He contributed perhaps as largely as any other one man to the victory of the Free-State policy, and became as violent in his hostility to the Democratic party as he had formerly been in its advocacy.

When his State was admitted to the Union in 1861 he was rewarded with the honor of being one of her first senators in Congress.
His course in the Senate, until the time of his defection, had been specially marked for its aggressiveness in support of the war and the destruction of the institution of slavery.

He was profoundly attached to Mr.Lincoln and had received many marks of his friendship.

The motive for his strange course under President Johnson was never clearly disclosed.

He was in the full vigor of life when he closed it with his own hands, being a few weeks beyond his fifty-first birthday.
The Administration of Mr.Johnson had, before the death of Mr.Lane, been unhappily associated in the popular mind with another suicide.
A few days before the assembling of Congress Mr.Preston King, collector of the port of New York, had drowned himself in the Hudson River by leaping from a ferry-boat.