I never did think he was right well balanced.

But I don't blame my husband, for I do think that when that man gets his head full of a new notion, he can out-talk a machine.

He'll make anybody believe in that notion that'll listen to him ten minutes--why I do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe in it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could see his eyes tally and watch his hands explain.

What a head he has got! When he got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them, away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime get a law made stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day -- it was somehow that way--mercy how the man would have made money! Negroes would have gone up to four prices.

But after he'd spent money and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps of negroes all contracted for, and everything going along just right, he couldn't get the laws passed and down the whole thing tumbled.