On the 7th of May, 1856, a great American, learned, sagacious, and
confident in his faith that right and justice would at last prevail,
said, in a speech delivered in the City of New York:
“In the year of our Lord 1900, there will be two million people in
Kansas, with cities like Providence and Worcester—perhaps like
Chicago and Cincinnati. She will have more miles of railroad than
Maryland, Virginia and both the Carolinas can now boast. Her land
will be worth twenty dollars an acre, and her total wealth will be
five hundred millions of money. Six hundred thousand children will
learn in her schools. What schools, newspapers, libraries,
meeting-houses! Yes, what families of educated, happy and religious
men and women! There will be a song of Freedom all around the Slave
States, and in them Slavery itself will die.”
Read in the light of the present, these eloquent words of Theodore
Parker seem touched with prophetic fire. The ideal Kansas he saw,
looking through the mists of the future, is the real Kansas of to-day.
The marvelous growth, the splendid prosperity, the potent intellectual
and moral energies, and the happy and contented life he predicted, are
all around us. At the threshold of the year A. D. 1886, fifteen years
before the limit of his prophecy, Kansas has cities like Providence and
Worcester; has more than double the railway mileage Maryland, Virginia,
and both the Carolinas could then boast; has land worth, not twenty, but
fifty and a hundred dollars an acre; has wealth far exceeding five
hundred million dollars; has schools, newspapers, libraries and churches
rivaling those of New England; and has 1,300,000 happy, prosperous and
intelligent people.
The prophecy has been fulfilled, but the end is not yet. The foundations
of the State, like those of its Capitol, have just been completed. The
stately building, crowned with its splendid dome, is yet to be reared.
Smiling and opulent fields, busy and prosperous cities and towns, are
still attracting the intelligent, the enterprising and the ambitious of
every State and country. The limits that bound the progress and
development of Kansas cannot now be gauged or guessed. We have land,
homes, work and plenty for millions more; and for another quarter of a
century, at least, our State will continue to grow. For we are yet at
the threshold and in the dawn of it all. We are just beginning to
realize what a great people can accomplish, whom “love of country
moveth, example teacheth, company comforteth, emulation quickeneth, and
glory exalteth.”