Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water

by Marc Reisner

Capitalists, newspaper editors, lonely pioneers, local emperors of Gilpin’s ilk—all had a stake in retreating deserts. But they were not the only ones. Abolitionists, for example, did, too. In the 1850s, when Kansas seemed likely to be the next state admitted to the Union, something approaching warfare broke out between those who would have made it a free state and those who would have tolerated slavery. Horace Greeley, an avowed abolitionist with considerable interest in the West, found the climate in Kansas wonderful and the rainfall abundant. In such a state, Greeley said in his influential editorials, a 160-acre homestead could produce an ample living. A plantation, of course, demanded more land—but if Kansas was full of yeoman farmers working 160-acre plots, plantations and slaves were not likely to intrude.