Joseph Lane (14 December 1801 – 19 April 1881) was Governor of Oregon (D) from 3 March 1849 to 18 June 1850 (succeeding George Abernethy and preceding Kintzing Prichette) and from 16 to 19 May 1853 (succeeding John P. Gaines and preceding George Law Curry), and a US Senator from Oregon from 14 February 1859 to 4 March 1861 (preceding James Nesmith).
Biography[]
Joseph Lane was born in Buncombe County, North Carolina in 1801, and his family moved to Kentucky when he was still a child. He moved to Evansville, Indiana in 1820, and he was largely self-educated. From the 1820s to the 1830s, he served in the State House of Representatives as a Democrat, and he then served in the State Senate from 1839 to 1840 and from 1844 to 1846. He served as a Brigadier-General of volunteers during the Mexican-American War, lifting the siege of Puebla. After his return home, he was appointed Governor of the Oregon Territory, and, from 1851 to 1859, he was the Oregon territorial delegate to the US House of Representatives. In 1860, he was nominated as the Southern Democrats' vice-presidential candidate alongside presidential candidate John C. Breckinridge, and his pro-slavery views and sympathy for the Confederacy during the American Civil War ended his political career. He died in 1881, and his son Lafayette Lane went on to serve as a representative, while his grandson Harry Lane was also a Senator.