Joseph Lane had already been an Indiana state representative and senator, fought in the Mexican-American War, and attained the rank of major-general when President James K. Polk appointed him governor of the newly created Oregon Territory in 1848.

Lane accepted the appointment and set out for Oregon. He arrived in Oregon City on March 3, 1849 to take the reigns from the provisional government that preceded him.

One of his first official duties was to prosecute the Whitman Massacre trial. Lane’s governor duties lasted only until June 1850, after which he served as Oregon’s delegate to the U.S. Congress until statehood in 1859. At that point he became Oregon’s first senator. Lane County is named after him.

Republican Rutherford B. Hayes had won Oregon’s popular vote in the presidential election of 1876, and the state’s three Republican electors marked their ballots for Hayes.

John Watts, one of the Republican electors, however, was a postmaster, an appointed position he did not resign until after his election to the Electoral College. The Democrats did not like this maneuver. The U.S. Constitution requires that electors not be elected or appointed officials.

Governor Grover, a Democrat, declared Watts ineligible for the elector position and replaced him with C. A. Cronin, the top Democrat vote getter in the presidential elector race. Cronin unilaterally declared two votes for Hayes and one vote, his, for Samuel J. Tilden, the Democratic candidate for President. The Republican electors disputed the legitimacy of the new appointment and cast their three ballots for the Hayes ticket as they had planned.

Several other states’ electoral college returns were also disputed in the close 1876 presidential election, so the U.S. Congress established an Electoral Commission to sort things out.

On February 23, 1877 the commission voted on the conflicting Oregon returns. The states’ ballots were awarded to Hayes, who eventually eked out the election by one electoral vote, 185-184.