Biography
The son of Amos Lane, Lane was born in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where he practiced law when he was admitted to the bar in 1840. He was a U.S. congressman from Indiana (1853–1855) where he voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
He moved to the Kansas Territory in 1855. He immediately became involved in the abolitionist movement in Kansas, and was often called the leader of the Jayhawkers, a leading Free Soil militant group. After the Free Soilers succeeded in getting Kansas admitted to the Union in 1861 as a free state, Lane was elected as one of the new state's first U.S. Senators, and reelected in 1865. During that time he presided over the Topeka convention.
Read more about this topic: James Henry Lane (Union General)
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“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
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