Kansas Senator James Henry Lane had been a participant in the conflict over "Bleeding Kansas" and then when statehood was achieved served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He entered the U.S. Senate in 1861 and served during the war simultaneously and controversially as a Union Army general. In the post-war Senate, he had been accused of being too receptive to President Johnson's policies and this, along with mental illness, led to him shooting himself in his carriage near Leavenworth ten days early. He lingered fatally wounded for ten days but died on this day in Leavenworth, aged fifty-two. (By John Osborne)
"Lane, Hon. James Henry," The American Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1866 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873), 422.
