ashrieks its cry of
| distress. There is a spirit in Kansas
met with nowhere else under the sun.
! Tt is born in our children, we catch the
4 disease from each other. and the imi-
grant. from whatever land he may
come, unless it be Rhode Island or
| New Jersey. takes it on first intention
by self inf1ietion.
| Kansans a Sturdy Race.
/ Kansas has evolved from these
| sources a thoroughbred race of men,
quick with desire, backboned with a
conscience and a heart that rhythms
it's beat to every high emotion; it
is race from which to date A new
ancestral line; each man an Anteus
standing with unslippered feet touch
ing the soil. his lifted eyes frenzied
of the stars, liberty swelling his breast
and mighty manhood gripped in his
fists. This is our patrimony of birth
! no disaster can fitch and nothing but
vice destroy.
| 1t is the incarnation of the glory of
John Browns life. his martyrdom, the
brave story of his compatriots, the
fierce struggles they encountered. the
heroic epoch of the great rebellion, the
, brave soldiers who served Kansas in
its battles, the long and pitted warfare
against stubborn and defiant nature
the bloodshed of the great rebellion
l the still of the nations heart await
ing the issues of the battle, and the
: unmeasured anguish of this republic
during that long period of strife, that
was almost the dignity of a religion,
{ 1t was the women of the frontier, OF
2 the sod house, the log cabin, the new
: homestead; 1t was the women of the
war, reliant in prayer, trusting III
God and giving constant sacrifice
81 III ~AAO TIT VI tHO nag anu DTdVe
! against every wrong. All these thing.
D have been in the alembic flung t.
s make and stature the Kansan l address:
] today.
Going back to the battle between
n freedom and slavery the opposins
! forces elashed. arson and murder.
i were committed, brutalities perpetrat
. ed, and skirmish, ambush and battl,
: frequently took place; the free stat,
= war was on. and all eastern Kansas
the settled part, became involved. TIL,
. land was afire to advance the caus'
3 of freedom and give slavery it's dealt
!. blow. The constitution, as interpreted
!. by the supreme court, was impoten
: and unavailing; the awakening of tn,
K North to the meaning of the Dret
' Scott decision, and the higher law as
: serted by Seward and maintained b.
John Brown, usurped its authority; ii
Ii -c.4s. Il a