He wanted it to be simple, with a single star rising from the clouds at the base of a field. He served as secretary of the state senate during the first legislative session following statehood.ĭuring this time he designed a seal for the state. The Democrats refused to sign, leading to a bitter campaign for ratification. to a crowd of yelling miscreants, who would have been glad to have pitched me into the Missouri, I suppose, as they have done with several Republicans in the last few years.” Ingalls feared that if the majority of the convention representatives were Democrats, “Kansas may be a Slave State after all.” That was not the case, however, and on July 29, a new free-state document was adopted and signed by the 35 Republicans attending the convention. Ingalls wrote his father a few days after being elected as a delegate in June 1859 describing Atchison as “an old stronghold of pro-slavery democracy.” He wrote that he was surprised by the win, considering every other county along the Missouri River elected proslavery Democrats. Ingalls was a member of the 1859 Wyandotte Constitutional Convention, which produced the constitution under which Kansas now functions. He believed in Kansas, and wrote that 'the aspiration of Kansas is to reach the unattainable its dream is the realization of the impossible.' Ingalls chose to live in Kansas because he believed the state had a bright and promising future. Senator from 1873 - 1891, coined the phrase Ad astra per aspera (to the stars through difficulties) that became the Kansas state motto.īorn in Massachusetts in 1833, Ingalls came to Sumner, Kansas Territory, in 1858 and eventually settled in Atchison to practice law.

Ingalls, who represented Kansas as a U.S. Ingalls, 'is the core and kernel of the country, containing the germs of its growth and the quickening ideas essential to its perpetuity.' An orator, scholar, lawyer, and statesman, known for his keen sarcasm and quick wit, Ingalls was, at age 26, a primary force behind the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention that brought about Kansas statehood. Married: Anna Louisa Cheeseborough, 1865. Born: December 29, 1833, Middleton, Massachusetts.

John james