He had now been eight months in Kansas.  He came out of the Mexican war with a good reputation as a brilliant and dashing officer, and a man of approved courage.  As a politician he had been highly favored by the people of Indiana.  He was in the convention that nominated President Pierce.  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 above, appealed to a gentlemen whose high position in public life and kindly and conservative temper eminently qualify him to speak, and this is what he says: