Address at a Reunion of the Pennsylvania Society of Atchison County, held at Atchison, March 1st, 1878.

Mr. President: The reunion of Pennsylvanians held in our city to-day is a meeting to be commended, not alone because it affords opportunity for acquaintanceship among citizens native of the same State, and promotes social friendships among them, but because it is favorable to the development of that individual and National sentiment which, while reverencing birthplace and old home, has a still higher reverence and love for the broad country which stretches from ocean to ocean. Whether in Kansas or in Pennsylvania, the same brave old flag floats over us; our new home and our native State are parts of the same good land; and the Union, which takes in its wide, and strong, and loving embrace the wheat-fields of Kansas and the coal-fields of Pennsylvania, is the dearer to us because away off there near the Atlantic are the graves of our forefathers, and here by the Missouri, half-way across the Continent, are our homes, our wives, and our children.

Years ago, when the passions born of our Territorial troubles were yet fiercely burning, I heard it said that Kansas was “the child of Massachusetts.” The “Old Bay State,” it is true, contributed her full quota towards moulding that public sentiment whose enthusiastic impulses sent so many immigrants to people our prairies, and her firm friendship for Free Kansas did very much to break down the intolerant domination of slavery within our borders. The voice of Massachusetts, then as during the Revolution of our forefathers, was eloquent and courageous, and her action swift, vigorous and determined. But Sam and John Adams, a century ago, had Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris, representatives of the “Old Keystone State,” as their most efficient coadjutors, and so in the struggle which made Kansas free, the zeal, the courage, and the constancy of Pennsylvania’s sons were conspicuously illustrated.

If Kansas could properly be called the child of any State, she is the daughter of Pennsylvania. But Kansas is really cosmopolitan. The blood of all States and all Nations runs in her veins. The East and the West, the North and the South, all sections and all nationalities have sent their sons and daughters to swell her population and contribute to her development. There is a wonderful aggregation of peoples in the citizenship of this young Commonwealth; and out of these has grown a remarkable community—a people homogeneous, yet diverse; combining the sturdy independence, firm convictions and all-conquering energy and industry of the North with the intense enthusiasm and fine courage of the South. It is difficult to estimate what the result of such fusing of bloods and temperaments will be in the future, but I believe it will produce as strong, intelligent and vigorous a manhood as this Continent or the world ever saw.

I do not intend, however, to discuss physiological questions. This is Pennsylvania’s Day in our city, and I want to trace the connection of Pennsylvania and her sons, as briefly as may be, with the history and development, political and material, of Kansas. But first let me ask, did any of you ever notice the striking similarity in the appearance of the two States, Pennsylvania and Kansas, as shown upon the map? In size, shape and general outlines, this resemblance is remarkable. In no other two States of the Union is the conformation of outlines and appearance so noticeable. Three sides of each, and the same three sides—north, south and west—are squarely cut, while the eastern boundary of each is irregular and formed mainly by the course of a river. Pennsylvania has a territorial area of 46,000 square miles, and is 315 miles east and west by 160 miles north and south. Kansas is a larger State, having a territorial area of 81,000 square miles, and being 400 miles east and west by 200 north and south. Both are longer, in about equal proportions, than they are wide.

Perhaps the resemblance between the two States on the map of our country—a resemblance as striking as that so often noticed in twin children—is the birth-mark which stamps them as of one blood and family, and accounts for the curious and interesting identification of Pennsylvania’s sons with events in Kansas, during the whole of that exciting epoch when this State was so prominent a figure in the history of the Nation.

And the relations of the two States have been indeed curiously interwoven—so curiously that I wonder the facts have not attracted more general attention and remark. Less than a month after the bill organizing the Territory of Kansas had become a law, Andrew H. Reeder, of Pennsylvania, was appointed the first Governor. At the first election ever held in the Territory, R. P. Flenniken, a Pennsylvanian, was the Free-State candidate for Congress. The first Free-State newspaper ever printed in Kansas was published and edited by George W. Brown, a Pennsylvanian. The first great seal of Kansas was designed by Governor Reeder, and engraved by Robert Lovett, a Philadelphia artisan. John L. Dawson, a Pennsylvanian, was the second Governor appointed for Kansas, but he declined. The first Free-State delegate convention ever held in Kansas was presided over by George W. Smith, a Pennsylvanian; and the resolutions adopted, constituting the first platform of the Free-State men, were mainly written by the deposed Governor Reeder. One of our first Territorial Judges was J. M. Burrell, a Pennsylvanian. The convention which set in motion the Free-State government organized under the “Topeka Constitution” had for its President William Y. Roberts, a Pennsylvanian; and at the election held that year, Andrew H. Reeder received a majority of the votes cast as the Free-State candidate for Congress. William Y. Roberts was elected Lieutenant-Governor under the Topeka Constitution. Capt. George W. Bowman, a Pennsylvanian—long a resident of this city—at the peril of his life and property took Governor Reeder out of Kansas. Hon. Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsylvania, introduced the first bill in Congress to admit Kansas into the Union under the Topeka Constitution.

The third Governor of Kansas, succeeding Governor Shannon, was John W. Geary, afterwards Governor of Pennsylvania. And he, like Governor Reeder, espoused the cause of the Free-State men before he had been in the Territory a week. He had been here only four days, in fact, when he ordered the Lawrence Company of Capt. Sam’l Walker, a Pennsylvanian, and one of the fighting leaders of the Free-State men, to be mustered into the United States service, and issued a proclamation ordering the invading Missourians out of Kansas. During the whole term of his service he was an earnest opponent of the outrages and crimes which were perpetrated upon the Free-State men. He was succeeded by Robert J. Walker, a native of Pennsylvania, who soon espoused the cause of the Free-State men; who induced them to take part in the election held in October, 1857; and who threw out the returns from Oxford and Kickapoo precincts and McGee county, thus giving the Free-State party control of both branches of the Legislature, and sending a Free-State Delegate to Congress.

The Grasshopper Falls Free-State Convention, held in August, 1857, at which it was decided to vote at the ensuing election, under the promise of Governor Walker that the vote should be free and fair, was presided over by George W. Smith, a Pennsylvanian. On the assembling of the first Free-State Legislature, in December, 1857, Cyrus K. Holliday, a Pennsylvanian, was elected President pro tem. of the Council, and George W. Deitzler, long a resident of Pennsylvania, and who came from that State to Kansas, was chosen Speaker of the House.

December 21, 1857, at the election held for State officers under the Lecompton Constitution, George W. Smith and William Y. Roberts, both Pennsylvanians, and the candidates of the Free-State men, were elected Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, respectively.

The last Territorial Legislature assembled in January, 1861, and it had native Pennsylvanians for presiding officers in both branches, W. W. Updegraff, President of the Council, and John W. Scott, Speaker of the House. The bill admitting Kansas into the Union under the Wyandotte Constitution was signed on the 29th of January, 1861, by James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania. And when the first State Legislature assembled, thirteen of its members and four of its officers, including the Speaker of the House, W, W. Updegraff, were native Pennsylvanians.

The connection of the sons of Pennsylvania with affairs in Kansas, political, military and industrial, has since that time been quite as prominent and as honorable. But I have no time to trace such details further. I can only add that of the officers commanding and the soldiers forming our gallant Kansas regiments and companies during the war for the Union, a very large proportion were native Pennsylvanians; of our civil officers, a United States Senator, a Governor, a member of Congress, a Lieutenant-Governor, three Superintendents of Public Instruction, and a number of other State officials, have been Pennsylvanians; and in every State Legislature there have been many members who were natives of the “Old Keystone State.” And, as Owen Seip would say, “the returns from Old Lehigh are not all in yet.”

The last accurate census of this State, taken in 1875, shows that 13,399 citizens of Kansas came from Pennsylvania. Only five States, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio, furnished a larger number of immigrants to Kansas. I think, however, that many more of our citizens are natives of the old Keystone State. The figures I quote do not show how many were born in each of the States, but only “where from to Kansas.” Of the citizens of Atchison county, 640 emigrated from Pennsylvania to Kansas. Only five States, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa and New York, furnished a larger number. I have no doubt that quite a large proportion of those who came from the Western States were originally from Pennsylvania.

Kansas is a young State. It was only seventeen years old last month, while Pennsylvania has rounded a full century of Statehood. Yet in 1542, just 140 years before William Penn landed on the shores of the Delaware, Francisco de Coronado, a Spanish commander of high rank, marched from Mexico through Kansas to its northern boundary. He was seeking gold and silver mines. He missed them. But he found, as he reported, “mighty plains, full of crooked-backed oxen;” and he wrote that “the earth is the best possible for all kinds of productions of Spain; for while it is very strong and black, it is well watered by brooks, springs and rivers.” This old Spanish explorer gave a very accurate description of the Kansas of to-day. But they didn’t receive his report in England, which probably accounts for the fact that Penn landed on the shores of the Delaware instead of sailing up the Mississippi and Missouri to Kansas.

Kansas was embraced in the grant of land made by King James I, of England, in the Virginia charter of 1609. Pennsylvania was embraced in the grant of land made by Charles II, of England, to William Penn, in 1681. But the French discovered the Mississippi in 1682, and from that date until 1763, Kansas was a French possession. It then passed into the hands of Spain. In 1780 Benjamin Franklin, then in Paris, set on foot negotiations for the purchase of Louisiana, which included Kansas. In 1800 the first Napoleon wrested Louisiana from Spain, and on the 30th of April, 1803, sold it to the United States. Pennsylvania remained an English colony until it became an American State.

A very old poetical legend explains how Pennsylvania came to be settled, in the statement that that—

Reduced to sober prose, this doggerel expresses an idea that first attracted public attention to Kansas, and for many years did much to promote settlement in this State, i. e., love of freedom—religious, political, and individual. This sentiment gave Kansas her first start in the world, and she has kept her pace and her place ever since. In 1800 our old native State had a population of only 602,361, and in twenty years this had increased to but little over a million. Kansas will far surpass that growth within twenty years from 1875, when she had a population of 531,156. We have over 700,000 now, and will have a round million in 1880. This is a fast age. Kansas was organized as a Territory less than a quarter of a century ago, and yet we have had nearly as many Governors as Pennsylvania, mossed as she is with the antiquity of over two centuries. As to State Constitutions, we can beat her, for Pennsylvania has managed to get along with three in a century, while Kansas had four before she got fairly into the Union, and I don’t know how many amendments since. Only one railroad crosses the good old Keystone State from East to West; Kansas has two passing from the Missouri to the Colorado line, and a third nearly half-way across. Atchison has more railroads than the great manufacturing city of Pittsburgh, and is as great a “Railroad Center” as Philadelphia. They make a man live there seven years before he can be Governor, yet they sent us three who were sworn in before they ever saw Kansas. Pennsylvania had nearly three million people in 1860, yet their Legislature is not as big, numerically, as is ours. Probably the average Kansan needs more laws to keep him within reasonable bounds than does the average Pennsylvanian.

Pennsylvania is a great State, and no son of hers, wander wheresoever he may, is ever ashamed to acknowledge his nativity. Virginia may be the mother of States, but the “Old Keystone” is the Pa.—especially of Kansas, as I think I have shown. And the citizens of Kansas hailing from Pennsylvania will never “go back on” their native State—nor to it, perhaps, unless on a visit. Not that they love Pennsylvania less, but Kansas more.

Looking back over the records of our eventful, often stormy past, and contemplating the prosperous present and hopeful future of Kansas, it has seemed to me that one great duty this State of ours has forgotten. All nations, all States, have delighted to perpetuate, in the names they have given to their cities or counties, the memory of those who, in times of great trouble and danger, testified their devotion to the welfare of the people by a courageous, steadfast, self-sacrificing defense of their rights and liberties. It is one of the crowning glories of the Old Keystone State, that of all the Governors who wielded the executive power during the Territorial existence of Kansas there were three, and only three, who did not consort with, or assist, or excuse those who invaded our soil with armed force, murdered our people, stuffed our ballot-boxes, burned our towns, and attempted to stifle free speech and a free press, in order to blight this fair land with the curse of human slavery—and these three were Pennsylvanians. And it is a just reproach to Kansas that not one of our counties bears the name of either of these three men—Reeder, Geary, or Walker. Kansas owes them much. Their memory should be honored by every Kansan. They have all passed away from the trials and troubles of this world. This State, the rights and liberties of whose people they defended with such self-sacrificing devotion and steadfast courage, cannot now reward them with substantial gifts. But it can at least testify its respect for their memory, and its gratitude for their splendid services in behalf of its early pioneers, by perpetuating their names in the names of some of its counties. And this it ought to do. Kansas will be justly open to the reproach of having forgotten those to whom she is largely indebted until three of her counties bear the honored names of Reeder, Geary, and Walker—her only Federal Governors who held justice above partisanship, who enriched the history of a dark and troubled period with the record of official duties fairly, honestly and bravely discharged; who sternly kept faith with the people, and so doing fought a great battle, not for a single generation or a few thousand citizens of a sparsely-settled Territory, but for all time and for the whole Republic.