River Wars of 1855–1856, being wounded in the shoulder at the Battle of Evans Creek. Vice-presidential nomination and political decline In 1860, the Democratic Party split on the issue of slavery. Pro-slavery Democrats from the South left the national convention and nominated their own candidates: John C. Breckinridge for president, and Lane for vice president. This "Southern Democrat" ticket was defeated. With his defeat for vice president and the beginning of the Civil War, Lane's political career ended. His pro-slavery views had been controversial in Oregon; his pro-secessionist views were wholly unacceptable. Lane became notorious for an exchange with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee on his last day in the Senate. Johnson had spoken in favor of the Union and denounced secession. A referendum on secession in Tennessee failed shortly thereafter, generally credited to Johnson's speech. On March 2, Lane accused Johnson of having "sold his birthright" as a Southerner. Johnson responded by suggesting that Lane was a hypocrite for so accusing Johnson when Lane so staunchly supported a movement of active treason against the United States. Later years Lane had taken a land claim of located just north of Roseburg, Oregon, in 1851. He later purchased a ranch located about east of that town, which he owned for a number of years before selling to a son. Lane also constructed a home overlooking the South Umpqua River; after his Senate term, he retired there in 1861. Although openly sympathetic to the Southern rebellion in the Civil War, he remained home on his ranch; he did not participate in the fighting, nor did he make a return to politics after that date. He has been accused of keeping a personal slave as late as 1878, an assumption based on the race of the African-Indian orphan, named Peter Waldo, he raised from the age of two to seventeen. Lane was baptized as a Roman Catholic in 1867, and his family was reared in the same faith, but he renounced that faith shortly before his death. Death and legacy Lane died at his home on April 19, 1881. His body was interred in the Roseburg Memorial Gardens. General Lane's daughter's home in Roseburg, where he spent much of his time, is now a museum maintained by the Douglas County Historical Society. Known as the Creed Floed House, the Floed–Lane House, or simply the Joseph Lane House, it is on the National Register of