The growth of Kansas has had no parallel. The great States of New York
and Pennsylvania were nearly a hundred and fifty years in attaining a
population Kansas has reached in thirty years. Kentucky was eighty
years, Tennessee seventy-five, Alabama ninety, Ohio forty-five, and
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Georgia, and North and South Carolina each
over a hundred years, in reaching the present population of Kansas. Even
the marvelous growth of the great States of the West has been surpassed
by that of Kansas. Illinois was organized as a Territory in 1810, and
thirty years later had only 691,392 inhabitants, or not much more than
one-half the present population of this State. Indiana was organized in
1800, and sixty years later had a population of only 1,350,428. Iowa was
organized as a Territory in 1838, and had, at that date, a population of
nearly 40,000. In 1870 it had only 1,194,020 inhabitants. Missouri was
organized in 1812, with a population of over 40,000, and fifty years
later had only 1,182,012. Michigan and Wisconsin, after fifty years of
growth, did not have as many people as Kansas has to-day; and Texas,
admitted into the Union in 1845, with a population of 150,000, had,
thirty-five years later, only 815,579 inhabitants.
In 1861 Kansas ranked in population as the thirty-third State of the
Union; in 1870 it was the twenty-ninth; in 1880 the twentieth; and it is
now the fifteenth. During the past quarter of a century Kansas has
outstripped Oregon, Rhode Island, Delaware, Florida, Arkansas, Vermont,
New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, Maryland, Mississippi,
California, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Wisconsin, and New
Jersey—all States before the 29th of January, 1861. Of the Northern
States only eight, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana,
Massachusetts, Michigan, and Iowa, and of the Southern States only six,
Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Virginia, and Texas, now outrank
Kansas in population. At the close of the present decade Kansas will, I
am confident, rank as the eleventh State of the American Union, and will
round out the Nineteenth Century as the sixth or seventh.
In the following table the population of Kansas, as shown by the first
census of the Territory, taken in January, 1855, and the official
enumerations made every five years thereafter, is shown. The figures
also exhibit the proportion of white and colored, and of native and
foreign-born inhabitants; the increase of population every five years,
and the density of population per square mile of territory at the close
of each period. The State census taken in 1865, however, did not show
the proportion of native and foreign-born citizens:
═══════╤═════════╤════════╤════════╤═════════╤══════╤═════════╤═════════
│ _Total │ _In- │_Density│ _White │_Col- │ _Native │_Foreign-
_Year._│ popu- │crease._│of popu-│ popu- │ored._│ popu- │ born._
│lation._ │ │lation._│lation._ │ │lation._ │
───────┼─────────┼────────┼────────┼─────────┼──────┼─────────┼─────────
1855 │ 8,601│ │ │ │ │ │
1860 │ 107,206│ 98,605│ 1.3│ 106,390│ 816│ 94,512│ 12,694
1865 │ 140,179│ 32,973│ 1.6│ 127,270│12,909│ │
1870 │ 364,399│ 224,220│ 4.4│ 346,377│18,022│ 316,007│ 48,392
1875 │ 528,349│ 163,950│ 6.5│ 493,00│35,344│ 464,682│ 63,667
1880 │ 996,096│ 467,747│ 12.2│ 952,105│43,941│ 886,010│ 110,086
1885[1]│1,268,562│ 272,466│ 15.4│1,220,355│48,207│1,135,887│ 132,675
───────┴─────────┴────────┴────────┴─────────┴──────┴─────────┴─────────
Footnote 1:
Census of March, 1885.