Ali on Kansas

“Kansas, however whittled down, was still a giant in size and potential productivity. Conceived in cold calculation, born in a rending hatred, she was to be baptized in blood. It was not a christening. It was a deep-river baptism.”

“'''Land Speculators and One Horse politicians. Blood and thunder, drouth and exploitation. Certainly no new state ever chose a more fitting motto than did young Kansas. Ad Astra per Aspera. It had been and would always be 'To the stars by hard ways.''''”

“Kansas was four years old when the Civil War came to an end. And in that brief time she had suffered not only four more years of blood and thunder but also a bond-issue scandal and an impeachment trial. Horace Greeley had in a way predicted it all on his visit in 1859. "The twin curses of Kansas, now that Border Ruffians have stopped ravaging her,' he said, 'are Land Speculators and One Horse Politicians." These were her twin curses from the beginning. They remained her twin curses throughout the war, and afterward.”

“The Civil War was fought, and won, in the East by accepted rules, by chessboard maneuvers to gain position through surprise flank movements and well-planned and well-executed frontal attacks, and to hold position through fortification, troop placement, and anticipation of enemy moves. Many men from Kansas went off to be chessmen in those important plays, far more per capita than from any other Northern state. Every quota sent by the Union Kansas met doubly, for the new state was peopled by men who had come there to fight against slavery.
Many Kansans were assigned to formal fighting, but others were incorporated under local commands and fought the war out in the same roles, now legalzied, that they had played in the curtain-raiser. Men who had been raiders were now authorized to wear the uniform of the Union Army. Many of them did not bother, any more than did their brothers across the border bother to don the gray of their Confederacy. Frontier dress lent itself well to guerrilla tactics.”