bringing an enormous trade. From its position at the initial point it is known as the "Gate City." There are large manufactures and its meat-packing industries are of the first importance, while its enterprise is giving it rapid growth. The Union Pacific Railroad pursues its route westward through Nebraska, up the valley of the Platte River for several hundred miles, and at Fort Omaha, just north of the city, is the military headquarters of the Department. THE STATE OF KANSAS. Various great railways bound to the West cross the Missouri in its lower course. The river flows between Kansas and Missouri, and here are St. Joseph with sixty thousand people, immense railway and stock-yards, and many factories; and Atchison with twenty thousand population and large flouring-mills, where the Atchison railway system formerly had its initial point, though now it traverses the country from Chicago southwest to Santa Fe and the Pacific Ocean. Leavenworth, a city of twenty-five thousand, has grown at the site of Fort Leavenworth, one of the important early posts on the Missouri. To the southward the Kaw or Kansas River flows in, the Indian "Smoky Water," coming from the west, draining the greater part of the State which it names. Upon this river is Lawrence, the seat of the Kansas State University, having a thousand students, and of Haskell Institute, a Government training-school for Indian boys and girls. Westward along the Kansas River broadly spread the vast and fertile prairies making the agricultural wealth of the State, and sixty-seven miles from the Missouri, built on both sides of the river, is Topeka, the capital, having thirty-five thousand people, large mills and an extensive trade with the surrounding farm district. In this eastern portion of Kansas, prior to the Civil War, was fought, often with bloodshed, the protracted border contest between the free-soil and proslavery parties for the possession of the State, that had so much to do with bringing on the greater conflict. When Congress passed the bill in 1854 organizing Nebraska and Kansas into territories, an effort began to establish slavery, and the Missourians coming over the border tried to control. They founded Atchison and other places and sent in settlers. At the same time Aid Societies for antislavery emigrants began colonizing from New England, large numbers thus coming to preëmpt lands. During four years the contests went on, Lawrence and other towns being besieged and burnt. The first Free-State Constitution was framed at Topeka in 1855, which Congress would not approve, and the following year the pro-slavery Constitution was enacted at Lecompton, which the people rejected. After the Civil War began, Kansas was admitted to the Union in 1861 with slavery prohibited. Among the free-soilers who went out to engage in these Kansas conflicts was old John Brown. Near the Missouri border, to the southward of Kansas River, is the little town of Osowatomie, in the early settlement of which Brown took part. Here he had his fights with the slavery invaders who came over from Missouri, finally burning the place and killing Brown's son, a tragedy said to have inspired his subsequent crusade against Harper's Ferry, which practically opened the Civil War. A monument is erected to John Brown's memory at Osawatomie. The New England emigration to Kansas in those momentous times inspired Whittier's poem, The Kansas Emigrants: "We cross the prairie as of old The Pilgrims crossed the sea, "We go to rear a wall of men On Freedom's southern line, "We're flowing from our native hills The blessing of our Mother-land "We go to plant her common schools And give the Sabbaths of the wild "Upbearing, like the Ark of old, The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of God Against the fraud of man. "No pause nor rest, save where the streams Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun! "We'll tread the prairie as of old Our fathers sailed the sea, And make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free !" The Civil War ended all these conflicts, and since then Kansas has been eminently peaceful. It is now the leading State of the corn belt which broadly crosses the middle of the United States. Its vast corn crops make the wealth of the people, and as they may be good or poor, the Kansan is in joy or despair. One year the farmers will be overwhelmed with debt; the next brings an ample crop, and they pay their debts and are in affluence. Thus throbs the pulse as the sunshine and rains may make a corn crop in the State that sometimes exceeds three hundred millions of bushels; and then there are not enough railway cars available to carry away the product. In a good crop the cornstalks grow to enormous heights, sometimes reaching twenty feet to the surmounting tassel, and a tall man on tiptoe can about touch the ears, while a two-pound ear is a customary weight, with thirty-five ears to a bushel. These vast cornfields, watched year by year and crop after crop by the hard-working wife of a Kansas farmer, caused her to write the touching lyric which has become the Kansas national hymn, Mrs. Ellen P. Allerton's "Walls of Corn": "Smiling and beautiful, heaven's dome "But the wide, wide lands that stretched away A great State's wealth these walls enfold. "Clothes and food for the toiling poor; Wealth to heap at the rich man's door; "Meat for the healthy, and balm for him Where (bless the corn!) want cometh not; |