Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/344

328 was opposition to the ratification. Lane at that time represented Umatilla County and was twenty-three years old. On Friday evening, December 8, 1865, the house amended the verbiage of the resolution and passed the same by a vote of thirty in its favor and four against—the negative votes being cast by Beall, Cox, Fay, and Lane. The senate refused to concur in this amendment or to appoint conferees, and on December 11, 1865, the house reconsidered the same, and passed the resolution as it came from the senate by the same vote. On December 11, 1865, the secretary of state, Samuel E. May, was instructed to telegraph Secretary Seward that the legislature had that day ratified the amendment. The legislature adjourned December 19, 1865.

At this distance it seems impossible to understand the degree of feeling that existed at the time when this great amendment to the federal constitution, recognizing and in a sense making legal that which the fortunes of war had settled, was under discussion. At this same special session a memorial to congress was adopted praying that Walla Walla County, Washington, might be incorporated in the State of Oregon, so that the boundaries of the state might conform to those embraced by the constitution as adopted, making Snake River to the mouth of the Owyhee River the northeastern boundary line, as specified in Article XVI.

James H. D. Henderson, the candidate of the union party, elected to congress in 1864 over James K. Kelly, democrat, took his seat March 4, 1865, serving on the committees on Pacific railroads, mines and mining, and Indian affairs, and as a member of the special committee appointed to consider appropriate resolutions and services in memory of the death of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Henderson died at Eugene in October, 1885, at the advanced age of seventy-five years, respected by his fel-