CHAPTER XX.

BUILDING THE STATE.

186. State Officials During Civil War.-During the years of the Civil War, Kansas made but slow progress in the accumulation of population and material wealth. The machinery of the civil State moved with regularity. Governor Robinson was succeeded, in 1863, by Governor Carney, and Martin F. Conway by A. Carter Wilder as Representative in Congress. In 1865 Governor Carney was succeeded by Governor Samuel J. Crawford, and James H. Lane succeeded himself as United States Senator.

It

187. Educational Advancement.-Preliminary steps were taken, in 1863, for the establishment of the State University at Lawrence, the State Agricultural College at Manhattan, and the State Normal School at Emporia. was, in spite of war's alarms, a period of foundations and beginnings. The State, even in the midst of war, continued the first works of the troubled Territorial period, when Baker University, an institution still enjoying a prosperous growth, was established as early as 1857.

188. Homestead Law.-An event having a most important bearing on the life and prosperity of Kansas, was the passage of the Homestead Law, on the 20th of May, 1862. The bill had been introduced in the House by Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania. It had once been vetoed by President Buchanan. It was signed by President Lincoln,

and took effect on the 1st of January, 1863. Within ten years thereafter twenty-six millions of acres of the public lands were entered by homestead settlers.

The law, in substance, gave a title from the United States to the actual settler who held the 160 acres for five years. The Homestead Law was an answer to those who demanded "land for the landless," and who sang: "Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm." At the close of the Civil War, a great many men who had served in the Union army were left with lands and homes to seek, and the law was so amended that the homesteader might deduct from the five years' residence required by the law, the time passed by him in the military or naval service of his country. With the close of the war, a great ex-soldier immigration poured into Kansas.

189. First Railroad.-The system of land grant railroads was also a great element in the settlement of the country. Kansas went in early for railroads. The Territorial Legislatures granted charters for extensive lines. The first railroad iron ever laid in Kansas was put down at Elwood, opposite St. Joseph, Mo., on the Marysville & Elwood Railroad, on the 20th of March, 1860, but drought and war intervened to prevent extensive railroad building in Kansas at that time.

190. Grant to A. T. & S. F. Railroad.-The policy of subsidizing the railroads in lands and bonds by the general Government was diligently labored for by Kansas men at Washington. In 1863, Congress made to the State of Kansas a grant of land, giving alternate sections, one mile square, ten miles in width, amounting to 6,400 acres, a mile on either side of a proposed line running from Atchi

son via Topeka, to some point on the southern or western boundary of the State in the direction of Santa Fe, with a branch from some point on the southern line of Kansas to the City of Mexico. This grant the State of Kansas transferred to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company, February, 1864. This grant amounted, as it turned out, to some 3,000,000 acres of land.

191. Grant to the Union Pacific Railroad.—The Eastern Division of the Union Pacific, on which work was begun on the State line of Kansas and Missouri in November, 1863, it being the first road started from the Missouri to the Pacific-eventually received a grant of alternate sections, twenty miles in width, and amounting to 12,800 acres to the mile. The grant extended 394 miles west from the Missouri river, and amounted to some 6,000,000 acres. Other lines extending through Kansas received subsidies, but these two, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and the Union Pacific Eastern Division, later called the Kansas Pacific, and the Missouri, Kansas and Texas, were the largest grantees of land. Besides these grants the railroads acquired large tracts of Indian lands.

192. Other Grants.-In February, 1866, the Legislature gave to four different railroad companies, 500,000 acres granted to Kansas under the Act of September, 1841, the lands to be sold for the benefit of the railroad companies, by an agent appointed by the Governor. The objection, however, being made, that Article VII, of the Ordinance to the Constitution of Kansas, states, "that the 500,000 acres of land to which the State is entitled under the Act of Congress, entitled 'an act to appropriate the proceeds of the sale of public lands, and grant pre-emption

rights,' approved September 4, 1841, shall be granted to the State for the support of common schools.' The land grant policy was in after years the subject of severe criti

cism, and caused extensive litigation between the settlers and the railroad companies, but at the time of its adoption was popular in Kansas. The organized counties voted large amounts of bonds to the roads, and the progress of the roads for a time was the progress of the State. The grants of land facilitated the building of the roads, and in Kansas the railroads preceded instead of following the settlement, greatly accelerating the old process of filling a country with a wagon immigration. The land grant companies sold their lands at low rates, and on long time, and the alternate sections reserved by the Government were

sold at $2.50 an acre, while beyond the "railroad limit," the homesteader pushed in everywhere.

193. The Pioneer.-The United States land offices which, in the Territorial days, were located along the line of the Missouri river, were moved westward from time to time to accommodate the host of claim seekers, who, in some instances, remained about the offices the entire night to await their opening in the morning. In the Concordia land district alone, in the year 1871, 932,715 acres of land were entered under the Homestead Act.

The homesteader has been styled the "Pilgrim Father' of Kansas. He left the great highways of travel and

sought the vast, open country. From the thin line of timber skirting the stream, he might gather a few logs to build his cabin, but more often he shaped his habitation in or of