know. I rejoice that I live in this age, that I am his contemporary.

What a contrast, when we turn to that political party which is so
anxiously shuffling him and his plot out of its way, and looking
around for some available slave holder, perhaps, to be its candidate,
at least for one who will execute the Fugitive Slave Law, and all
those other unjust laws which he took up arms to annul!

Insane! A father and six sons, and one son-in-law, and several
more men besides,--as many at least as twelve disciples,--all struck
with insanity at once; while the same tyrant holds with a firmer
gripe than ever his four millions of slaves, and a thousand sane
editors, his abettors, are saving their country and their bacon!
Just as insane were his efforts in Kansas. Ask the tyrant who is
his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane? Do the thousands
who know him best, who have rejoiced at his deeds in Kansas, and
have afforded him material aid there, think him insane? Such a use
of this word is a mere trope with most who persist in using it,
and I have no doubt that many of the rest have already in silence
retracted their words.

Read his admirable answers to Mason and others. How they are
dwarfed and defeated by the contrast! On the one side, half-brutish,
half-timid questioning; on the other, truth, clear as lightning,
crashing into their obscene temples. They are made to stand with
Pilate, and Gesler, and the Inquisition. How ineffectual their
speech and action! and what a void their silence! They are but
helpless tools in this great work. It was no human power that
gathered them about this preacher.