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- [missing text… 1854(?).] There was a country
- (now Kansas) marked on our old maps
- as the “great American desert.” It was
- contended by many that the rains were
- so infrequent & the prairies so parched
- that no considerable population could
- be sustained by such land in such a
- climate. Again it was urged with great
- force that the slave holders had every advant
- age ˄overus since the slave-holding state of Mis-
- souri bounded the entire eastern side of Kansas
