The period from 1865 to 1875 was, however, a period of uncertainty.
Kansas remained an experiment. The drouth and grasshopper invasion of
1860, a menacing memory for many years, had just begun to grow dim when
the drouth of 1873 and the still more disastrous drouth and locust
invasion of 1874 revived its recollection, and intensified the
uncertainty it had inspired. The intervening years were not, it is true,
without their exaltation and triumphs. Luxuriant harvests followed the
disaster of 1860, year after year in unbroken succession, until 1873,
and we indulged in much jubilant boasting and self-gratulation over our
fruitful soil, our benign climate, and our gracious seasons. But over
and through it all brooded and ran a feeling of question or uncertainty,
which manifested itself in many ways. The newspapers, while affecting to
sneer at those who did not believe Kansas to be a country where rains
always came just when they were wanted, nevertheless recorded every rain
with suspicious prominence. Even the corner-lot speculator watched the
clouds while he was denouncing the slanderers who asserted that Kansas
was “a dry country.” “Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” might
have been said of the Kansans who, from 1865 to 1875, vehemently
maintained that the normal condition of Kansas was that of a quagmire.
And in the midst of it all came 1873 and 1874, with their twin
devastations and calamities. A fierce sun rose and set for months in a
cloudless sky; the parched earth shrank and cracked; and the crops
withered and shriveled in winds as hot as the breath of a furnace. But
as if the destruction thus wrought was not enough, out from the
northwest came clouds of insects, darkening the sun in their baleful
flight, and leaving the very abomination of desolation wherever they
alighted. It was then that the bravest quailed, and our sturdiest
farmers abandoned all hope. Thousands of people, now among our most
prosperous citizens, would have sold everything they possessed for
one-sixth of its value, during the year 1874, and abandoned the State
forever. But they could find no purchasers, even at such a price.
Somehow—and I mention the fact to their everlasting credit—many of the
newspapers of Kansas never lost heart or hope during that distressful
season. They lauded the State more earnestly, if possible, than ever
before. They asserted, with vehement iteration, that the season was
exceptional and phenomenal. They exhorted the people to keep up courage,
and confidently predicted abundant harvests next year. And to their
influence more than any other, is due the fact that Kansas survived the
drouth and grasshopper invasion of 1874 with so little loss of
population.