The development of Kansas, it seems to me, has had three periods, which
may properly be called the decades of War, of Uncertainty, and of
Triumph. From 1855 to 1865, Kansas was an armed camp. The border
troubles, outbreaking late in 1854, continued until the Rebellion was
inaugurated. Kansas, in fact, began the war six years before the Nation
had fired a shot, and the call to arms in 1861 found here a singularly
martial people, who responded with unparalleled enthusiasm to the
President’s demands for men. In less than a year ten full regiments were
organized, and before the close of the war Kansas had sent over twenty
thousand soldiers to the field, out of a population of but little more
than a hundred thousand. Fields, workshops, offices and schools were
deserted, and the patient and heroic women who had kept weary vigils
during all the dark and desolate days of the border troubles, now waited
in their lonely home for tidings from the larger field of the civil war.
It is doubtful whether Kansas increased, either in population or wealth,
from 1861 to 1864. But the young State grew in public interest and
reputation, and when the heroic men, whose valor and patriotism had
saved the Republic, began to be mustered out, Kansas offered an inviting
field for their energy, and they came hither in great numbers. The
population of the State, which was 107,206 in 1860, had increased to
140,179 in 1865. The assessed value of its property increased from
$22,518,232 to $36,110,000 during the same period, and the land in farms
from 1,778,400 to 3,500,000 acres. It was not a “boom,” nor was it
stagnation and decay. Yet it is probable that nearly the whole of the
growth shown by these figures dates from the spring of 1864.
The real development of Kansas began in 1865, and it has known few
interruptions since. The census of 1870 showed a population of
364,399—an increase of 124,220 in five years, or nearly double the
population of 1865. Railroad building also began in 1865, and 1,283
miles were completed by 1870. The home-returning soldiers and the
railroads came together. Immigrants to other States came in slow-moving
canal boats or canvas-covered wagons, but they came to Kansas in the
lightning express, and most of them went to their claims in comfortable
cars drawn by that marvel of modern mechanism, the locomotive. Our State
has never had a “coon-skin cap” population. It is the child of the
prairies, not of the forest. It has always attracted men of
intelligence, who knew a good thing when they saw it. They brought with
them the school, the church and the printing-press; they planted an
orchard and a grove as soon as they had harvested their first crop; and
if they were compelled to live in a dug-out the first year or two, they
were reasonably certain to own a comfortable house the third.