Kansas is the Athena of American States. Thirty-six years ago the Slave
Oligarchy ruled this country. Fearing that the birth of new States in
the West would rob it of supremacy, the Slave Power swallowed the
Missouri Compromise, which had dedicated the Northwest to Freedom. The
industrious North, aroused and indignant, struck quick and hard, and
Kansas, full-armed, shouting the war-cry of Liberty, and nerved with
invincible courage, sprang into the Union. She at once assumed a high
place among the States. She was the deadly enemy of Slavery; she gave
voice and potency to the demand for its abolition; and she aided in
burying Secession in its unhonored grave. The war over, she became the
patron, as she had been during its continuance the exemplar, of heroism,
and a hundred thousand soldiers of the Union found homes within the
shelter of her embracing arms. The agriculturist and the mechanic were
charmed by her ample resources and inspired by her eager enterprise.
Education found in her a generous patron, and to literature, art and
science she has been a steadfast friend. Her pure atmosphere invigorated
all. A desert disfigured the map of the Continent, and she covered it
with fields of golden wheat and tasseling corn. She has extended to
women the protection of generous laws and of enlarged opportunities for
usefulness. In war she was valiant and indomitable, and in peace she has
been intelligent, energetic, progressive and enterprising. The modern
Athena, type of the great Greek goddess, is our Kansas.