COLONEL E. D. BAKER.

 

            WHEN alone, sometimes, the present vanishes, and from out of the soundless past stately forms stalk into the present, their sovereign faces wearing the calm of the long ago, but their kindly eyes seem aglow with memories of other days and other scenes which once filled the full measure of man's duty here and in which, in the splendor of their manhood, they bore their part.

            Among them there always comes the shade of E. D. Baker. It is natural that it should be so, for to earnest boyhood he was always the ideal man, among the very foremost men who ever lived on the Pacific coast; who ever went from the Pacific coast and died for his country. About five feet eleven inches in height, and built up to about one hundred and eighty pounds ; his face was that of Pericles, his eyes in repose sombered like a hawk's in his wide circles over earth or ocean in the afternoon sunbeams, but blazing like an eagle's when aroused -- that was the picture he made in his daily life among men.

            But when on the rostrum some theme worthy of him called him to its championship; then there was a transformation scene, and listening and watching more than once I have said to myself: "It is as when Moses and Elias were transfigured." Face, eyes, hands were all alive, his voice took on a shrill cadence that carried men before it at will, and each sentence closed either ablaze with lightnings and deep roll of the thunders that his soul had called up, or with a rhythm like a lofty anthem. When thus awakened he was all energy, alive through and through, the ideal of Cicero's orator materialized : the ideal man of all the earth.

            At that time he was a great lawyer ; he had been a brilliant soldier ; he was fitted for any emergency. His politics were antagonized by the controlling political power that then ruled the Golden State ; his assailants were sometimes the brilliant men of the opposition, sometimes the canaille, but he met them all, he mastered the learned and eloquent by his superior learn-

48 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

ing and eloquence, and the coarser class by showing them, to their discomfiture, the advantage in warfare of a Damascus blade in a skilled hand over a cleaver wielded by a boor.

            He pronounced the eulogy over the remains of the dead Broderick, and the state was melted to tears ; he made a speech in New York City in that portentous late autumn of 1860 and set the hearts of his listeners ablaze ; he heard the closing- twenty minutes of the speech of Breckenridge in the senate, in justification of his giving up his place as a senator of the United States and joining the armies that had been marshaled to destroy the Union, and at its close at once took the floor, and when he finished the brilliant Breckenridge as a masterful debator was merely a memory. He was the close friend and adviser of President Lincoln ; he raised and trained a regiment, was sent against an enemy which outnumbered his command four to one ; the reinforcements promised him were never sent ; so when next morning the battle was joined, he, standing, as was his wont, with right hand in the breast of his coat, received a volley, at the same instant was struck by four bullets in his breast, either one of which would have been fatal.

            Edward Dickinson Baker was born in London. His father was a Quaker teacher, but his mother was the sister of Captain Thomas Dickinson, who fought side by side with Collingwood at Trafalgar, that Collingwood who would have divided the honors of that great day with Nelson had not the latter died just as the thunders of battle grew still.

            Colonel Baker did not receive school advantages in schools, but his father was a teacher, and looked carefully after his education; and gave him that better education, in some respects, of taking him to all famous places possible and filling his mind with their stories and legends. He saw the pageant of the funeral of Lord Nelson, and its splendor and solemnity lingered with him and influenced all his life.

            When he was five years old his father removed to Philadelphia, and spent ten years in that city as a teacher.

            What Baker read he ever afterward knew. He did not seem to have any conscious effort of memory ; he at once stored his mind and it was there, on call, ever after.

COLONEL E. D. BAKER. 49

            He early developed the fact that he was a natural orator. He studied law and became eminent at once. The Black Hawk war came on. He fought through that war ; then came the Mexican war, and then again he enlisted. He was only nineteen years of age when he was admitted to the bar of Illinois.

            In 1835 he removed to Springfield, Illinois, and he must have been rated a fine lawyer then, for among his partners at different times were Albert D. Bledsoe, subsequently assistant secretary of war in the southern Confederacy ; Joseph Hewitt, and the venerable Judge Stephen P. Logan, whom Illinois people still declare was the greatest lawyer ever known in the state. He had among his contemporaries Lincoln, Douglas, McDougal, Logan, Trumball, Stuart, and others of scarcely less note.

            In those days Colonel Baker used to write a good deal of poetry. Much of it was fine. It was transposing into rhyme the natural rhythm and eloquence in his soul.

            Colonel Baker was in Congress when the Mexican war broke out, and he hastened from Washington to his home in Illinois and quickly raised a regiment of volunteers, which he led to the Rio Grande. He was chosen by General Taylor as bearer of dispatches to the war department and proceeded to Washington.

            Congress was in session and as he had not resigned his seat in the house, he availed himself of his privilege as a member to speak. By general consent one of the most important bills relating to the soldiers was made a special order, and the chance was given Colonel Baker to discuss it. Having brought no civilian's clothes with him, he spoke in his military uniform, and so rapidly that the reporters were unable to make a good report. It made a most profound impression, and this was accentuated by Colonel Baker's recitation at the close of a poem in memory of his comrades who had died in the unhealthy camp on the Rio Grande.

            We give one verse of it, because of its style and because another poem in the same measure a few years later made and still makes a profound impression. It was as follows :

50 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

"Where rolls the rushing Rio Grande,

Here peacefully they sleep ;

Far from their native Northern land,

Far from the friends who weep.

No rolling drum disturbs their rest,

Beneath the sandy sod ;

The mould lies heavy on each breast

The spirit is with God."

            He immediately after resigned his seat in Congress, to return to Mexico. His regiment was transferred to the department of General Scott, and although he missed Buena Vista, he took part in the capture of Vera Cruz and greatly distinguished himself at Cerro Gordo. In that battle, when General Shields was struck down and the brigade faltered for want of a leader, Colonel Baker took in the situation at once, and shouting to his regiment, "Come on !" he ordered the whole brigade to advance. For his gallantry and skill, General Scott continued Colonel Baker in command of the brigade.

            When the fierce debate came on on the question of admitting California to statehood. Colonel Baker was in Congress and urged its admission. When in reply Venable and Toombs referred to Baker's foreign birth. Baker fiercely replied, and closed with these fateful words :

            "If the time should come when disunion rules the hour and discord is to reign supreme, I shall again be ready to give the best blood in my veins to my country's cause."

            When President Taylor died he was still in Congress and pronounced a most beautiful eulogy on the dead general and president. After reviewing his career from a captaincy in the war with Great Britain up through his career as commander in Mexico, he said :

            "Mr. Speaker, the character upon which Death has just set his seal is filled with beautiful and impressive contrasts : A warrior, he loved peace ; a man of action, he sighed for retirement. Amid the events which crowned him with fame, he counseled a withdrawal of our troops. And whether at the head of armies or in the chair of state, he appeared as utterly

COLONEL E. D. BAKER. 51

unconscious of his great renown as if no banners had dropped at his word, or as if no gleam of glory shone through his whitened hair."

            In 1852 Colonel Baker, with his entire family, migrated to California and settled in San Francisco.

            California was indeed a new field for him. He had seen stormy political times in Illinois ; had passed through many a fierce campaign where a good deal that was brutal was exhibited. He had been in Congress a potent advocate of the ad- mission of California, but he did not know that from the hour of its admission, the preparations for a secession of the south had been going on, that in California many of the prominent men from the old South were in the movement

            Broderick, by his magnetism and power, was fighting his way; when he won his party divided, and by the ''chivalry' wing he was marked as an enemy and put down for slaughter when the time should be ripe. Baker, as the most conspicuous Republican, repeatedly canvassed the state.

            He was fiercely assailed ; with every assault his voice grew louder and clearer, his fame took on a higher and higher stature. His answers to coarse invective were clarion calls for enlightenment and all-embracing freedom, until the men who "came to scoff went away to pray." His voice was a clear tenor and when in full volume seemed to fill all space with music.

            The modern schools have extended their studies ; the world is filled with modern books, with the result that the graduates' learning has been widened, but it sometimes lacks thoroughness. Four score years ago the ancient classics were insisted on in the schools until, at least with some students, they were so assimilated that they were part of their lives and gave color to all their intellectual efforts. It was so with Col. Baker.

            One of his greatest triumphs was in the mining camp of Goodyear's Bar high up on the Yuba and amid some of the sublimest of California mountains. Here were six hundred placer miners, and very few women. At the election the year before Colonel Baker went there only one Republican vote was cast. Baker said he would go and reinforce that voter.

            Standing on a carpenter's bench in front of a saloon he

52 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

began his speech. There was a large sprinkling of Irishmen in the crowd. The whole camp was present, but it had been whispered around and it was understood that there should be no applause.

            Baker spoke for half an hour, his voice being the only sound heard. But that was the year when the anti-foreign Know Nothing party was in full force in California. When Baker reached that part of his speech, he gave a word painting of Reilly's Irish regiment in battle in Mexico, as he had watched it. When at the very climax he pointed to a staff from which the Stars and Stripes had been lowered, and passing from the description of the battle scene he delivered an apostrophe upon the flag.

            The crowd had grown very restless under the enchantment of his eloquence, and as he paused for a moment, a mighty yell as of a horde of wild Indians was started, and still yelling, but with tears running down their cheeks, a rush was made to grasp and bear away in triumph in their arms the speaker. The bench was overthrown, those upon it were pitched headlong upon the heads of those below, but no one was hurt. Then there was a night of it.

            On that occasion Baker justified what Stanley said of him in his funeral eulogy over his body "How irresistible he was when he deprived men of their reason as he overwhelmed them in admiration of his transcendant genius."

            Colonel Baker's triumphs at the bar that wonderful old- day California bar were, if possible, greater than on the rostrum. When it looked as though Cora, who killed Richardson, could get no lawyer to defend him, so fierce was public opinion, Baker went to his defense, and in his argument to the jury gave his reasons in these words :

            "The profession to which we belong is, of all others, fearless of public opinion. It has ever stood up against the tyranny of monarchs on the one hand, and the tyranny of public opinion on the other.

            "And if, as the humblest among them, it became me to instance myself, I may say with a bold heart, and I do say it with a bold heart, that there is not in all this world the wretch

COLONEL E. D. BAKER. 53

so humble, so guilty, so despairing, so torn with avenging furies, so pursued by the arm of the law, so hunted to cities of refuge, so fearful of life, so afraid of death there is no wretch so steeped in all the agonies of vice and crime, that I would not have a heart to listen to his cry and a tongue to speak in his defense, though round his head all the wrath of public opinion should gather and rage and roar and roll as the ocean rolls around the rock."

            When California celebrated the laying of the first Atlantic cable, Baker was the orator in San Francisco. His oration was illuminated all the way through with the lightning flashes of his genius and eloquence.

            No finer oration was ever delivered in any country than was Baker's, no finer from Demosthenes down to Lincoln's Gettysburg speech ; no more enchanting eloquence was ever listened to.

            Baker pronounced the funeral eulogy over Broderick. Never had such a host thronged to a funeral in California. The crowd was measured by acres. Of the oration, Edward Stanley said :

            "I have read no effort of that character, called out by such an event, so admirable, so touching, so worthy the sweet eloquence of Baker. It should crown him with immortality."

            Of it George Wilkes wrote :

            "At the foot of the coffin stood the priest, at its head, and so he could gaze fully on the face of his dead friend, stood the fine figure of the orator. For minutes after the vast throng had settled itself to hear his words, the orator did not speak. He did not look in the coffin nay, neither to the right nor left ; but the gaze of his fixed eye was turned within his mind and the tear was on his cheek. Then, when the silence was most intense, his tremulous tones rose like a wail and with an uninterrupted stream of lofty, burning and pathetic words he so penetrated and possessed the hearts of the sorrowing multitude that there was not one cheek less moist than his own. When he had finished the multitude broke into an agonized response of sobs."

            A rough man who was there told me that when Colonel

54 AS I REMEMBER THEM.

Baker stretched out his arms over the casket and said : "Men of California, the man whose body lies before you was your senator," every hat was doffed in an instant.

            In February, 1860, Colonel Baker, by invitation of Oregon friends, removed to that state.

            At that time the state was solidly Democratic and there were many great Democrats there to hold the state in line. Colonel Baker made a thorough canvass, speaking in every camp, town, and city, with the result that the next January he was elected United States senator.

            On his way to Washington he, in San Francisco, made a speech that fairly electrified that city and the whole state. In New York he made a marvelous speech. His most noted speeches in Washington were first, his reply to Senator Judah P. Benjamin, then to Senator Breckenridge. Those speeches must be read in their entirety to be fully appreciated.

            On the forenoon of that day of the Breckenridge speech, Colonel Baker had been out drilling his regiment. He went to the capitol, lay down on a lounge in a cloak room, and fell asleep. Sumner and a few others thought that while Baker could prepare a fine speech and deliver it splendidly, he could not speak impromptu. A senator woke him, explained that Breckenridge was making a fearful speech, and asked him if he would reply to it.

            He promptly consented, arose and entered the senate chamber in his uniform. He carried the senate and the galleries by storm. When, near the close, he referred to the sneering question of Breckenridge, asking where men could be found to go to the subjugation of the south, after saying what the states would do, Baker said: "The most peaceable man in this body may stamp his foot upon this senate chamber floor, as of old a warrior and a senator did, and from that single tramp will spring forth the armed legions." Just then the scabbard of his sword struck the floor, ringing through the hall, and a mighty thrill struck the listeners.

            Colonel Baker, from the old Illinois days, had been one of the most trusted of Lincoln's friends. When the first inauguration of President Lincoln came, it was Colonel Baker who

COLONEL E. D. BAKER. 55

introduced him to the throng that had gathered to the inaugural ceremonies.

            After General McClellan had been appointed to the supreme command of the army of the Potomac, President Lincoln sent Baker with an important message to McClellan. The men met and measured each other, and a few days later Colonel Baker said to a friend : : "I am going to take my command into one battle to show that I am not afraid. If I live through it, I will then resign, for things do not suit me. "

            He was sent to Balls Bluff. The next morning he was killed ; the reinforcements promised him were never sent, and so soon it was known that he was dead, his command was withdrawn. On his person was found a major-general's commission signed by President Lincoln. Of his death John Hay wrote :

            "Edward Dickinson Baker was promoted by one grand brevet of the God of Battles, above the acclaim of the field, above the applause of the world, to the Heaven of the martyr and the hero."

            There was a public funeral in Washington. It would have been in the White House except for repairs going on.

            Splendid eulogies were pronounced in both houses of Congress. Even Senator Sumner made a touching address, closing with the words : "Call him, if you please, the Prince Rupert of battle: he was also the Prince Rupert of debate."

            But the great speech was by his old time Illinois friend. Senator McDougall of California. The historian says : 'The surprise, the thrill of the occasion was the speech of Mr. McDougall of California.'

            There were funeral services in many places in California and Oregon. Edward Stanley was the orator in San Francisco, Starr King also made a most touching address. The whole coast was in mourning.

            The soul of Colonel Baker went out from a battlefield nearly half a century ago, but the splendor of his genius and patriotism still lingers over this west, and the echoes of the music of his voice, blending with the murmur of winds and streams, give a softer rhythm to both.