I have paid many visits to this Post since the far-away days of ’61, but never have the scenes and incidents of that period been so vividly recalled as during the present occasion. The white tents, the trampled grass, the groups of men, half uniformed, half in citizens’ dress; the straggling stacks of arms, the marching columns, the orderlies coming and going, the notes of bugles and the music of fife and drum—these scenes and sounds seem to belong to the turbulent past rather than to the peaceful and prosperous present. The alien and unfamiliar feature is this great tent, and the speech-making within its canvas walls. The days of ’61 were not distinguished for talk. They were days of action. The speech-maker did his work then, as now, but not here on this reserve. I fancy that if “Old Prince,” that terror of the Kansas recruits, had caught a man making a speech on the reservation, he would have organized a drumhead court-martial at once, for his prompt trial and execution. The place and the surroundings, as I have said, are familiar. And yet how vast the changes that have been wrought since the mustering here twenty-two years ago! It is doubtful if the adult male population of Kansas at that time greatly exceeded the numbers present at this reunion. The poor, harassed and feeble Territory has grown to be one of the greatest States in the Union, rich in all the elements of substantial prosperity; richer still in the imperial manhood of a citizenship which includes representatives of every regiment in the Union army. Plodding along in all the walks and ways of our now peaceful and quiet Kansas life are men who have fought on every battle-field of the civil war; men who were active participants in all the events of the greatest and most stirring drama of the world’s history; men whose personal recollections embrace the story of every march, camp, bivouac, skirmish and battle in which the armies of the Union engaged; men whose blood has been poured out in every combat where patriotism maintained the supremacy of our flag. Is it any wonder that Kansas has, in the nearly two decades that have elapsed since the war closed, grown to be one of the greatest, most intelligent, and most prosperous of the States? Of what achievements, in the enterprises of civil life requiring courage, energy and resourceful vigor, is such blood and bone, and heart and brain, as make up her population, not capable? From the most sterile and reluctant soil a manhood of this order would wrest plenty. Is it wonderful that, when earth and air combine to aid its labors, this population should have made Kansas one of the greatest and most prosperous States in the Union?