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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Joseph Lane Biography LANE,
Joseph (1801-81). An American pioneer and soldier, born in Buncombe Co., N.
C. He removed to Kentucky in 1814 and two years later crossed the Ohio into
Warrick Co., Ind. He was elected to the Legislature in 1822 while still under
age and was consequently obliged to wait some time before he could take his
seat. From that time until the outbreak of the Mexican War he was a member of
one branch or the other of the Indiana Legislature, but in 1846 he resigned from
the State Senate to enlist as a private. Soon afterward he was elected colonel
of the Second Indiana Volunteers and in 1846 was commissioned brigadier general.
He was wounded at the battle of Buena Vista and at Huamantla defeated General
Santa Anna, for which service he received the brevet rank of major general
in the regular army. He was very successful against the guerrilla bands which
infested the country and became known as the Marion
of the Mexican War. At the close of the war President Polk
appointed him Governor of Oregon Territory, and, when President
Taylor removed him two years later (1850), the people elected him delegate
to Congress-an office which he held until Oregon's admission to the Union in
1859, when he was chosen to the United States Senate, where he served from
February, 1859, to March, 1861. (He also acted as Governor of Oregon from May 16
to 19, 1853.) During President Pierce's administration
he commanded the troops sent to suppress an uprising of the Indians. In 1852 the
Indiana Democratic State Convention advocated his nomination for the presidency,
and in 1860 he ran for Vice President on the ticket with John
C. Breckenridge, Upon his defeat he retired from public life to his ranch in
Oregon, where he lived in comparative poverty until his death. The New International
Encyclopaedia, Vol.
XIII
(New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920)
533.
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