Quintessential Kansas – A famous cartoon from the New Yorker magazine may best capture the status of Kansas in the minds of countless Americans. “You are now entering Kansas,” announces a sign on an interstate highway, “or some state very much like it.”
Well, how funny – let alone, how accurate – is that? All that this cartoon really demonstrates is the astounding ignorance that many residents of the East Coast, not to mention the West Coast, have of Kansas in particular and the Great Plains in general.
To those of us who know this place, with its unique history and subtle beauties, Kansas is still not only a geographical expression, as Carl Becker, the famous historian once put it, but a true ‘state of mind,’ a philosophy, and a religion in one. Let’s also remember that when Dorothy Gale clicked her heels three times and intoned the words, “There’s no place like home,” the place she was talking about was Kansas.
So, what is it about Kansas that is magnetic to some and unfathomable to others? Perhaps it is the prairie-sized parade of extraordinary moments, periodic natural and man-made catastrophes, incomprehensible decisions, and unrelenting resilience that mark the history of the state.
From the wonderful to the weird, from the amazing to the awful, Kansas history has it all. This sample collection of themed articles begins the exploration of those choice elements and key aspects that define the quintessence of the Sunflower State. These pieces are just part of a much larger ensemble that is now underway.
On May 22, 1861, the Kansas legislature adopted “Ad Astra Per Aspera” – “To The Stars Through Difficulties” – as the official state motto. Words To, Uh… Live By. Four months after Kansas joined the Union as its 34th state, the legislature chose Ad Astra Per Aspera – “To The Stars Through Difficulties” – as the state motto.
“To The Stars Through Difficulties” is still an inspiring thought, except perhaps for the most jaded among us. The words were not original by any means. But they served as a fitting summation of how Kansas came through and survived the difficult, chaotic, and often-violent territorial period.
Adopted on May 22, 1861, as part of the official seal, these words turned out to be downright prophetic. Following statehood, Kansas would endure Civil War raids by William Clarke Quantrill and other Confederate guerrillas, regular periods of drought, grasshopper plagues, tornadoes, dust storms, occasional Kaw River floods, bust and boom economic cycles, cattle town lawlessness, and a variety of other natural and man-made calamities. To the stars through difficulties, indeed!
The man directly responsible for the adoption of Ad Astra Per Aspera in 1861as Kansas motto was John J. Ingalls, an aspiring Republican Party member who at that time was secretary of the state’s senate. The Massachusetts-born lawyer and ferocious anti-slavery advocate came to Kansas in 1858 where he became editor of Freedom’s Champion, an Atchison newspaper.
At the age of 26, Ingalls was elected to the 1859 convention where the Wyandotte Constitution was written and he went on to serve as a lieutenant-colonel in the Kansas militia and as a judge advocate. In 1873, John Ingalls was elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Kansas, a position that he held for 18 years.