After his re-election, Lane secured another twenty-thousand-dollar appropriation to build the road asked for by the legislature, from Scottsburg to connect with the former road to Rogue River,[1] besides other appropriations sufficient to justify his boast that he had obtained more money for his territory than any other delegate had ever done.[2]
I have already spoken of the division of the territory according to the petitions of the inhabitants of the territory north of the Columbia, and a memorial of the legislature of 1852–3. This measure also Lane advocated, upon the ground that the existing territory of Oregon was of too great an area, and encouraged the democratic party in Oregon to persist in memorializing congress to remove the obnoxious federal officers appointed by a whig president.[3]
The spring of 1853 brought the long-hoped-for change in the federal appointments of the territory. Two weeks after the inauguration of Pierce as president, Lane wrote his friends in Oregon that all the
- ↑ The survey of this road was begun in October 1854, by Lieut Withers, U. S. A., and completed, after another appropriation had been obtained, in 1858, by Col. Joseph Hooker, then employed by Capt. Mendall of the topographical engineers. Hooker was born in Hadley, Mass., in 1819, graduated at West Point in 1837; was adjutant at that post in 1841, and regimental adjutant in 1846. He rose to the rank of brevet colonel in the Mexican war, after which he resigned and went to farming in Sonoma County, Cal., in 1853, losing all his savings. When the civil war broke out he was living in Rogue River Valley, and at once offered his services to the government, and made an honorable record. He died at Garden City, Long Island, in October 1879. Or. Statesman, June 3, 1861, and Aug. 18, 1862; Bowles' Far West, 453; S. F. Bulletin, Nov. 1, 1879.
- ↑ Lane's Autobiography, MS., 131. For his territory, and not for himself. Lane's ambition was for glory, and not for money. He did compel congress to amend the organic act which gave the delegate from Oregon only $2,500 mileage, and to give him the same mileage enjoyed by the California senators and representatives, according to the law of 1818 on this subject. In the debate it came out that Thurston had received $900 over the legal sum, 'by what authority the committee were unable to learn.' Cong. Globe, 1851–2, 1377.
- ↑ The territorial officers chosen by the assembly were A. Bush, printer; L. F. Grover, auditor; C. N. Terry, librarian; J. D. Boon, treasurer.
gate. It was thought that a route might be found which would avoid the Umpqua cañon; but after expending one quarter of the appropriation in surveying, the remainder was applied to improving the cañon and the Grave Creek hills. The contracts were let to Lindsay Applegate and Jesse Roberts. Cong. Globe, 1852–3, app. 332; Or. Statesman, Nov. 8, 1853.
