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.