to leave the borders of the state in the service of the United States government. They distinguished themselves at the decisive battle of Okechobee where their brave commander was killed and Capt. James Childs was seriously wounded. The stories and experiences of these returning Jackson county patriots from the Florida war, were not without their influence.

In 1847, General Doniphan raised the second regiment of the Missouri volunteers to go out of the state borders, for the Mexican war. So long was his march and so victorious his exploits, that he has been called the Xenophon of Missouri. And his companies, raised in the vicinity of Kansas City, on returning home, elated with their victories and broadened by what they had seen, stamped their influence on the city.

In 1849, the gold fever was raging and that vast herd of gold seekers, known as the "Forty-niners," passed through Kansas City, the Gate-way to the Golden West. Then came the "Pike's Peak-ers," the pioneer land seekers, the Texas cattlemen and the large western ranchmen who made their headquarters here for a number of years. Their influence on Kansas City developed it and it has now become the greatest stock market in the world.

The greatest cities of the world have been seaports on account of maritime trade, but Kansas City, singularly situated in the center of the United States and so long on the border of organized government, was from its earliest days the West Port through which the East outflowed into that Terra Incognita beyond. As "bread cast upon the waters," all that flowed out, flowed back after many days or months or years. The French and Indian trappers, Spanish and Mexican traders, Oregon homesteaders and the "Fortyniners," and Texas cattlemen, all knew subconsciously that this place was destined to become the Great Central Market of the continent. Kansas City, too, has had its share of war, the Mormon war; the fearful Border war, the beginning of the terrible conflict between freedom and slavery, Union and Secession, and the Civil war.

The arrival of the Pacific railroad and the building of the Hannibal bridge, due mainly to the efforts of Col. Kersey Coates and Col. R. T. VanHorn, helped to arouse new and common interest and weld together the sundered community after the close of the Civil war. Then came the building of the Trans-continental railroads which Senator Benton had so long been advocating and which resulted in diverting the public attention from the maritime cities to the building up and developing of the great internal resources of the continent. With the coming of the railroads there came the decline in our great river commerce. Public attention, after forty years of disuse is again returning to the necessity of the improvement of the great rivers of the country, and the last action of the government deep water ways commission assures us that Kansas City will ere long see many steamboats

at the old levee again, and the youth of tomorrow as of yesterday may enjoy dancing on steamer decks on the Rhine of America.

The Kansas City Spirit, evolved from so many sources and influences, is something that every stranger feels in the air. Some day a monument must be erected to it that will typify the soul of this West Port, this maritime city on the border of the great prairies so long navigated only by the Prairie schooners, this Gate City at the geographical heart of the continent. A monument to the Kansas City Spirit will be a monument to the city's Past, Present and Future, the place which has become the City Beautiful toward which all Pilgrims in search of Happiness and Content, progress.

With the same civil spirit and pride that characterized the Florentines and Venetians and which developed Florence and Venice into great and powerful centers for art, science and politics, Kansas City will attain her highest usefulness and will be recognized as one of the cities of the world. ELIZABETH BUTLER GENTRY.

CHAPTER XXX.

KANSAS CITY IN PROPHECY.

Attempts to lift the veil and reveal the future are not peculiar to any age or nation. Ideas of prophecies are formed from the sacred writings and incline one to believe only in their authenticity; however in profane history may be found many utterances of prophetic lore and it awakens a keen interest to find in the annals of history prophecies undoubted in their fulfillment. The prophetic spirit is the poetry of life; a play of the imagination; again a logical deduction of a keen insight; again it is the basis of the desire itself, the region of our hopes and presentiments extends far beyond the limit of what we can know with certainty.

Nearly nineteen hundred years ago, Seneca, the celebrated Roman Stoic philosopher, predicted the discovery of America in a few poetic phrases. He said, "Ages will come in the fullness of years in which the ocean shall loose the chains of things and a mighty land shall lie open, and Typhoneus shall lay bare new realms; nor will there be an Ultima Thule."

Forecasts of wars with their results have been made most frequently, no doubt the insight of men of fine perceptions. The most notable was the utterance regarding the war for Independence and the declaration of freedom for the colonists, made by William Livingston, the famous "war governor" and the first governor of New Jersey, in 1776. Seven years before

the first mutterings of the American revolution, in 1768, Livingston gives a vivid word painting of things to come. He predicts in these words: "Liberty, religion and the sciences are on the wing to these shores. The finger of God points out a mighty empire to your sons. The land we possess is the gift of heaven to our fathers, and divine Providence seems to have decreed it to our latest posterity. The dawns in which the foundation of this mighty empire is to be laid by the establishment of a regular American constitution. All that has hitherto been done seems to be little besides the collection of materials for this glorious fabric. 'Tis time to put them together. The transfer of the European part of the family is so vast and our growth so swift that before seven years roll over our heads the first must be laid." Benjamin Franklin in his wisdom caught a gleam of the future when he wrote from England relative to the probable result of a war for Independence. These are his words, "New England alone can hold out for ages against this country, and if they are firm and united, seven years will win the day."

*

Thomas Jefferson certainly had visions of the fearful conflict brewing in his time and foreseen by him. A half century before our awful Civil strife with its attendant horrors, Jefferson warned his constituents when he said, "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. It is still in our power to direct the processes of emancipation and deportation in such slow degree as that the evil will wear off insensibly and their way be pari passu filled up with free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up." Many more instances might be cited of grave words foretelling by many years future happenings, which would make one ask, "How did they know-what mysteries knew they of-with whom were they in touch-with whom did they commune?"

To be interested in prophecies, it becomes necessary to know the individual who made the prophecy and to understand from his point of view why he predicted such a future. Thomas H. Benton was a famous man. He was one of the substantial statesmen of his period. For thirty years his presence was felt in the senate. Mr. Benton had a perception of things vital, which was as clear as the view of the mariner who, gazing across a calmstilled sea, finds warning of a storm. His view was not bounded by calendar records, whose signs anyone might read, but pierced the mists of futurity and saw the effects which present causes would produce. His foresight was sufficiently keen as shown in a letter written to Alexander Kayser of St. Louis, dated March 12, 1856, at Washington, D. C., in which he said: "I have work enough marked out to occupy the remainder of my life, and

of a kind to be pleasant and profitable to me, if not beneficial to a future. generation-which I think it may be. I propose to abridge the debates of Congress from 1789 to 1850-also to continue my history from 1850 to the day of my death. This is work enough for me, and of more dignity (to say nothing of anything else) than acting a part in a slavery agitation which is now the work of both parties, and which in my opinion is to end disastrously for the Union let which side will prevail. A new man unconnected with the agitation is what the country wants."

At a meeting of the council of the town of Kansas, May 4, 1854, a committee composed of Dr. Johnston Lykins, Milton J. Payne and William G. Barclay, was appointed to receive and entertain Senator Thomas H. Benton. He came and his speech was a prophecy concerning the greatness of a city at the Kaw's mouth. Senator Benton's prophecy is interesting because it has been fulfilled.

"There, gentlemen, where the rocky bluff meets and turns aside the sweeping current of this mighty river; here where the Missouri, after running its southward course for nearly 2,000 miles, turns eastward to the Mississippi, a large commercial and manufacturing community will congregate, and less than a generation will see a great city on these hills." Thus spoke a great prophet.

Again he tells us in his writings that over 20 years ago he stood upon a projecting rock where the town of Randolph is now built, and pointing to this place, remarked, "There is the point that is destined to become the largest city west of St. Louis." Senator Benton was fully imbued with the masterful, overpowering spirit of the West. He was foremost of all other great statesmen in hastening the development of the region west of the Mississippi river; during the entire thirty years of his public career, he was regarded as pre-eminently the representative of the pioneer interests of the West. He was the first to demand pre-emptive right to actual settlers and the giving of homesteads to impoverished but industrious people. He was far in advance of the government in recognizing its obligations to the people, who have more than fulfilled the Senator's grandest dreams of advancement. by forming a galaxy of states in the territory that he took under his especial protection when he first became a national law-maker. When he proposed postal routes by which to reach the far western possessions, he was ridiculed by the conservative statesmen of the East, but when he had suffered defeat after defeat he finally won. He first proposed the Pacific railway as a national necessity. He then was advanced in years, and it was not uncommon. to hear intelligent senators and representatives of the East refer to the Pacific

railroad dream of Senator Benton as the project of "the old man gone in his head."

Senator Benton not only advocated a trans-continental railway and insisted that its construction was an inevitable and imperative duty sooner or later, but he recognized the best route for the Pacific railway. In one of his many speeches on the subject he declared that he had no faith in the views of the engineers who had been sent across the mountains at the different points to report upon the possibility of constructing highways. He said that the only engineer who did not lie was the buffalo, and the buffalo proved that the better climate was northward by coming south to graze in the summer and returning northward to winter.

In this Senator Benton was clearly right, although his visions were generally rejected at that time, and when finally a Pacific railroad was forced upon the government in the Civil war to prevent an independent empire from being established on the Pacific coast, the least desirable of the three routes was accepted-by Bridger pass to the Salt lake, and thence westward across the Sierra Nevada mountains, making the great line traverse a thousand miles on which there has never been a green field, and where the snows of the Sierras make railroading possible in winter only by scores of miles of snow sheds, while the Northern Pacific line is possible winter and summer, and is hundreds of miles nearer to the commerce of the East. Many have performed individual feats of heroism in aiding in the upbuilding of the unbroken line of commonwealths that now spans the continent from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, but no one man has accomplished a tithe of the great achievements of Thomas Hart Benton in educating the government to appreciate its great western possessions and in forcing the early advancement that has made that whole region develop into fruitfulness and plenty. In Senator Benton's time the Rocky mountains were considered an insuperable barrier to intercourse between the Atlantic ocean and the Pacific ocean. He would have startled the country and the world sixty years ago when he declared that the way to India was not across the Atlantic ocean but across the Pacific, had his utterance not been regarded as that of a blind, unreasoning enthusiast. This was his declaration: "There is the East; and there is India." This sentence once jeered as the utterance of a dreamer is now the single inscription on the beautiful bronze statue of Thomas H. Benton in Lafayette Park, St. Louis, Missouri.

William Gilpin, like Senator Benton, was a man of the West. Both with tongue and pen he foretold its destinies. Closely identified with John C. Fremont, Senator Benton, Lewis L. Linn and other men of note in the forming of Mississippi history, William Gilpin was among the foremost in his varied achievements during his long period of public service. Born of