rce. He was in Congress at the time of the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska bill, and aided in its enactment. He was the friend of
Stephen A. Douglas. Yet he came to Kansas a man of broken fortunes. He
was bankrupt in reputation, bankrupt in property, and bankrupt in
morals, and he came away from unhappy family relations. Notwithstanding,
he brought with him boundless ambition, and a consciousness in his own
heart that he possessed genius that might lift him up to the highest
pinnacle of honor. His first effort was to reorganize that political
party that was in control of the Government at Washington, and that he
had so faithfully served in Indiana. As respects slavery, he probably
would have said with Mr. Douglas that he did not care whether it was
voted up or voted down. But his effort fell stillborn and dead. Dr. John
H. Stringfellow was an old Whig, and so also were many of the
Pro-slavery leaders, and they would not hear to it that there should be
any parties known save the Pro-slavery and Free State parties. The Free
State men were equally averse to making any division in their own ranks.
Mr. Lane was to choose, and he did choose _with a vengeance_.

Bad men usually pay this compliment to a righteous life, that they seek
to conceal their wicked deeds and wear the outside seeming of virtue.
But this strange man never pretended to be anything else than just what
he was. He displayed such audacious boldness as gave an air of
respectability even to his wickedness.

His public speaking did not belong to any school of oratory known among
men; yet, if to sway the people as a tempest bends to its will a field
of waving grain, be oratory, then was Mr. Lane, in the highest sense of
the word, an orator. He spoke once in Chicago when the people were most
excited over the Kansas troubles. A great crowd came to hear, and he
swayed them to his will, as only such men as Henry Ward Beecher and
Patrick Henry have been able to do. But this gospel was the gospel of
hate. Implacable, unforgiving hate was his only gospel.

At last this man, at once both great and wicked, having attained the
highest honors the people had to bestow, died by his own hand. The
people believed that he had gone wrong and betrayed them, and they
withdrew from him their favor. Mr. Lane loved popularity more than he
loved heaven, and he shot himself through the brain.

The writer, unwilling alone to take the responsibility of expressing
such a judgment as the