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ELOQUENCE OF THE FAR WEST

No. I.

of <& JD. Bafcer

EDITED
(WITH GLANCES AT THE ORATOR AND HIS TIMES)

BY OSCAR T. SHUCK

AUTHOB OF " BENCH AND BAB IN CALIFORNIA "

SAN FRANCISCO
PUBLISHED BY THE EDITOR

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1899, by

OSCAB T. SHUCK,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress,
at Washington.

The Mnrdock Presi
San Francisco

Mr. JOHN W. HENDRIE,

South Beach, Connecticut.
Kind Sir:

BAKER was speaking on the Atlantic
seaboard when he pointed across a hemisphere, back
to the far Pacific, where his notes were yet rever-
berating, and modestly said that his voice was
feebler than the feeblest murmur upon our shore.*

Near where he stood then, you have long rested
on the Atlantic border, after an active business
career on this far strand. If the clear call of our
ORATOR did not swell above the sound of the sea,
it yet touched the bounds of the continent, and is
resonant still; and you, are of that mass, now wide
dispersed, early gathered by the Golden Gate, who
hear even now its "echoes roll from soul to soul."
Our great city, whose busy streets you walked a
busy man so long ago and some of whose cherished
institutions have lately quickened at your touch-
acknowledges your affectionate remembrance, and
gives you greeting from afar.

Remote, now, from our occidental life, you keep
alive an exceptional concern for all that contributes
to our well-being, and you have a special, impre-
scriptible interest in the riches of our intellectual
*See pase 238.

heritage. You will love this book. I count myselj
happy in being able to lay it under your eye; and 1
do so, recognizing you as one to whom our friend's
fame is dear, and in the hope that your honored
name may be associated with his through coming

time.

I am, Sincerely,

Your Obliged Friend, and

Obedient Servant,

THE EDITOR.
San Francisco, August 1, 1899.

PBEFACE.

WHETHER at the bar, or "beside the bier,
in the lecture hall, or on the stump, at
public festival, or in solemn debate Baker
spoke for Man. Freedom and Glory were
the constant theme of this free and glorious
spirit; we shall have a glimpse of him, how-
ever, invested with even a deeper concern
at the dedication of Lone Mountain Ceme-
tery. His many arguments and speeches
during a long career as a lawyer, or advo-
cate, with some exceptions, lost their interest
as the occasion passed. The most notable of
these exceptions the defense of Cora
has its place in this volume. As a lecturer,
his best productions are lost; that is, he did
not write them, and they were not report-
ed: as The Sea, The Plurality of Worlds,
Socrates, Books. His efforts of chief excel-
lence, however, and perhaps on broader and
higher platforms, were fortunately commit-
ted to type; and while these comprise but a
small part of his life-work, they are yet a
3

Preface.

great deal in themselves, and are precious.
Like all the emanations of this gratifying
and satisfying mind, they cast no lurid light
they are entirely untainted by anything
morbid, or moody, or cynical. Healthful,
hopeful, virile, prophetic, their tuition is
true, and ever their burden is the advance-
ment of his countrymen and his kind. Their
perpetual influence must be salutary. It
is well that his ideals, gathered now and
gathered forever, should unite their beauty
before the century closes that will mark his
place in history.

The speeches in this Volume are given in
full, except that about one fourth of the
Reply to Benjamin is omitted, on account of
its great length ; and from the Defense of
Cora much of the analysis of the evidence
of witnesses has been eliminated.

Since BAKER performed his noble part,
the fast-hastening years have brought their
many contrasted characters on the scene, to
diversify Time's drama on our western
shore, but he is SOVEREIGN. That tragic
hour is far off now when he went to his
worthy rest among the great men who are
4

Preface.

sleeping in the crypt of FAME but his
spirit will kindle the hearts of men as long
as LONE MOUNTAIN shall guard his grave, or
Shasta and Whitney look down upon the
landscapes that he loved.

CONTENTS

PAGES

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE OP BAKER . . 9-12

THE ATLANTIC CABLE ADDRESS . . 13-36

THE FERGUSON EULOGY 39-59

THE BRODERICK ORATION .... 63-85

THE AMERICAN THEATER SPEECH . . 89 - 127

THE REPLY TO BENJAMIN .... 131-223

AT THE NEW YORK MASS-MEETING . 227-239

THE REPLY TO BRECKINRIDGE . . 243 - 270

DEATH OF BAKER His FAMILY . . 273-282

POEM BY BAKER 283-284

THE DEFENSE OF CORA 287-318

DEDICATION OF LONE MOUNTAIN CEME-
TERY IMMORTALITY . 321-330

EDWARD DICKINSON BAKER was born in
London, England, February 24, 1811.
His father was a man of education and
literary tastes, and brought his family to
America, settling in Philadelphia, when
Edward was about five years old. The
father taught school and apprenticed the
boy at a suitable age to a weaver. In
1825 the family moved to Indiana, and,
a year or so later, to Illinois. The son
had no taste for systematic study, but
possessed a passion for books. Going
to St. Louis in early manhood, he drove
a dray for one season ; then returning to
Illinois, he began the study of law, and,
after a year had passed, he obtained a
license and began practice. In 1831, he
seriously thought of entering the ministry
of the Reformed (or Christian) Church.
9

Introductory Notice.

In the spring of '32 he enlisted in the
Black Hawk (Indian) War and served to
its close, obtaining a major's commission.
He first won celebrity as a speaker by
his oration at the laying of the corner-
stone of the old State House in Spring-
field, 111., July 4, 1837. In that year he
was elected to the lower branch of the
State Legislature, as a Whig, and was
re-elected. In 1840, he " took the stump "
for Harrison for President; was a State
Senator, 1841-44. In the fall of '44,
he was elected to the National House of
Representatives from the Springfield dis-
trict. When the Mexican War broke out
he, without resigning his seat in the
House, hastened home, obtained a col-
onel's commission and raised a regiment,
which he led into the field. He was one
of the comparatively few Northern Whigs
who favored the war with Mexico. At
10

Introductory Notice.

its close his State presented him with
a sword. In '49 he was returned to Con-
gress. In 1852 he removed to Califor-
nia, locating in San Francisco. Here he
won great fame as a lawyer, lecturer, and
political speaker, but not many of his
speeches are preserved. In 1859 he ran
for Congress on the Kepublican ticket
but was defeated. Within a year there-
after he had removed to Oregon and
was a Senator of the United States. The
War of the Kebellion breaking out, he
again took the field and went as a
colonel into this, his third, warfare with
characteristic enthusiasm. In July, 1861,
he was appointed and confirmed a briga-
dier-general of volunteers. At his first
encounter in that great conflict he fell,
in his fifty-first year, October 21, 1861.
After his death a commission as major-
general of volunteers was issued in his
11

Introductory Notice.

name. His remains were brought to
San Francisco and laid in Lone Moun-
tain Cemetery, among the people who
had enjoyed the flower of his renown.
His career is the subject of the first
chapter of BENCH AND BAB IN CALIFOR-
NIA. Edward Stanly's oration at his
burial may be found in REPRESENTATIVE
MEN OF THE PACIFIC, together with the
address of Thos. Starr King.

Baker's picturesque career, as inter-
woven with great events, is further
touched upon in appropriate order in
the pages to follow.

THE ATLANTIC CABLE
ADDBESS

The most poetic utterance of Baker's life was his
address delivered in San Francisco on September 27, 1858,
at the public commemoration of the laying of the Atlantic
Telegraph. This immortal production is also, in the judg-
ment of many, both more thoughtful and more ornate
than even his celebrated Broderick oration. It contains
the memorable apostrophe to science, and the happy
allusion to the comet of that time. It is perennial. The
words near the clo<e, ' We stand ... at the entrance
to a more imperial dominion," seem to express, after the
lapse of forty years, a new and larger prophecy.

THE ATLANTIC CABLE ADDKESS.

AMID the general joy that thrills
throughout the civilized world, we are
here to bear our part. The great enter-
prise of the age has been accomplished.
Thought has bridged the Atlantic, and
cleaves its unfettered path across the sea,
winged by the lightning and guarded
by the billow. Though remote from the
shores that first witnessed the deed, we
feel the impulse and swell the paean ; for,
as in the frame of man, the nervous sensi-
bility is greatest at the extremity of the
body, so we, distant dwellers on the
Pacific coast, feel yet more keenly than
the communities at the centers of civili-
zation, the greatness of the present suc-
cess, and the splendor of the advancing
future.

The transmission of intelligence by
electric forces is perhaps the most striking

15

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

of all the manifestations of human power
in compelling the elements to the service
of man. The history of the discovery
is a monument to the sagacity, the prac-
tical observation, the inductive power of
the men whose names are now immortal.
The application to the uses of mankind
is scarcely less wonderful, and the late
extension across a vast ocean ranks its
projectors and accomplishers with the
benefactors of their race. We repeat
here to-day the names of Franklin, and
Morse, and Field. We echo the senti-
ments of generous pride, most felt in
the commonwealth of Massachusetts, at
the associated glory of her sons. But we
know that this renown will spread where-
ever their deeds shall bless their kind;
that, like their works, it will extend be-
yond ocean and deserts, and remain to
latest generations.

The history of the Atlantic Telegraph
is fortunately familiar to most of this
auditory. For more than a hundred

16

The Atlantic Cable Address.

years it has been known that the velocity
of electricity was nearly instantaneous.
It was found that the electricity of the
clouds was identical with that produced
by electric excitation ; next followed the
means- for its creation, and the mech-
anism of transmission. Its concentration
was found in the corrosion of metals
in acids, and the use of the voltaic pile ;
its transmission was completed by Morse
in 1843, and it was reserved to Field to
guide it across the Atlantic. Here, as
in all other scientific results, you find
the wonder-working power of observa-
tion and induction ; and nowhere in the
history of man is the power of Art
action directed by Science knowledge
systematized so signally and beauti-
fully obvious. I leave to the gifted
friend who will follow me, in his pecu-
liar department, the appropriate descrip-
tion of the wonders of the deep seaway;
of the silent shores beneath; of sunless
caverns and submarine plains. It is for

17

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

others to describe the solitudes of the

nether deep. Yet who is there whose
imagination does not kindle at the idea
that every thought which springs along
the wires vibrates in those palaces of
the ocean where the light fails to pene-
trate and the billows never roll ?
/ From those dark, unfathomed caves the
pearl that heaves upon the breast of
beauty is dragged to the glare of day.
There the unburied dead lie waiting for
the resurrection morning, while above
them the winds wail their perpetual re-
quiem ; there the lost treasures of India
and Peru are forever hid; there the
wrecks of the Armada and Trafalgar
are forever whelmed.

What flags and what trophies are floating

free
In the shadowy depths of the silent sea ? *

But amid these scattered relics of the
buried past, over shell-formed shores

A quotation from his own poem to be found in this
volume.

18

The Atlantic Cable Address.

and wave -worn crags, the gleaming
thought darts its way. Amid the mon-
sters of the deep, amid the sporting
myriads and countless armies of the sea,
the single link that unites two worlds
conveys the mandate of a king or the
message of a lover. Of old, the Greek
loved to believe that Neptune ruled the
ocean and stretched his trident over the
remotest surge. The fiction has become
reality; but man is the monarch of the
wave, and his trident is a single wire !

The scene in which we each bear a
part to-day is one peculiar, it is true,
to the event which we celebrate ; but
it is also very remarkable in many and
varied aspects.

Never before has there been on the
Pacific coast such an expression of popu-
lar delight. We celebrate the birthday of
our nation with signal rejoicing; but vast
numbers who are here to-day can find
no place in its processions, and perhaps
wonder at its enthusiasm; we celebrate
19

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

great victories which give new names to
our history and new stars to our ban-
ner, these are but national triumphs;
but to-day the joy is universal; the pro-
cession represents the world all creeds,
all races, all languages are here ; every
vocation of civilized life mingles in the
shout and welcomes the deed. The min-
ister of religion sees the Bow of Promise
reflected under the sea, which speaks of
universal peace ; the statesman perceives
another lengthening avenue for the march
of free principles; the magistrate here
can see new guards to the rights of so-
ciety and property, and a wide field for
the sway of international law ; the poet
kindles at the dream of a great republic
of letters tending toward a universal
language ; and the seer of science finds
a pledge that individual enterprise may
yet embody his discoveries in beneficent
and world-wide action.

The mechanic walks with a freer step
and a more conscious port, for it is his
20

The Atlantic Cable Address.

skill which has overcome the raging sea
and the stormy shore ; and labor toil-
stained and sun-browned labor claims
the triumph as his own in a twofold right.
First, because without patient, enduring
toil, there could be neither discovery,
invention, application, or extension; and
again, because whatever spreads the bless-
ings of peace and knowledge, comes home
to his hearth and heart.

Surrounded then, as I am, by the rep-
resentatives of all civilized nations, let
me express some of the thoughts that are
struggling for utterance upon your lips
as you contemplate the great event of
the century. Our first conviction is that
the resources of the human mind and
the energies of the human will are illim-
itable ; from the time when the new phil-
osophy of which Francis Bacon was the
great exponent became firmly written in a
few minds, the course of human progress
has been unfettered each established
fact, each new discovery, each complete

21

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

induction is a new weapon from the armory
of truth ; the march cannot retrogade ; the
human mind will never go back; the
question as to the return of barbarism
is forever at rest. If England were to
sink beneath the ocean, she hath planted
the germ of her thought in many a fair
land beside, and the tree will shadow the
whole earth. If the whole population

, of America were to die in a day, a new
migration would repeople it ; not with liv-

\ ing forms alone, but with living thought,
bright streams from the fountains of all
nations.

O Science, thou thought-clad leader
of the company of pure and great souls,
that toil for their race and love their
kinds! measurer of the depths of earth
and the recesses of heaven! apostle of
civilization, handmaid of religion, teacher
of human equality and human right, per-
petual witness for the Divine wisdom
be ever, as now, the great minister of
peace ! Let thy starry brow and benign

22

The Atlantic Cable Address.

front still gleam in the van of progress,
brighter than the sword of the conqueror,
and welcome as the light of heaven !

The commercial benefits to accrue to
all nations from instantaneous communi-
cation are too apparent to permit much
remark ; the convenience of the merchant,
the correspondence of demand and sup-
ply, the quick return of values, the more
immediate apprehension of the condition
of the world, are among the direct results
most obvious to all men ; but these are at
last mere agencies for a superior good,
and are but heralds of the great ameliora-
tions to follow in the stately march.

The great enemy of commerce, and
indeed of the human race, is war. Some-
times ennobling to individuals and na-
tions, it is more frequently the offspring
of a narrow nationality, and inveterate
prejudice. If it enlists in its service
some of the noblest qualities of the hu-
man heart, it too often perverts them to
the service of a despot.
23

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

From the earliest ages a chain of moun-
tains, or a line of a river, made men
strangers, if not enemies. Whatever,
therefore, opens communication and cre-
ates interchange of ideas, counteracts the
sanguinary tendencies of mankind, and
does its part to " beat the sword into the
plowshare."

We hail, as we trust, in the event we
commemorate, a happier era in the his-
tory of the world, and read in the omens
attendant on its completion an augury of
perpetual peace.

The spectacle which marked the mo-
ment when the cable was first dropped
in the deep sea, was one of absorbing
interest. Two stately ships of different
and once hostile nations, bore the pre-
cious freight. Meeting in mid-ocean they
exchanged the courtesies of their gallant
profession each bore the flag of St.
George, each carried the flowing Stripes
and blazing Stars on each deck that
martial band bowed reverently in prayer

The Atlantic Cable Address.

to the Great Ruler of the tempest : exact
in order, perfect in discipline, they waited
the auspicious moment to seek the distant
shore. Well were those noble vessels
named, the one, Niagara, with a force
resistless as our own cataract ; the other,
Agamemnon, "the king of men," as con-
stant in purpose, as resolute in trial, as
the great leader of the Trojan war. Bight
well, O gallant crews, have you fulfilled
your trust! Favoring were the gales and
smooth the seas that bore you to the
land ; and oh ! if the wish and prayer of
the good and wise of all the earth may
avail, your high and peaceful mission
shall remain forever perfect, and those
triumphant standards so long shadowing
the earth with their glory, shall wave in
united folds as long as the Homeric story
shall be remembered among men, or
the thunders of Niagara reverberate above
its arch of spray.

It is impossible, fellow-citizens, within
such limits as the nature of this assem-

25

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

blage indicates, to portray the various
modes in which the whole human race
are to be impelled on the march of pro-
gress by the telegraphic union of the two
nations; but I cannot forget where I
stand, nor the audience I address. The
Atlantic telegraph is but one link in a
line of thought which is to bind the
world: the next link is to unite the
Atlantic and Pacific. Who doubts that
this union is near at hand ? * Have we
no other Fields ? Shall the skill which
sounded the Atlantic not scale the Sierra
Nevada ? Is the rolling plain more dan-
gerous than the rolling deep? Shall
science repose upon its laurels, or achieve-
ment faint by the Atlantic shore ? Let
us do our part; let our energy awake!
Let us be the men we were when we
planted an empire. We are in the high-
way of commerce ; let us widen the track
one effort more, and science will span

* When this union was effected, three years later, the
second message sent over the wire was the announcement
of Baker's fall in battle.

26

The Atlantic Cable Address.

the world. While I speak, there comes
to us, borne on every blast from the East
and from the West, high tidings of civili-
zation, toleration, and freedom. In En-
gland the Jews are restored to all the
privileges of citizens, and the last step
in the path of religious toleration is
taken. The Emperor of Russia has de-
creed the emancipation of his serfs, and
the first movement for civil liberty is
begun. China opens her ports, and
commerce and Christianity will penetrate
the East. Japan sends her embassador
to America, and America will return the
blessings of civilization to Japan. O
human heart and human hope! never
before in all your history did ye so rise
to the inspiration of a prophet in the
majesty of your prediction !

Fellow-citizens, we have a just and
generous pride in the great achievement
we here commemorate. We rejoice in
the manly energy, the indomitable will,
that pushed it forward to success; we

27

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

admire the skillful adaptation and appli-
cation of the forces of nature to the uses
of mankind; we reverence the great
thinkers whose observation swept through
the universe of facts and events, and whose
patient wisdom traced and evolved the
general law. Yet, more than this, we
turn with wonder and delight, to behold
on every hand the results of scientific
method everywhere visible and every-
where increasing; but amid that wonder
and delight we turn to a still greater
wonder the human mind itself! Who
shall now stay its progress ? What shall
impede its career ? No longer trammeled
by theories nor oppressed by the despo-
tism of authority grasping, at the very
vestibule, the key to knowledge, its ad-
vance, though gradual, is but the more
sure. It is engaged in a perpetual war-
fare, but its empire is perpetually enlar-
ging. No fact is forgotten, no truth is lost,
no induction falls to the ground ; it is as
industrious as the sun ; it is as restless

'28

The Atlantic Cable Address.

as the sea ; it is as universal as the race
itself; it is boundless in its ambition,
and irrepressible in its hope. And yet,
in the very midst of the great works that
mark its progress, while we behold on
every hand the barriers of darkness and
ignorance overthrown, and perceive the
circle of knowledge continually widening,
we must forever remember that man, in
all his pride of scientific research, and
all his power of elemental conquest, can
but follow at an infinite distance the
methods of the Great Designer of the
Universe. His research is but the attempt
to learn what nature has done or may do ;
his plans are but an imperfect copy of a
half-seen original. He strives, and some-
times with success, to penetrate into the
workshop of nature ; but whether he use
the sunbeam, or steam, or electricity
whether he discover a continent or a
star whether he decompose light or
water whether he fathom the depths
of the ocean or the depths of the human

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

in each and all lie is but an imita-
tion of the Great Architect and Creator of
all things. We have accomplished a great
work ; we have diminished space to a
point ; we have traversed one twelfth of
the circumference of our globe with a
chain of thought pulsating with intelli-
gence, and almost spiritualizing matter.

But, even while we assemble to mark
the deed and rejoice at its completion,
the Almighty, as if to impress us with a
becoming sense of our weakness as com-
pared with his power, has set a new
signal of his reign in heaven ! If to-night,
fellow-citizens, you will look out from
the glare of your illuminated city into
the northwestern heavens, you will per-
ceive, low down on the edge of the
horizon, a bright stranger, pursuing its
path across the sky. Amid the starry
hosts that keep their watch, it shines
attended by a brighter pomp and followed
by a broader train. No living man has
gazed upon its splendors before ; no

30

The Atlantic Cable Address.

watchful votary of science has traced its
course for nearly ten generations. It is
more than three hundred years since its
approach was visible from our planet.
When last it came, it startled an emperor
on his throne, and while the supersti-
tion of the age taught him to perceive in
its presence a herald and a doom, his
pride saw in its flaming course and fiery
train the announcement that his own light
was about to be extinguished. In com-
mon with the lowest of his subjects, he
read omens of destruction in the baleful
heavens, and prepared himself for a fate
which alike awaits the mightiest and the
meanest. Thanks to the present condi-
tion of scientific knowledge, we read the
heavens with a far clearer perception. We
see in the predicted return of the rush-
ing, blazing comet through the sky, the
march of a heavenly messenger along his
appointed way and around his predes-
tined orbit. For three hundred years
he has traveled amid the regions of

31

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

infinite space. "Lone wandering, but
not lost," he has left behind him shining
suns, blazing stars, and gleaming constel-
lations, now nearer to the Eternal Throne,
and again on the confines of the universe.
He returns, with visage radiant and be-
nign ; he returns, with unimpeded march
and unobstructed way; he returns, the
majestic, swift electric telegraph of the
Almighty, bearing upon his flaming front
the tidings that throughout the universe
there is still peace and order that,
amid the immeasurable dominions of the
Great King, his rule is still perfect
that suns and stars and systems tread their
endless circle and obey the Eternal Law.
When Pericles, the greatest of Athenian
statesmen, stood in the suburb of the
Kerameikos to deliver the funeral ora-
tion of the soldiers who had fallen in the
expedition to Samos, he seized the occa-
sion to describe, with great but pardon-
able pride, the grandeur of Athens. It
was the first year of the Peloponnesian

32

The Atlantic Cable Address.

war, and he spoke amid the trophies of
the Persian conquest and the creations
of the Greek genius. In that immortal
oration he depicted in glowing colors the
true sources of national greatness, and
enumerated the titles by which Athens
claimed to be first city of the world. He
spoke of constitutional guarantees, of
democratic principles, of the supremacy
of law, of the freedom of the social
march. He spoke of the elegance of pri-
vate life of the bounteousness of com-
forts and luxuries of a system of
education of their encouragement to
strangers of their cultivated taste of
their love of the beautiful of their
rapid interchange of ideas ; but above
all, he dwelt upon the courage of her
citizens, animated by reflections that her
greatness was achieved "by men of dar-
ing, full of a sense of honorable shame
in all their actions."

Fellow - citizens, in most of these
respects we may adopt the description;

33

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

but if in taste, in manners, if in temples
and statues, if in love and appreciation
of art, we fall below the genius of Athens,
in how many respects is it our fortune
to be superior! We have a revealed
religion; we have a perfect system of
morality; we have a literature, based, it
is true, on their models, but extending
into realms of which they never dreamed ;
we have a vast and fertile territory within
our own dominion, and science brings the
whole world within our reach ; we have
founded an empire in a wilderness, and
poured fabulous treasures into the lap of
commerce. *

But, amid all these wonders, it is
obvious that we stand upon the threshold
of new discoveries, and at the entrance
to a more imperial dominion. The his-
tory of the last three hundred years has
been a history of successive advances,
each more wonderful than the last.

There is no reason to believe that the
procession will be stayed, or the music

34

The Atlantic Cable Address.

of its march be hushed ; on the contrary,
the world is radiant with hope, and all
the signs in earth and heaven are full of
promise to the race. Happy are we to
whom it is given to share and spread
these blessings; happier yet if we shall
transmit the great trust committed to our
care undimmed and unbroken to succeed-
ing generations.

I have spoken of three hundred years
past dare I imagine three hundred
years to come ? It is a period very far
beyond the life of the individual man;
it is but a span in the history of a nation,
throughout the changing generations of
mental life. The men grow old and die,
the community remains, the nation sur-
vives. As we transmit our institutions,
so we shall transmit our blood and our
names to future ages and populations.
What multitudes shall throng these
shores, what cities shall gem the bor-
ders of the sea! Here all people and
all tongues shall meet. Here shall be a

35

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

more perfect civilization, a more thorough
intellectual development, a firmer faith, a
more reverent worship.

Perhaps, as we look back to the
struggle of an earlier age, and mark
the 'steps of our ancestors in the career
we have traced, so some thoughtful man
of letters in ages yet to come, may bring
to light the history of this shore or of
this day. I am sure, fellow-citizens, that
whoever shall hereafter read it, will per-
ceive that our pride and joy are dimmed
by no stain of selfishness. Our pride is
for humanity ; our joy is for the world ;
and amid all the wonders of past
achievement and all the splendors of
present success, we turn with swelling
hearts to gaze into the boundless future,
with the earnest conviction that it will
develop a universal brotherhood of man.

36

THE FEKGUSON EULOGY

WILLIAM I. FERGUSON, a carpenter's son, born in Penn-
sylvania, grew up in Illinois, receiving a common-school
education, clerking in a store, then becoming a lawyer.
He was several times city attorney of Springfield, and in
1848, when he was only twenty-three, his name was on
the Democratic electoral ticket. He came to be the first
criminal lawyer at the Sangamon bar. He removed to
Californiain the summer of 1853, locating in Sacramento,
and in '55 was elected as a Know-nothing to the State
Senate, and was made chairman of the Judiciary Commit-
tee. In '57 he was re-elected Senator, this time as a Demo-
crat. The Democratic party was then dividing on the
slavery question, and Ferguson became conspicuous as
the most fervid orator of the Northern, or Douglas, wing.
The Legislature then met annually. In August, 1858,
between two sessions, Ferguson, on a visit to San Francisco,
had a personal dispute, influenced by partisan feeling,
with Geo. Pen Johnston, attorney-at-law, United States
Commissioner, Clerk of the U. S. Circuit Court, and who
later became part owner of the Examiner newspaper.
Ferguson accepted a challenge to a duel, and the parties
met on Angel Island, on August 21st. At the fourth fire
Ferguson was shot in the leg just below the thigh. He
held out against amputation, but three weeks afterward
this was resorted to. His life ended under the ordeal. A
pathetic story of the closing scene is presented in the old
chronicles. It shows the nobility of the man whose
doom moved Baker to words so apt and fond.

Before the commencement of the final preparation,
Ferguson prepared himself for death. He then, for the
first time, stated that he believed the wound had extended
to his hip joint, as that had of late been the source of
great pain. He had little or no doubt that amputation
would be necessary, and he did not expect to survive
it. Indeed, he went so far as to say that life was not
desirable under such circumstances. His language was

39

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

sensible and cheerful, yet his tone was feeble and melan-
choly. He conversed freely of the difficulty that brought
about the meeting between him and his antagonist, which
he insisted was misunderstood. He did not doubt that
Johnston was honest in that misunderstanding, and
believed that he (Ferguson) had really made the remark
attributed to him. Yet Ferguson contended that he (Fer-
guson) was the proper judge, and that his adversary was
mistaken. On this assertion, he exhibited much earnest-
ness, and repeated the remark again and again. He
spoke of the meeting between them on the field, after he
had been wounded, and regretted that an improper inter-
pretation had been given to Johnston's remarks. He
said they had been spoken kindly and feelingly, and
were well intended, and he hoped no friend of his would
say to the contrary. He also stated that the whole affair
was conducted honorably and fairly; and above all, he
desired that no prosecution of Johnston should be toler-
ated by his friends. He said in this connection, " I freely
forgive him, and hope he may continue to be a useful
and honorable member of society ; then, why should others,
whom he never injured, refuse to do so ? " He spoke of his
mother; but no language can cdiivey the eloquence of his
trembling lips, his silvery accents, as he called the name
of her who gave the life now just entering eternity. He
expressed the wish to be buried in Sacramento, as he felt
that place to be his home yet he would leave that mat-
ter to his friends. At this period he desired to be alone.
A few moments thereafter his faithful servant "John"
came from his room bathed in tears. " He has said his
last prayer on earth." When his friends again entered,
he said, " I am ready." The chloroform was applied, and
he never spoke more.

Ferguson had said, a day or two before, to those watch-
ing at his bedside: " My friend Baker has known me
best; ask him, if he will, to speak of me when I am dead."
The orator's eulogy was delivered in the Senate chamber
at Sacramento, where the body was lying in state, Septem-
ber 16, 1858.

40

THE FEBGUSON EULOGY.

THE intense interest which is apparent
in this crowded auditory too well evinces
the mournful character of the ceremony
we are about to perform. Wherever
death may invade the precincts of life,
whether in the loftiest or lowliest home,
there is a tear for all who fall ; there is a
mourner for even the meanest and the
most humble ; but when beyond the deep
impression which the change from life to
death produces in all good minds when
beyond this we know that an eminent
citizen is stricken down in the full vigor
of his manhood and in the pride of his
intellectual power, the impression is
deeply mournful. And when to this we
add that those who loved him in life,
whose servant and representative he was,
have gathered around his bier to-day to
accompany him to his last resting-place

41

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

on earth, the impression is not merely
mournful, but painful. And when we
add to this that the man we mourn died
by the hand of violence suddenly in
a peaceful land, away from his own
friends, the painful impression becomes
an overwhelming sorrow.

At the personal request of our departed
friend, it has been assigned to me to say
a few words upon this occasion.

I have perhaps known him longer than
anybody here. I have 'known him, more
particularly in his early youth, perhaps
better than any one here assembled. I
have watched the bud, the blow, the fruit,
and lastly the untimely decay ; and while
I desire to speak of him as he himself
would wish to be spoken of ; while I do
not mean that personal friendship shall
warp my judgment or lead me to say as
his friend anything unduly in his praise,
so also, on the other hand, shall I say
nothing against him or others that is
unjust or unkind.

42

The Ferguson Eulogy.

The gentleman whose remains you are
about to consign to his last resting-place
until the trump of the Archangel shall
sound, was a native of the State of Penn-
sylvania. I knew his father well; a
respectable, worthy, honest man; a me-
chanic by pursuit, intelligent, self-reliant,
and in every respect honorable.

The young man was ambitious from
his boyhood. He sought the profession
of the law, not merely for itself, but as
an opening that would lead to what he
considered were higher and more noble
positions.

He was fitted for the study of law by
nature. He was then what you knew him
but lately bold, self-reliant, earnest,
brilliant, eloquent, a good judge of
human nature, kind, generous, making
friends everywhere, placable in his resent-
ments, easily appeased, and a true friend.
He read law not only with me, but also
with far more able men, and he formed
his judgment of public affairs while

43

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

honored with the friendship of Douglas,
his opponent, Lincoln, John J. Hardin,
who won a deathless name at Buena Vista,
Judge Logan, and many others who are
the pride and boast of the Mississippi Val-
ley. He was early distinguished in his
own State. He was very young, and he
had those contests among his own friends
which are peculiar to politics ; and there
had the reverses and crosses without
which no man is worth much. The
success which he achieved here had its
foundation laid in defeat, and I think I
may say that most of what he knew as a
politician he had learned in the school
of adversity

"That stern teacher of the human breast."

It is not good for a man to be always
successful, either in private or public
life. No man's character can be formed
without trial and suffering, and our de-
parted friend showed by his course of
conduct that he could endure temporary

44

The Ferguson Eulogy.

defeat, confident of the ultimate success
of the right perhaps not the less confi-
dent of his power to achieve success. He
was a successful candidate upon the Dem-
ocratic ticket for presidential elector in
1848. He was as renowned in his own
State, as a debater, as he was here ; he
had (and that is saying a great deal) as
many friends there as he had here ; he
deserved them there, as he deserved them
here, by his fidelity to his friends, high
personal qualities, courage, intellect, bril-
liancy by those qualities which rendered
him so dear to many of you now before
me.

He came here, and what he was here
you know better than I. You knew him
well, for he served you. You knew him
well, for he ever strove for your appro-
bation, and loved you living, and loved
you dying. He had a great many quali-
ties that make a successful politician, not
merely in the personal sense of the word,
but in a higher sense, the achievement of

45

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

great deeds, and the advancement of great
principles.

These halls have been the witnesses
of many of his triumphs. As was well
remarked by a contemporary newspaper,
he hardly ever undertook that which,
when he set himself earnestly to work,
he did not accomplish. He had the de-
termination to succeed that knowledge
of mankind that control over other
men's minds that kindly manner, those
generous impulses for all that love for
humanity those qualities of mind which,
if they called forth grave defects, also
called forth great virtues. And these
are in most of the departments of life
the great elements of success. Mere
intellect, except in the closet, does but
little; the qualities of mind, of mere
abstract wisdom, which distinguished a
Newton or a La Place, would do but little
at Washington. It is the same both in
private and public life. A knowledge
of the human heart; a readiness of re-

46

The Ferguson Eulogy.

sources; kindness of heart; fidelity in
friendship will effect more than mere
abstract wisdom, and must be combined
with it in order to render that wisdom of
avail. These, and all these, our friend
had.

You know how well he served you;
and those who knew him best, knew how
ardently he desired your approbation,
how earnestly he strove to win it.

There is more than one thing in his
legislative career which deserves notice,
and not the least is the manner of his
death. He died poor not poor in the
common sense of the term, but poor as
was Aristides when he was buried at
the expense of the citizens of Athens.
Amongst all his papers, there is not
found the trace of a speculation. He
had no property no resources ; his pov-
erty, if remarkable, was honorable. In
a land where corruption is said to be rife,
the more especially in legislative bodies,
and which, whether the charge is true or

47

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

false, is proverbially liable to corrupting
influences, it seems impossible that lie
used the vast power he possessed for
aught except the public interest and wel-
fare. And this alone would be a proud
epitaph to record upon his tombstone.
He was a man of undoubted courage,
as his death proved. I am not here to
speak of its manner. I am not here to
discuss the subject of dueling. If I
were, it would be to utter my unquali-
fied condemnation of the code which
offers to personal vindictiveness a life
due only to a country, a family, and to
God. If I were, under any circum-
stances, an advocate for a duel, it should
be at least a fair, equal, and honorable
duel. If, as was said by an eloquent
advocate in its favor, "it was the light
of past ages which shed its radiance upon
the hill-tops of civilization, although its
light might be lost in the dark shade of
the valleys below"; if even I held this
view, I should still maintain that a duel

48

The Ferguson Eulogy.

should be fair and equal ; that skill
should not be matched against igno-
rance, practical training against its ab-
sence. And while I am in no sense to
be understood as expressing an opinion
as to the late duel, knowing nothing of
the matter myself, yet I do say that no
duel should stand the test of public
opinion, independent of the law, except
the great element of equality is there.
In the pursuits of common life, no one
not trained to a profession is supposed
to be a match for a professional man in
the duties of his profession. I am no
match for a physician in any matters con-
nected with his pursuits, nor would the
physician be a match for me in a legal
argument. The soldier is no fair match
for the civilian, when the latter has not
been trained to the use of arms; nor,
although his courage is equal, and he
may have a profound conviction that he
is right, will, therefore, the contest be
rendered equal and just. I repeat that

49

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

I do not make these remarks intending
thereby to reflect upon the character of
the late duel. Personally, I know noth-
ing more than what I and you all have
heard. Whether it was fair or unfair, it
is not my province to inquire. I am de-
nouncing the system itself, for it loses
annually hundreds of valuable lives, and
in the present state of civilization, it
does no good, profits nothing, arrests no
evil, but impels a thousand evils; but
above all, do I protest against any con-
tests of this nature where, in skill,
knowledge of weapons, or from any
cause, the parties are not equals in all
the conditions of that stern debate. The
friend whose loss we deplore was un-
doubtedly a man of courage. Whatever
may be said with respect to the code of
dueling whatever may be said as to
his motives his conduct on the field
was in all respects what his friends
expected. He stood four fires, at a dis-
tance of scarcely twenty feet, with a

50

The Ferguson Eulogy.

conviction that there was a strong de-
termination to take his life that the
matter should be carried to an extremity
and that, too, when, until the day be-
fore, he had never fired a pistol off in
his life. But courage is shown not
merely in action, but in endurance. A
woman may show the higher quality of
courage in many instances where many
men would fail. A brave man a really
brave man shows his courage no less
in endurance than in action. It is a
higher, a greater quality to suffer than
to do ; and in this respect our friend was
no way defective. He bore a long and
painful confinement he bore a severe
operation he saw his hold upon life
unclasping day by day, hour by hour;
and amidst it all, neither his resolution
nor his cheerfulness faltered for an in-
stant. When he lay helpless, looking
back upon the errors (and who has not
errors?) of his life, he seemed to recall
them for lessons of instruction and warn-

51

IIMIWCDCITV

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

ing for the future ; and when he knew he
must die, he arrayed himself for the last
contest, to die as became a man, amid all
sweet and pious and holy recollections.
He died with no vindictive passion in his
heart. He died with words of affection
upon his lips. He died with the thoughts
of his mother present to liis soul. He
left this world with the thoughts of
home and mother. He left with words
of forgiveness and kindness. His last
act of consciousness was an act of prayer.
O Affection, Forgiveness, Faith ! ye are
mighty spirits. Ye are powerful angels.
And the soul that in its dying moments
trusts to these, cannot be far from the
gates of heaven, whatever the past life
may have been. However passion or
excitement may have led a soul astray, if
at the last and final hour it returns to the
lessons of a mother's love, of a father's
care if it learns the great lesson of
forgiveness to its enemies if at the last
moment it can utter these words : " Father

52

The Ferguson Eulogy.

of life and light and love!" these shall
be winged angels troops of blessed
spirits that will bear the fainting,
wounded soul to the blessed abodes,
and forever guard it against despair. Oh,
my friends ! those mighty gates built by
the Almighty to guard the entrance to
the unseen world, will not open at the
battle-ax of the conqueror; they will
not roll back if all the artillery of earth
were to thunder forth a demand, which,
indeed, would be lost in the infinite
regions of eternal space! but they will
open with thoughts of affection, with
forgiveness of injuries, and with prayer.
But I am not here to speak of the
virtues of the departed alone. He had
his defects ; they were great ; they were
marked; but they were incident to his
career and his character. He was, by
nature and habit, a politician; and of all
callings, that of a politician is the most
illusive and unsatisfactory : it kindles the
mind in a state of constant excitement:

53

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

it is a constant struggle, which is fre-
quently injurious in its effects ; and our
friend, with all his fine qualities, was no
exception to the rule. Let him that is
without sin cast the first stone. Of how
many can we say that no greater defect
can be recorded? Of him who is dead,
what worse can be said? He was hon-
orable, honest, loving, generous, placa-
ble ; and if amid his virtues, there were
some defects, they are but to be men-
tioned to be forgiven and forgotten.

Fellow-citizens, the words I utter I
should not deem complete if I did not,
before I close, utter a word of warning.
The most powerful intellect, the most
amiable qualities, may be shaded by a
love for excitement and the evils which
the life of a politician is but too apt to
engender. What Ferguson was, we know.
What he might have been, if he had
conquered himself, who can tell? The
inspired Book says that " he that ruleth
his own spirit is greater than him that

54

The Ferguson Eulogy.

taketh a city," and if our departed friend
could have conquered himself, who could
have stayed the resistless course of his
bright intellect? It should be a warn-
ing to us all, gray heads as well as to
young men. All should remember that
the pursuit of politics is delusive and
full of temptation. No man should forget
the duty he owes to his country, but all
should remember that they owe a duty
to themselves. When men I refer now
more particularly to young men see a
great statesman stand forth in the midst
of a listening senate, and mark the stamp
which he makes upon the public mind,
and upon the policy of the country, by
the force of his intellectual vigor, they
are apt to forget the labors by which
that proud position has been achieved
to forget how many have sought to attain
such a lofty position and have failed ; and
to forget that he who is now filling their
minds with admiration, , may be on the
eve of a sudden fall. Politics should not

55

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

be the pursuit I mean the only pursuit
of any man. Representative honors,
official station, should only be the occa-
sional reward, or the occasional sacrifice ;
and if, forgetting this rule, young men
attempt to make politics their only hope,
with the probability that in many cases
they will fail, and that if successful, they
will surely be exposed to a thousand
temptations : if they love excitement for
its own sake the noisy meetings, the
conventions, the elections this love for
excitement will grow upon them, and
they will soon be on the high road to
ruin.

If any one is determined to achieve
distinction in politics, let him first ob-
tain a competency in some trade, profes-
sion, or pursuit, and then, even if unsuc-
cessful in politics, the misstep will not
be irretrievable. But, young men, do
not be beguiled by the example of our
Ferguson, even if you possess his splen-
did talents even if you could achieve

56

The Ferguson Eulogy.

the success he did: look at the end!
There he lies in a bloody grave. Let
your habits be fixed. " Let all the ends
thou aimest at be thy country's and thy
God's."

Fellow-citizens, I have said what I
supposed this occasion most required.
If I had been told sixteen years ago that
it would be my fortune to stand by the
bloody grave of my young friend, in the
city of Sacramento on the Pacific coast,
I could scarcely have believed it had an
angel from heaven told me so; for at
that time there was no civilized Pacific
coast. Then his course was unmarked,
and my future was so marked out, that
it would seem but little less than a
miracle that I should stand here, by
his dying request, to offer a few poor
remarks over his bier, before he is laid
to rest in the place he loved so well
in the city named after the sweeping
Sacramento. But who can tell what a day
may bring forth? Here we see the sud-

57

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

den, untimely end of one who was amia-
ble, gifted, and who was looking forward
to a long career of honor and fame. And
perhaps it may be my lot to be shortly
laid in the grave; and perhaps in this
assembly some one may be called upon
to address some remarks over my poor
lifeless body even as I have been
called upon on the present occasion; and
if this should be so, I pray that that
friend may accord to me as much of
praise and as little of blame as will be
consistent with the truth.

In conclusion, I would remark that I
have no words sufficient to express my
own personal regret. I have lost a warm
personal friend. I may find others, but
I shall not be able to find friends that I
have loved in other years. I shall not
often find those to whom I can, as I
could to him, talk of the old familiar
times and the lessons I taught him in
early life of the virtues and example
of his parents of his mother's, his
58

The Ferguson Eulogy.

poor afflicted mother's affection and love
of his old contests his old hopes,
so often broken. I shall not often find
friends like these, nor can the breach
which death has made be so easily
repaired.

Let me hope, for myself and us all,
that when we have filled our allotted
space in this world; when we are
attended by weeping friends, for the
purpose of removing us to our last rest-
ing-place, that it shall not be said of us
that we have lived without purpose, but
that we have gathered friends in the days
of our manhood ; that we have left fruits
to bloom when we have departed.

THE BRODEEICK OEATION

DAVID C. BEODERICK, stone-cutter's son and United
States Senator, was born in Washington, D. C., on the 4th
of February, 1820. In his sixth year the family settled
permanently in New York City. When he was fourteen
his father died, and, at seventeen, he was apprenticed to
his father's trade, and followed it for some years. He
received little education in boyhood, but began a wide
course of reading before coming of age. He became
prominent in local politics on the Democratic side, and
in the fire organization, being foreman of Howard En-
gine Company, No. 34. The death of his mother in '42, and
the loss of his brother by an accident soon after, left him
without a known relative. In '46 he was nominated for
Congress by one wing of his party, the Young Democracy,
but was defeated. He arrived in California in 1849. While
an operative in Samuel W. Haight's assay office, San Fran-
cisco, he was, in January, 1850, elected to a vacancy in the
State Senate, and was re-elected for a full term. He had
organized the first fire company in the city Empire
No. 1 and became its foreman. When Broderick died,
the company took his name.

In January, 1852, he was defeated by John B. Weller
for the Democratic nomination for United States Senator
losing the prize by one vote. Five years later, he was
elected to that office for a full term of six years from the
4th of March, 1857. The Democratic party being divided
by the slavery question into Northern and Southern wings,
Broaerick led the former, while Southern men, generally,
followed his senatorial colleague, Wm. M. Gwin. President
Buchanan favored the Southern wing, and Senator Gwin
directed the distribution of Federal patronage in Cali-
fornia. Returning home, after an open breach with the
President, Broderick entered, with great determination,
into the most excising and remarkable political canvass
the State has known that of 1859. It was the campaign

63

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

which the genius of Baker so illumined. The Democratic
party broke squarely in two, and the Republicans made
their first great fight, but not a winning one. The Ad-
ministration Democrats elected their full ticket for State
officers (Latham for Governor), and, although Douglas
Democrats and Republicans united upon Baker and Sib-
ley for Congress, the latter were defeated overwhelm-
ingly.

In June, 1859, the campaign pending, Judge David S.
Terry, of the Supreme Court, Administration Democrat,
in a public speech, alluded to the other wing of his party
as " the personal chattels of a single individual whom
they are ashamed of. They belong, body and breeches,
to David C. Broderick." On reading this speech, Brod-
eriok remarked that he had once referred to Judge Terry
as the only honest man on the Supreme Bench, but that
now he took it back. D. W. Perley, a friend of Judge Terry,
heard this expression, and challenged Broderick to a
duel. The Senator replied, in effect, that he would be
otherwise engaged until the canvass was ended. Right
after the election, when Broderick and Baker were in the
valley of defeat, Judge Terry resigned from the Supreme
Bench, and, after correspondence, Broderick explaining,
but not retracting, the Judge challenged the Senator, who
accepted. On the 12th of September, 1859, near Lake
Merced, was fought the most memorable duel in our
annals, graphically described in BENCH AND BAR IN CALI-
FORNIA, by an eye-witness. Broderick fell at the first ex-
change of snots, struck full in the right breast, fie
expired four days later. The body was placed in state in
the Union Hotel, fronting Portsmouth Square, in which
Ferguson had died a year before. The funeral occurred
on Sunday, September 18th, the same master tongue that
spoke at Ferguson's bier delivering the eulogium.

Broderick left a large estate the result of invest-
ments in San Francisco realty which was the subject of
protracted litigation. A chapter in REPRESENTATIVE MEN
OP THE PACIFIC is devoted to his career.

The oration, wiiich next follows, was thus referred to

64

The Broderick Oration.

by George Wilkes, of New York city, in a newspaper
eulogy of Baker, soon after the latter's death:

" 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. Both of them, the
living and the dead, were self-made men; and the son
of the stone-cutter, lying in mute grandeur, with a record
floating round the coffin which bowed the heads of the
surrounding thousands down in silent respect, might
have been proud of the tribute which the weaver's
apprentice was about to lay upon his breast. For min-
utes after the vast audience 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 upon his cheek. Then, when the silence was the
most intense, his tremulous voice 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 mulitude, that there was not one cheek
less moistened than his own. For an hour he held them
as with a spell; and when he finished, by bending over
the calm face and stretching his arms forward by an
impressive gesture, exclaimed, in quavering accents,
Good friend! brave heert! gallant leader! hail and fare-
well I ' the audience broke into a general response of sobs.
Never, perhaps, was eloquence more thrilling; never,
certainly, was it better adapted to the temper of the
listeners. The political field in California not being open
to immediate occupation, Baker transferred himself to Ore-
gon, and there the glow of his last effort soon carried
him to the highest honors of that State."

Of this production, Edward Stanly said, in his own
fine eulogy of Baker : " I have read no effort of that charac-
ter, called out by such an event, so admirable, so touch-
ing, so worthy the sweet eloquence of Baker. It should
crown him with immortality."

65

THE BKODEKICK OEATION.

CITIZENS OF CALIFORNIA: A Senator
lies dead in our midst! He is wrapped
in a bloody shroud, and we, to whom his
toils and cares were given, are about to
bear him to the place appointed for all
the living. It is not fit that such a man
should pass to the tomb unheralded ; it
is not fit that such a life should steal
unnoticed to its close ; it is not fit that
such a death should call forth no rebuke,
or be followed by no public lamentation.
It is this conviction which impels the
gathering of this assemblage. We are
here of every station and pursuit, of every
creed and character, each in his capacity
of citizen, to swell the mournful tribute
which the majesty of the people offers
to the unreplying dead. He lies to-day
surrounded by little of funeral pomp.
No banners droop above the bier, no

67

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

melancholy music floats upon the reluc-
tant air. The hopes of high-hearted
friends droop like fading flowers upon
his breast, and the struggling sigh com-
pels the tear in eyes that seldom weep.
Around him are those who have known
him best and loved him longest; who
have shared the triumph, and endured
the defeat. Near him are the gravest
and noblest of the State, possessed by
a grief at once earnest and sincere ; while
beyond, the masses of the people whom
he loved and for whom his life was given,
gather like a thunder-cloud of swelling
and indignant grief.

In such a presence, fellow-citizens, let us
linger for a moment at the portals of the
tomb, whose shadowy arches vibrate to the
public heart, to speak a few brief words
of the man, of his life, and of his death.

Mr. Broderick was born in the District
of Columbia, in 1820. He was of Irish
descent, and of obscure and respectable
parentage ; he had little of early advan-

The Broderick Oration.

tages, and never summoned to his aid
a complete and finished education. His
boyhood and his early manhood were
passed in the city of New York, and the
loss of his father early stimulated him
to the efforts which maintained his sur-
viving mother and brother, and served
also to fix and form his character even
in his boyhood. His love for his mother
was his first and most distinctive trait of
character, and when his brother died
an early and sudden death the shock
gave a serious and reflective cast to his
habits and his thoughts, which marked
them to the last hour of his life.

He was always filled with pride, and
energy, and ambition. His pride was in
the manliness and force of his character,
and no man had more reason than he
for such pride. His energy was mani-
fest in the most resolute struggles with
poverty and obscurity, and his ambition
impelled him to seek a foremost place
in the great race for honorable power.

G9

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Up to the time of his arrival in Cali-
fornia, his life had been passed amid
events incident to such a character.
Fearless, self-reliant, open in his enmi-
ties, warm in his friendships, wedded
to his opinions, and. marching directly
to his purpose through and over all
opposition, his career was checkered
with success and defeat; but even in
defeat, his energies were strengthened
and his character developed. When he
reached these shores, his keen observa-
tion taught him at once that he trod a
broad field, and that a higher career was
before him. He had no false pride ;
sprung from a people and of a race
whose vocation was labor, he toiled with
his own hands, and sprang at a bound
from the workshop to the legislative
hall. From that time there congregated
around him and against him the elements
of success and defeat strong friend-
ships, bitter enmities, high praise, malig-
nant calumnies ; but he trod with a free

70

The Broderick Oration.

and a proud step that onward path which
has led him to glory and the grave.

It would be idle for me, at this hour
and in this place, to speak of all that
history with unmitigated praise ; it will
be idle for his enemies hereafter to deny
his claim to noble virtues and high pur-
poses. When, in the Legislature, he
boldly denounced the special legislation
which is the curse of a new country, he
proved his courage and his rectitude.
When he opposed the various and some-
times successful schemes to strike out
the salutary provisions of the Constitu-
tion which guarded free labor, he was
true to all the better instincts of his life.
When, prompted by ambition and the
admiration of his friends, he first sought
a seat in the Senate of the United States,
he aimed by legitimate effort to attain
the highest of all earthly positions, and
failed with honor.

It is my duty to say that, in my judg-
ment, when at a later period he sought

71

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

to anticipate the senatorial election, he
committed an error which I think he
lived to regret. It would have been
a violation of the true principles of rep-
resentative government, which no reason,
public or private, could justify, and
could never have met the permanent
approval of good and wise men. Yet,
while I say this over his bier, let me
remind you of the temptation to such
an error, of the plans and reasons which
prompted it, of the many good pur-
poses it was intended to effect. And if
ambition, "the last infirmity of noble
minds," led him for a moment from the
better path, let me remind you how nobly
he regained it.

It is impossible to speak within the
limits of this address of the events of
that session of the Legislature at which
he was elected to the Senate of the United
States; but some things should not be
passed in silence here. The contest
between him and the present Senator

The Broderick Oration.

had been bitter and personal. He had
triumphed. He had been wonderfully
sustained by his friends, and stood con-
fessedly " the first in honor and the first
in place." He yielded to an appeal made
to his magnanimity by his foe. If he
judged unwisely, he has paid the forfeit
well. Never in the history of political
warfare has any public man been so pur-
sued ; never has malignity so exhausted
itself.

Fellow-citizens ! the man whose body
lies before you was your Senator. From
the moment of his- election his character
has been maligned, his motives attacked,
his courage impeached, his patriotism
assailed. It has been a system tending
to one end and the end is here. "What
was his crime? Keview his history
consider his public acts weigh his
private character, and before the grave
incloses him forever, judge between him
and his enemies.

Asa man to be judged in his pri-

73

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

vate relations who was his superior?
It was his boast, and amid the general
license of a new country, it was a proud
one, that his most scrutinizing enemy
could fix no single act of immorality
upon him! Temperate, decorous, self-
restrained, he had passed through all
the excitements of California unstained.
No man could charge him with broken
faith or violated, trust; of habits simple
and inexpensive, he had no lust of gain.
He overreached no man's weakness in
a bargain, and withheld from no man his
just dues. Never, in the history of the
State, has there been a citizen who has
borne public relations more stainless
in all respects than he.

But it is not by this standard he is to
be judged. He was a public man, and
his memory demands a public judgment.
What was his public crime ? The answer
is in his own words : " / die because I ivas
opposed to a corrupt administration, and
the extension of slavery'' Fellow-citizens,

74

The Broderick Oration.

they are remarkable words, uttered at
a very remarkable moment ; they involve
the history of his senatorial career, and
of its sad and bloody termination.

When Mr. Broderick entered the Sen-
ate, he had been elected at the beginning
of a Presidential term as the friend of
the President-elect, having undoubtedly
been one of his most influential sup-
porters. There were unquestionably some
things in the exercise of the appointing
power which he could have wished other-
wise; but he had every reason to remain
with the Administration which could
be supposed to weigh with a man in his
position. He had heartily maintained
the doctrine of popular sovereignty, as
set forth in the Cincinnati platform, and
he never wavered in his support till the
day of his death. But when in his judg-
ment the President betrayed his obliga-
tions to his party and country when,
in the whole series of acts in relation to
Kansas, he proved recreant to his pledges

75

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

and instructions when the whole power
of the Administration was brought to
bear upon the legislative branch of the
Government, in order to force slavery
upon an unwilling people then, in the
high performance of his duty as a Senator,
he rebuked the Administration by his
voice and vote, and stood by his prin-
ciples. It is true, he adopted no half-
way measures. He threw the whole
weight of his character into the ranks of
the opposition. He endeavored to arouse
the people to an indignant sense of the
iniquitous tyranny of Federal power, and
kindling with the contest, became its
fiercest and firmest opponent. Fellow-
citizens, whatever may have been your
political predilections, it is impossible to
repress your admiration, as you review
the conduct of the man who lies hushed
in death before you. You read in his
history a glorious imitation of the great
popular leaders who have opposed the
despotic influences of power in other

76

The Broderick Oration.

lands and in our own. When John
Hampden died on Chalgrove field, he
sealed his devotion to popular liberty
with his blood. The eloquence of Fox
found the sources of its inspiration in
his love for the people. When Senators
conspired against Tiberius Gracchus, and
the Tribune of the people fell beneath
their daggers, it was power that prompted
the crime and demanded the sacrifice.
Who can doubt, if your Senator had
surrendered his free thought, and bent in
submission to the rule of the Adminis-
tration who can doubt that, instead of
resting on a bloody bier, he would have
this day been reposing in the inglorious
felicitude of Presidential sunshine?

Fellow-citizens, let no man suppose
that the death of the eminent citizen of
whom I speak was caused by any other
reason than that to which his own words
assign it. It has been long foreshadowed
it was predicted by his friends
it was threatened by his enemies: it

77

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

was the consequence of intense political
hatred. His death was a political neces-
sity, poorly veiled beneath the guise of
a private quarrel. Here, in his own
State, among those who witnessed the
late canvass, who know the contending
leaders, among those who know the antag-
onists on the bloody ground here, the
public conviction is so thoroughly settled,
that nothing need be said. Tested by
the correspondence itself, there was no
cause, in morals, in honor, in taste, by
any code, by the custom of any civilized
land, there was no cause for blood. Let
me repeat the story it is as brief as it
is fatal : A judge of the Supreme Court
descends into a political convention it
is just, however, to say that the occasion
was to return thanks to his friends for an
unsuccessful support. In a speech bitter
and personal, he stigmatized Senator
Broderick and all his friends in words of
contemptuous insult. When Mr. Brod-
erick saw that speech, he retorted, saying

78

The Broderick Oration.

in substance, that he had heretofore
spoken of Judge Terry as an honest man,
but that he now took it back. When
inquired of, he admitted that he had so
said, and connected his words with Judge
Terry's speech as prompting them. So
far as Judge Terry personally was con-
cerned, this was the cause of mortal
combat; there was no other.

In the contest which has just termi-
nated in the State, Mr. Broderick had
taken a leading part; he had been engaged
in controversies very personal in their
nature, because the subjects of public
discussion had involved the character
and conduct of many public and distin-
guished men. But Judge Terry was not
one of these. He was no contestant; his
conduct was not in issue; he had been
mentioned but once incidentally in
reply to his own attack and, except as
it might be found in his peculiar traits
or peculiar fitness, there was no reason
to suppose that he would seek any man's

79

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

blood. When William of Nassau, the
deliverer of Holland, died in the presence
of his wife and children, the hand that
struck the blow was not nerved by pri-
vate vengeance. When the fourth Henry
passed unharmed amid the dangers of
the field of Ivry, to perish in the streets
of his capital by the hand of a fanatic,
he did not seek to avenge a private grief.
An exaggerated sense of personal honor
a weak mind with choleric passions,
intense sectional prejudice united with
great confidence in the use of arms
these sometimes serve to stimulate the
instruments which accomplish the deep-
est and deadliest purpose.

Fellow-citizens ! One year ago to-day
I performed a duty, such as I perform
to-day, over the remains of Senator Fer-
guson, who died as Broderick died,
tangled in the meshes of the code of
honor. To-day there is another and more
eminent sacrifice. To-day I renew my
protest ; to-day I utter yours. The code
80

The Broderick Oration.

of honor is a delusion and a snare ; it
palters with the hope of a true courage
and binds it at the feet of crafty and
cruel skill. It surrounds its victim with
the pomp and grace of the procession,
but leaves him bleeding on the altar. It
substitutes cold and deliberate prepara-
tion for courageous and manly impulse,
and arms the one to disarm the other ; it
may prevent fraud between practiced
duelists who should be forever without
its pale, but it makes the mere " trick of
the weapon" superior to the noblest
cause and the truest courage. Its pre-
tense of equality is a lie it is equal in
all the form, it is unjust in all the sub-
stance the habitude of arms, the early
training, the frontier life, the border war,
the sectional custom, the life of leisure,
all these are advantages which no nego-
tiation can neutralize, and which no
courage can overcome.

But, fellow-citizens, the protest is not
only spoken in your words and in mine

81

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

it is written in indelible characters ; it is
written in the blood of Gilbert, in the
blood of Ferguson, in the blood of Brod-
erick ; and the inscription will not alto-
gether fade.

With the administration of the code
in this particular case, I am not here to
deal. Amid passionate grief, let us strive
to be just. I give no currency to rumors
of which personally I know nothing;
there are other tribunals to which they
may well be referred, and this is not one
of them. But I am here to say, that
whatever in the code of honor or out of
it demands or allows a deadly combat
where there is not in all things entire
and certain equality, is a prostitution of
the name, is an evasion of the substance,
and is a shield blazoned with the name
of Chivalry, to cover the malignity of
murder.

And now, as the shadows turn toward
the east, and we prepare to bear these
poor remains to their silent resting-place,

82

The Broderick Oration.

let us not seek to repress the generous
pride which prompts a recital of noble
deeds and manly virtues. He rose un-
aided and alone; he began his career
without family or fortune, in the face of
difficulties; he inherited poverty and
obscurity; he died a Senator in Congress,
having written his name in the history
of the great struggle for the rights of
the people against the despotism of
organization and the corruption of power.
He leaves in the hearts of his friends
the tenderest and the proudest recollec-
tions. He was honest, faithful, earnest,
sincere, generous, and brave : he felt in
all the great crises of his life that he
was a leader in the ranks; that it was his
high duty to uphold the interests of the
masses ; that he could not falter. When
he returned from that fatal field, while
the dark wing of the Archangel of Death
was casting its shadows upon his brow,
his greatest anxiety was as to the per-
formance of his duty. He felt that all

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

his strength and all his life belonged
to the cause to which he had devoted
them. "Baker," said he and to me
they were his last words " Baker, when
I was struck I tried to stand firm, but the
blow blinded me, and I could not." I
trust it is no shame to my manhood that
tears blinded me as he said it. Of his
last hour I have no heart to speak. He
was the last of his race ; there was no
kindred hand to smooth his couch or wipe
the death damp from his brow ; but around
that dying bed strong men, the friends of
early manhood, the devoted adherents of
later life, bowed in irrepressible grief,
"and lifted up their voices and wept."

But, fellow-citizens, the voice of lamen-
tation is not uttered by private friend-
ship alone the blow that struck his
manly breast has touched the heart of a
people, and as the sad tidings spread, a
general gloom prevails. Who now shall
speak for California ? who be the inter-
preter of the wants of the Pacific Coast ?

84

The Broderick Oration.

Who can appeal to the communities of
the Atlantic who love free labor ? Who
can speak for masses of men with a pas-
sionate love for the classes from whence
he sprung ? Who can defy the blandish-
ments of power, the insolence of office,
the corruption of administrations ? What
hopes are buried with him in the grave !

"Ah ! who that gallant spirit shall resume,
Leap from Eurotas' bank, and call us from
the tomb?"

But the last word must be spoken, and
the imperious mandate of Death must be
fulfilled. Thus, O brave heart ! we bear
thee to thy rest. Thus, surrounded by
tens of thousands, we leave thee to the
equal grave. As in life, no other voice
among us so rung its trumpet blast upon
the ear of freemen, so in death its echoes
will reverberate amid our mountains and
valleys, until truth and valor cease to
appeal to the human heart.

Good friend! true hero! hail and
farewell.

85

THE AMERICAN THEATEE
SPEECH

WE come to the most triumphant effort of Baker's
life the most triumphant, in that he never stood forth
the conqueror as on that occasion, and never so proudly
waved his unchallenged banner. It has already appeared
how, so unexpectedly and swiftly, the valley of defeat had
been left and the summit of victory reached. The orator
alludes to the sharp turns of fortune more than once in this
great effort, known universally as " The American Tneater
Speech," in which, among many fine passages, occurs the
impassioned tribute to Freedom, and with which speech
alone his name is associated in the minds of thousands.
The roomy oM theater, long since demolished, stood
where now is Halleck Block, on the northeasterly corner
of Sansome and Halleck streets. The orator was passing
through San Francisco to Washington City, in his pocket
his credentials from Oregon as her Senator. At a recep-
tion by his friends he declined to make a speech, but he
had a surprise for F. F. Low (who was to be Governor of
the State a few years later). When Baker was electrifying
the masses of the State on the stump, not a year before,
Low, then a banker at Marysville, had enthusiastically
promised him a fine suit of clothes, " when you take your
seat in Congress." When defeat came, Low thought no
more of the matter. Baker, now a Senator from another
commonwealth, met the Marysville banker at the San
Francisco reception, and said, "Low, I '11 take that suit of
clothes." Of course, he was accommodated. The American
Theater speech was delivered on the evening of the same
day, October 26, 1860. Baker was never so animated. It
was the liveliest meeting he ever addressed, the ladies
more than filling the dress circle.

89

THE AMEEICAN THEATEK
SPEECH.

I OWE more thanks than my life can
repay ; and I wish all Oregon were here
to-night. We are a quiet, earnest, pas-
toral people, but by the banks of the
Willamette there are many whose hearts
would beat high as yours if they were
here. I owe you much, but I owe more
to Oregon. [Laughter.] My heart is
very full and very glad. Oregon regards
herself as one with California the inter-
ests of the Pacific as the same, whether
at the mouth of the Columbia or the
Golden Gate. More than that, she be-
lieves that the interests of the Union are
one, and she intends to stand by it.

Just when I ought to make the best
speech of my life, I know I'll make the
very worst. Four years ago this night,
in front of this very house, I had the

91

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

honor to attempt to lay a little deeper
and broader the principles of Republi-
canism by trying to show why we should
elect as President an eminent citizen,
who, I believe, is here to-night [turning
to the box where sat John C. Fremont,
with his family]. We were a young and
untried party then. I recollect saying
then, that, as "Revolutions never go
backwards," whoever became a Republi-
can then would remain one. We have
lost nobody since, and are gaining every-
body. [Laughter.] I know we are going
to win. All signs in heaven and earth
approve it. Still, on the eve of battle,
though in every skirmish they have
shown superiority, the leader may well
pass before the line ; and if I might
assume that position for a single mo-
ment, as the shouts of victory echo from
wing to wing, from front to rear, I would
pass along to assure the fearful and
confirm the bold. [Applause.]

They used to say that we were a sec-

92

The American Theater Speech.

tional party. We sectional ! Who, then,
is national? Breckinridge will get no
State at the North, and the Bell and
Everett men say he will get none at the
South. [Laughter.] Sectional, are we ?
We used to reply: First, freedom can't,
be sectional ; it must be national. [Here
there was some struggle near the door.
"Heavens! let us get out we're swel-
tering!" cried a voice. "You can't stir
a peg you must stand it," answered
another. Soon all was quiet again.]

But they used to affirm that, as a party,
we mean to deal unfairly with a portion
of the States. When have we said or
intimated anything of the sort? If we
are not yet represented in every State,
whose fault is it? They won't let us go
South to make Republicans. [Laugh-
ter.] Mr. Douglas intimates that Mr.
Lincoln can't go South to see his mother.
But in this view of the matter we are
getting over our sectionalism very fast.
Have you heard from St. Louis? Have

93

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

you ever heard of Frank Blair ? Have
you heard anything from Western Vir-
ginia?* Anything from the poor white
folks of the South? If it is sectional
not to get many votes in one section,
how many will Breckinridge get in New
York? All he will get there will be by
pretending not to run. [Laughter.] How
many votes will he get in Illinois? Will
he get half as many votes in Illinois as
Lincoln will in Missouri?

But I prefer to test it in another way.
I deny that in the beginning, or in the
end, we desire to interfere with slavery
in any way where it exists by law. I
deny that we desire to interfere with
slavery in the Territories where it has
been put there by the people. And as
a party and as individuals we have more
interest in preserving the Union than you
have. We never proposed you never
heard one of us propose to dissolve
the Union. Many of us were old Whigs,

* West Virginia was not yet a State.
94

The American Theater Speech.

and we have been beaten out of our
boots not once only, but all the time.
We deplored the election of James Bu-
chanan as a national calamity. They got
their President, the House, the Senate,
the Supreme Court. They got the execu-
tive, the legislative powers, the judiciary.
Did you ever hear us threaten, imagine,
or predict the dissolution of the Union?
[Applause.]

But how stand you Breckinridge men
on this subject? I will not say that
every Breckinridge man is a disunionist ;
but I will say that every disunionist is a
Breckinridge man. [Great laughter and
applause.] The difference is like the
Irishman's pronunciation in talking with
an Englishman by the name of Footney.
"Mr. Futney," said the Irishman, "you
and I agree." "Very well," says Mr.
Footney; "but my name is Footney."
"Exactly so, Mr. Futney; Futney it is,
then." "But, sir," says the Englishman,
"my name is not Futney, but Footney

95

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

F, double o, t Footney." "By the man
that made Moses, what is the difference
between Futney and Futney?" [Great
laughter.] Every disunionist, from Yan-
cey, up and down, is a Breckinridge man.
Here, I understand, their stump-speakers
boldly proclaim the doctrine. The Sena-
tor from Oregon* said: "If the South
don't stand up for her rights" -that is,
secede "they don't deserve to have
them." We, on the other hand, mean
to submit to everything, but we will have
the Union. Oregon is the farthest from
the center, but I believe she would be
the last State to leave it. [Applause.]
Yours, one of the youngest States, would
be one of the last to leave it We don't
mean, we won't mean, we never shall
mean, to dissolve. It is easy to talk
of Union when you have the offices;
but when you haven't them, how do
you talk? I repeat we don't propose
to dissolve the Union, and we don't

* General Jo Lane.

The American Theater Speech.

propose to let anybody else dissolve it.
[Cheers.]

But they say, " Our sufferings are
intolerable ; and if you elect Lincoln
we '11 dissolve the Union ! " We propose
to give them a chance to try it. What
could Lincoln do without the Senate,
and the House, and the Supreme Court,
to make a dissolution necessary? He
can't touch a dollar he can't appoint
an officer he can't command a soldier
to a single point he cannot free a slave.
But suppose Lincoln gets the House,
and I think he will, suppose he gets a
majority of the Senate, too. If he gets
a majority of the Senate and the House
and the people, I should think it would
be pretty hard to dissolve. Some
of the judges of the Supreme Court
are getting very old; but, as Jefferson
said of judges, they never die, and few
resign [laughter], and it will be a
long time before the Republicans can
get the power to do anything that the
97

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

public voice and conscience will not
approve.

There is something in party platforms.
Many will persist that we don't mean to
admit any more slave States. We have
no such platform. We have given no
such votes. We have said that we will
not interfere with slavery in the States,
nor with freedom in the Territories.
They say we will pass laws opposed to
the extension of slavery into the Terri-
tories. Well, our fathers were in that
way Washington and Jefferson. Every-
body was that way once ; and you are
that way, too. The men who met to
make the California Constitution hastened
to dedicate free territory to free men
forever. We have yielded somewhat of
the sternness of our first principles in
this matter. By the compromise of 1820
we allowed slave States to be made out
of territory acquired by purchase, and
only insisted that north of a certain line
they should not go with their slaves.

The American Theater Speech.

If territory was free when acquired, it
was to be left free forever. In 1850,
when, as Mr. Seward said, the Whig and
Democratic parties were in a state of
dissolution, they wanted another set of
provisions they wanted a fugitive slave
law. " Have n't you got one ? " we asked.
"Yes," they answered; "we've had one
for forty years; but your judges and
juries ain't to be trusted." "What!"
we exclaimed, " would you set aside all
our system of jurisprudence?" "Ah!"
said they, "you have a machinery called
the habeas corpus you must give that
up." We argued its inherent human jus-
tice. They said that it was all very well
for a white man, but it should not apply
to black ones. Suppose I have a black
horse, and it runs away from Kentucky
into Illinois. You say he must have a
jury to try the question to whom he
belongs. But if my black man runs
away, he may not have a jury trial. We
complained that the demand was unjust;

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

but then, if you are going to dissolve the
Union, take your nigger, and let us have
peace. [Great laughter.]

Well, in 1854, there was the Territory
of Kansas. The South already had two
thirds of the original territory dedi-
cated to slavery; but still they grudged
us Kansas, and passed the Nebraska Bill.
Freedom, elastic, vigorous, growing, was
too fast for them; it made Kansas a free
Territory, and it would have made it a
free State if it had not been for J. B. I
am a Popular Sovereignty Eepublican.
[Faint applause.] I was last year, and I
am now. I believe in popular sover-
eignty, not as a principle, but as a
policy as a measure. And I don't
believe in it because I don't care about
slavery. I do care about slavery, I
do, so help me God! I do care about
freedom. But since the experiment in
Kansas, I believe more in the capacity of
the people to govern themselves. The
people will not tolerate slavery on free
100

The American Theater Speech.

soil. I seize from the Douglas Demo-
crats this weapon, which in their hands
is a reed, but in ours a spear of fir,
"fit for the mast of some tall Admiral."
We will make it a great weapon for free-
dom. Before it the slaveholders writhe
in deep distress. They go out "and
stand." [Laughter.] They break up their
dearest idol the traditionary organiza-
tion of the Democratic party. I mock
at their calamity I laugh when their
fear cometh. [Laughter.] Popular sov-
ereignty means government by the peo-
ple ; it is no odds whether they govern
Kansas by their votes in Kansas, or the
Union by their votes in the Union.

Southern people claim the right to go
wherever they choose with their prop-
erty. I say in reply that the negro is
not property in the general sense; he is
property only in a sort of qualified sense.
A negro can be property only in the face
of the common law, humanity, religion,
literature, and philosophy for all these
101

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

claim that black or white, rich or poor,
high or low, "a man's a man for a' that."
[Great cheering.] It is true that there
are certain compromises of the Consti-
tution affecting this question, which we
all agree to abide by; but we deny that
the negro is by common law a slave. He
is such slave only by local law; and we
say, catch him where you can, keep him
where you can, hold him where you can;
but when he gets away from your local
law, he is free, by every instinct of hu-
manity, and every principle of the com-
mon law. [Applause.] We deny, then,
that he is "property" which you have a
right to take into the Territories, and
you shall not carry him there against the
common sentiment of the men among
whom you go. Is not that fair? Can you
overcome the argument? [Applause.]

In my country, where our hospitality
[great laughter and applause, which in-
terrupted the speaker] in my country
[renewed laughter and cheers, causing a

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The American Theater Speech.

long pause] well, in Oregon, then!
[Prolonged applause.] As a friend at my
elbow suggests, if it is n't my country,
whose country is it ? It is n't Joe Lane's,
sure! [Tremendous applause.] In my
country, where their hospitality is broader
than their means of dispensing it conve-
niently, the good people are sometimes
put to shifts to accommodate those who
need shelter, and it becomes necessary
to sleep three in a bed. [Laughter.]
Well, in traveling through the country,
I stop at a house for the night, and I am
told that I must sleep after that fashion
three in a bed. We prepare to retire,
when, looking at one of my companions
for the night, I smell brimstone. [Here
the Colonel sniffed the air suspiciously,
the suggestive operation exciting a
tumult of laughter on the part of his
audience.] I say to him, "My good friend,
are you from Scotland?" [Kenewed
merriment.] He replies, "No." I look
around feel nervous and uncornfort-
103

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

able and finally exclaim, "My God!
friend, you Ve got the itch!" He says,
"Well!" and I say "Well!" And then
I and the third man say, "We two can't
sleep with you, and we are in the major-
ity; you can't come to bed at all."
[Laughter.] The fellow rejoins, "Good
God! has it come to this that a man
can't go where he chooses with his own
property?" [Renewed laughter and long
continued applause.] Well, gentlemen, I
have illustrated you apply! Slavery is
the itch to free labor, and we say it ought
not to be carried into the Territories
against the will of the free men who go
there. [Great cheering.]

The normal condition of the Terri-
tories is freedom. Stand on the edge of
the Sierra Nevadas, or upon the brow
of any eminence looking down into the
Territories beyond, and what do you
behold? You find there the savage, the
wild beast, and the wilderness, but you
do not find slavery; and if it gets there,

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The American Theater Speech.

it goes there by your local law. The
Western man goes into the Territories
with his family, his horses, his oxen,
his ax and other implements of labor.
The Southern man goes with his slave.
The Western man says, " I can't work by
the side of the slave he degrades my free
labor." And the Irishman or German
(who don't go South to find employment)
says, " I can't work by the side of the
slave either it degrades my labor."
And these free laborers say, " Let us all
go to work together and get Congress to
make a law to do what Madison did
turn the negro out ; and if they don't do
it, we will do it for ourselves!" But
the Southern man says, "No, you don't!
I 've got the Dred Scott decision in my
pocket, which holds that neither Con-
gress nor the Territorial Legislature, nor
any human power can remove human
slavery from the Territories ; that it goes
there protected by the Constitution of
the United States, and there it must

105

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

remain; and now, therefore, I tell you
Irishman, and German, and Western man,
that your ideas of popular sovereignty
and free labor are all humbug!" So
says the slave-owner. Now, you Douglas
Democrats, what are you going to do
about this ? Some of you say you don't
care. I say you do care, for you can't
help caring ; first, because you are a man,
and you feel that whatever affects human-
ity affects you. It is absurd to say that
you don't care. There are four million
slaves, and they are increasing. The fell
influence of slavery is paralyzing the
interests of freedom and free labor, and
checking the advance of the whole
country. It denies us legislation; it
defeats our Pacific Railroad, and with-
holds the daily overland mail. If free-
dom is right, and popular sovereignty is
right, sustain them like men ; and sustain
those alone through whom you can give
it practical effect; if they are not right,
abandon them. I would not make war,

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The American Theater Speech.

revolutionize the Government, dissolve
the Union, or nullify the decisions of the
Supreme Court. If that Court says a
negro is not a citizen, I submit; but I
say to Douglas men, " Let 's attack the
Supreme Court and reform it!" [Ap-
plause.] This is not nullification. We
will obey the decision of the Supreme
Court in this particular case ; but as soon
as God in his wisdom takes Taney and
the rest of them to himself, we will, with
the help of honest Lincoln put better
men in their places, and thus reverse the
Court by the verdict of the people.
[Great cheers.] What will you Douglas
men do? Will you hear the music of
the march of freedom, and stand idly by,
or turn a deaf ear ? We have the right
and duty thus lawfully and peacefully to
reverse a decision which puts a construc-
tion upon the Constitution that is higher
than the Constitution itself, especially
when that decision relates to personal
liberty. I say that a decision which
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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

claims that by the Constitution slavery
goes everywhere the flag goes, there to
be and remain forever, is treason against
human hope. [Tremendous applause.]
You Douglas men, you will vote for pop-
ular sovereignty, will you? Now, how
will you do it? What State will you
carry? Perhaps California [cries of
"No, No!"] and Missouri. What good
will that do you? You can accomplish
nothing. Come to us, then, and we will
do you good. We will stand with you,
and use popular sovereignty effectually,
as a great engine of freedom.

There are people who talk as though
we Republicans were doing the South
some grievous wrong. How? When?
Where? They forget that freedom and
free labor are the great interests of the
country. There are only about two hun-
dred and seventy thousand white men
who have a direct interest in human
slavery. Will legislating, then, for thirty
million of free white men, instead of for

108

The American Theater Speech.

the exclusive interest of two hundred
and seventy thousand, be a cause for dis-
union? There are poor white men in
the South as well as in the North, who
have an interest in this question of free
labor, and we stand for the interests of
free labor everywhere the world over,
wherever a bright eye sparkles, or a
bright idea gives forth its light! [Ap-
plause.] Every country has a bright
idea peculiar to itself. In England it
is the commercial idea; in France, the
military idea; here, freedom, free labor.
[Applause.] Why not assert it, then?
Guard it, protect it, dignify it, ennoble
it! Do you want slave labor? Do you
believe in these Dred Scott notions, and
do you want the Constitution to carry
slavery with you and fasten it upon you
when you go to Arizona or other Terri-
tory? I ask you, citizens of foreign
birth, you, young German, let me sup-
pose that you have been in America for
five years, and you go back to the old

109

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

home across the seas and give an account
of your journeyings. You tell your
old father that you have been in Cali-
fornia, Oregon, Iowa. He says to you,
"Well, John, I suppose you have been
down into that fertile State, Virginia?"
You answer, "No," and he asks, "Why
not? " "Because they have slaves there."
"That's right, John," he says; "don't
go where there are slaves. You started
for a free country, John, and you were
right to keep away from where they hold
human beings in bondage. But what are
your politics, John?" "I am a Demo-
crat." "A Democrat! Well, I suppose
that means in America just what it does
in Europe the opposite of aristocracy.
The Democrat demands equal rights for
all men. And what other party is there,
John?" "The Eepublican party," you
reply. "That 's a good name, too, John;
but what is the difference between the
Democrats and the Republicans?" And
you go on to explain that Democracy in
no

The American Theater Speech.

the United States means equal rights to
all sectiom, and Republicanism means
equal rights to all men, but that you have
clung to the Democratic party all your
time in America, because of party name
and organization, and old associations.
"What!" says the old man, who looks
straight at the propositions you have pre-
sented. "John," he observes, "didn't
you use tc love freedom? And in the
Revolution of 1848 were you not ready
to die for it? And could you, after all
that, go over to the United States to
sneak after the supporters of human
slavery and help them carry it wherever
they choose, to curse free territory with
its blight, and then call it Democracy?"

Suppose we keep all the Territories
for freedom, who is hurt? We do only
what our fathers did. We strike for
freedom. We struggle for free labor.
We act in the eyes of the world as
becomes a free people. The South has
already more slave territory than she

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

can scratch over in three hundred years.
They are engaged in a struggle in which
they have no sympathy from gods, angels,
or man. They say to the North, "You
may take the offices, or at least a good
many of them for we can wind you
around our fingers as we like; but we
must take our slaves where we choose."
And in this struggle who are they going
to take with them? First, they will take
a part of the South; second, all of the
office-holders of the North; and third,
nobody else! [Laughter.] The Democ-
racy of the North, other than the office-
holders, all go for Douglas, and, as to
the office-holders we shall soon turn them
out Who else sympathizes with the
slaveholders in this emergency? Does
Germany? Kussia? England? Spain?
Mexico? When, after the Mexican War,
the Commissioners met near Mexico City,
to make a treaty of peace, they said to
Mr. Trist, "We are a conquered people;
you can do with us what you please ; but
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The American Theater Speech.

we implore you, do not force slavery on
us."

When we are reproached for being
Black Republicans, in what company do
they put us? With whom? In California
who are with us? The intelligence, the
wealth, the beauty, the growing power,
the convictions of right and of duty are
with us. Who are you, wandering, drift-
ing, shifting, fusing, dividing, half Breck-
inridge, half Douglas, now here, now
there [swaying his figure from side to
side], wno are you? Abolition chokes
in your throat! For us it always thun-
ders on the right; and you on which
side do you hear the thunder? Take
this city and in it the churches, the
schoolhouses, the pretty women, the
good, are on our side. [Laughter.]
With you, if you want your cotton
cleaned, you come to us for cotton-gins.
I do not mean to cast any reproach upon
the people of the South. They are a
hospitable, a generous people. There

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

are disunionists among them, it is true,
but the masses are sound, and I know
they do love the country God bless
them! the whole country. But in much
that makes up national greatness and
excellence, they are lamentably deficient.
In deep philosophy, in inspired poetry,
they are lacking. The books we write,
they read,* the lectures we deliver, they
hear; Bancroft and Prescott write their
history for them; Bryant and Longfellow
write their poetry. [Applause.] Even
where despotism is rife, ideas of personal
liberty are thriving. Even under the
shadow of the throne of Russia; on the
banks of the Seine, where the ashes of

*"We can imagine what a passionate tumult must
have been excited by the propositions [of Madame de
Stael] that literature has relations most intimate and
most essential to public virtue, liberty, glory, and felicity ;
that a law of progression is imposed on human destiny,
raising the level of manners and of literature from epoch
to epoch ; that this progression is indefinite, and advances
with the growth of institutions that is to say, with the
tendency to republican government and republican man-
ners, and will have for its distinctive character the
triumph of the serious spirit of the North over the frivo-
lous spirit of the South." Vinet'8 Studies upon the French
Literature of the Nineteenth Century.
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The American Theater Speech.

the first Napoleon repose; where the
British Queen in majestic dignity pre-
sides over a nation of freemen every-
where abroad, the great ideas of personal
liberty spread, increase, fructify. Here
ours is the exception! In this home of
the exile, in this land of constitutional
liberty, it is left for us to teach the
world that slavery marches in solemn
procession! that under the American
stars slavery is protected, and the name
of freedom must be faintly breathed, the
songs of freedom be faintly sung! Gari-
baldi, Victor Emanuel, hosts of good men
are praying, fighting, dying on scaffolds,
in dungeons, oftener yet on battle-fields,
for freedom; and yet while this great
procession moves under the arches of
liberty, we alone shrink back trembling
and afraid when freedom is but men-
tioned! [Terrific cheers.]

[While the people were cheering, a
Mr. Hart, who sat on the platform, ap-
parently carried away with enthusiasm,

115

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

rushed to the footlights, and with ex-
tended arms and loud voice, exclaimed,
"It is true! it is true! We are slaves,
compared to the rest of the world."
Then, pale as a ghost, he staggered back
to his seat, the people continuing to cheer
vociferously. The orator, meanwhile, was
consulting a friend as to the time. He
had been speaking an hour and a half.]

The interest of the South is identical
the slave interest belongs to the whole
of it in common, and alone. Our inter-
ests are diversified; they lie in cattle,
stocks, lands, manufactures; but all are
connected with free labor. Whatever
great measure comes before the nation
develops the hostility of the South, be-
cause it conflicts with their one interest.
The Pacific Railroad is a striking ex-
ample. We have been children of the
dispersion; longing and lingering, with
eyes turned to the East, which many
of us shall never see again. We have
prayed and sighed for a railroad; we

116

The American Theater Speech.

have studied the whole matter through;
we have showed how States would spring
up along its route ; we have demonstrated
how it might be built and where; we
have pointed out the reasons why we
ought to enjoy the benefits of a ready
communication with the East. Pierce
professed to recommend the road; Bu-
chanan professed to recommend it We
have asked for bread, and they have
given us a stone; for fish, and they have
given us a serpent. Even while I am
speaking, a Breckinridge convention in
Virginia is resolving against any railroad,
in any way. If, four years ago, we had
elected Fremont, in four months after, he
would have recommended a railroad, and
would have sent two regiments of dra-
goons in the meanwhile to tramp the
track [Cheers.] He would not have
recommended a mere military road, but
a railroad at once. He would have had
no constitutional scruples himself, and
would not have tolerated them in any

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

one else. He would not, as this man
has done, have hesitated because some-
body said that Mason, or Toombs, or
somebody else, did not like it. There
is not a more incorruptible man in the
world, I believe, than Fremont; but if
anybody had been corrupted, I assure
you it would have been in favor of and
not against the railroad. [Laughter and
applause.]

We are running a man now by the
name of Lincoln [cheers] who will do
the same thing. He is an honest, good,
simple-minded, true man, who is a hero
without knowing it. If he recommends
a railroad, and he will, he won't
twaddle about it. But his hands must
be upheld and strengthened by you.
You must send men to Congress who
will not feel that the "peculiar institu-
tion" is the only institution there is.

But what is true of the sentiments of
the South toward a railroad, is true also
of a homestead. What does she care for
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The American Theater Speech.

a homestead? She never expects to use
it. What does she care about a cordon
of homes stretched from the Missouri to
the Eocky Mountains, and from the Rocky
Mountains to the Sierra Nevada? She
is in another line of business. See Vir-
ginia, once the mother of Presidents and
statesmen, now engaged in slave-breed-
ing! rearing little niggers to send
farther South! She cares nothing about
a homestead. But the German immigrant
does the men from Norway and Sweden
do. Our interests are not hers, at least,
they are not the interests of her slave-
holders, and they, so long as they can
control them, will give the votes of fifteen
slave States against a homestead. But
there is coming a change. One day this
month Oregon elected a Eepublican Sen-
ator; and the next day her Democratic
Legislature instructed him to vote for a
homestead law.* [Cheers.]

*This statement seems a little artful, and may be ex-
plained. If it could be said that the Oregon Legislature
was Democratic, it was yet the same body which elected

119

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Now, when we get the power, as we
will, we propose to interfere with no
Constitutional compacts; we shall organ-
ize no John Brown raids; if some John
Brown should go down and whip Vir-
ginia, and get hung for it, it shall not be
our fault, but his misfortune; and while
we stand by and let them hang the John
Browns, we shall take the hint, follow
the wholesome example, and hang every
traitor who sets to work in earnest to
dissolve the Union. [Applause.] But the
majority must rule, and that is the end
of the whole matter. [Laughter.]

But here somebody recovers his wits
and seems to address me "Colonel

Baker Senator. The latter, defeated in California in
November, 1859, removed to Oregon in February, 1860.
The Legislature of that State convened in the following
September, being divided into three nearly equal ele-
ments, Douglas Democrats, Administration Democrats,
and Republicans, the first named leading slightly. There
were two Senators to be chosen one for a term of which
a year and a half had expired, and one for a full term of
six years from the 4th of March next coming. By a
combination between the Douglas Democrats and the
Republicans, Nesmith and Baker were elected, Baker
taking the place already vacant, and proceeding at once
to Washington via ^an Francisco.
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The American Theater Speech.

Baker, what say you at Se ward's 'irre-
pressible conflict'?" Why, this: If Mr.
Seward had that opinion, I think he did
right to express it. And, I apprehend,
it 's your opinion, too. [Laughter.] You
don't think slavery is going to last for-
ever. God is too good for that. A thou-
sand years are as one day in his sight,
and it may take some time for slavery
utterly to decay! I hope disease won't
last always ; I don't know that death will.
I very much doubt if slavery will. You
Breckinridge men, if there is a little vein
of piety in you, inherited from your
mother [laughter], even you must hope
that slavery will be abolished some day.
Henry Clay and he was no Abolitionist
used to felicitate himself that, by the
freed slaves of our land, civilization would
yet be carried to the banks of the Niger.
Bead Pope's "Messiah" I don't know
that Pope was an Abolitionist though
inspired poets are apt to be. [Applause.]
Homer was, Shakespeare was, the Bible
121

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

was, and Pope would be in very good
company if he was. So long as there
is a slave and a master in the world, the
slave's heart will throb for freedom. Edu-
cate him, and he will fight for it; nerve
him, and he will die for it; and you, to
save your soul, can't help saying "Hurrah
for the weaker side!" [Cheers.] I would
shoulder my rifle to suppress insurrec-
tion; and yet in my own impulses, in the
depth of my own reflection, I feel that if
Mr. Seward, looking forward with the eye
of statesmanship and philosophy, said the
conflict was irrepressible, God go with
him ! I indorse the sentiment. [Tremen-
dous cheers.]

But my inquiring friend forgets how
Mr. Seward qualified the remark that
it was by and under the Constitution,
and not otherwise, that the conflict was
to go on. And at last it is but the opinion
of a great philosopher and statesman
referring the matter to an all-wise Provi-
dence.

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The American Theater Speech.

Up in my country we often see men
afraid of being suspected of sympathiz-
ing too much with the negro. One was
saying there the other day "I ain't one of
your d d Abolitionists; why, my uncle
had a nigger." [Laughter.] Now, I am
very willing to, and I will confess I
have a sympathy with the negro race, with
all slaves, with all who are in sorrow
and misfortune and would to God I
could deliver them all! [Applause.] I
have sympathy with a man who has a
scolding wife, or a smoky chimney, or the
fever and ague; though I might not
advise my friend to whip his wife, or
pull down his chimney, or take arsenic for
his fever and ague nor do I feel myself
bound to run a tilt to free all negroes.
When I go to church, and the preacher
says, "Have mercy upon all men!" I
don't respond, "Good Lord! upon all
white men!" They make the mistake of
supposing that if we have human feelings,
we are plotting against them. "We live

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

in a land of constitutional law. What-
ever is nominated in the bond, we abide.
If I own ten thousand cattle, worth one
hundred thousand dollars, I have but
one vote, and that is my own. If another
owns one hundred negroes, worth one
hundred thousand dollars, he has sixty
votes; the ownership of five negroes con-
veys the right of three votes equals the
representative power of three white men.

That is hard, but it is in the bond, and
we abide it. It is hard to compel me
to give up to slavery a man on your
simple affidavit that he is a slave. But
it is in the compact, and we stand it.

There need be no fear of intestine
feuds; there need be no threats of dis-
union. In the presence of God, I say
it reverently, freedom is the rule, and
slavery the exception. It is a marked,
guarded, perfected exception. There it
stands ! If public opinion must not touch
its dusky cheek too roughly, be it so;
but we will go no further than the terms

124

The American Theater Speech.

of the compact. We are a city set on a
hill. Our light cannot be hid. As for
me, I dare not, I will not be false to free-
dom! [Applause.] Where in youth my
feet were planted, there my manhood
and my age shall march. I will walk
beneath her banner. I will glory in her
strength. I have seen her, in history,
struck down on a hundred chosen fields
of battle. I have seen her friends fly
from her; I have seen her foes gather
around her; I have seen them bind her
to the stake ; I have seen them give her
ashes to the winds, regathering them that
they might scatter them yet more widely.
But when they turned to exult, I have
seen her again meet them face to face,
clad in complete steel, and brandishing
in her strong right hand a naming sword
red with insufferable light! [Vehement
cheering.] And I take courage. The
Genius of America will at last lead her
sons to freedom! [Great applause.]
People of California! you meet soon,

125

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

as is your custom every four years, to
conduct a peaceful revolution. There is
no danger here. Disunion is far away.
The popular heart is right. It is a plain,
honest, simple duty you have to perform.
All the omens are good, and the best of
omens is a good cause. On the Pacific
coast we have labored long; we have been
scoffed, beleaguered, and beset. One
year ago, I, your champion, in your fair
State, my own State then, was beaten in
a fair contest! With my heart somewhat
bruised, my ambition crushed, one week
later I stood by the body of my friend
Broderick, slaughtered in your cause,
and I said "How long?" [Sensation.]
The tide is turned. The warrior, indeed,
rests. He knows no waking; nor word,
nor wish, nor prayer, can call him from
his lone abode. I speak to those who
loved him; and in another and higher
arena I shall try to speak for him [a rum-
ble of applause, increasing at last to a
great demonstration], and I shall say

126

The American Theater Speech.

that the people who loved him so well,
and among whom his ashes rest, are not
forgetful of the manner of his life, or the
method of his death.

People of San Francisco! you make
me very happy and very proud. Your
kind words cheer, as they have often
cheered before. Another State, generous
and confiding beyond any man's deserts,
has placed me where I may serve both
her and you. And now, thanking you
again and again, I bid you a cordial,
affectionate, heartfelt farewell. [The
whole audience arose and cheered and
cheered again. It was half after ten,
and the orator had spoken two hours
and a quarter.]

THE KEPLY TO BENJAMIN

ONLY ten days were to intervene between the delivery
of the American Theater speech and the Presidential
election, but the speech was at once put in type- and scat-
tered over the State as a campaign document. Abraham
Lincoln's election as President followed, Baker's two States
voting for him. The new Senator proceeded to Washing-
ton City, and was sworn in on Wednesday, the 5th of
December, 1860, for an unexpired term to end on the 3d
of March, 1865. It was under the caption of "New Sena-
tor " that the official " Congressional Globe" recorded the
fact of his qualification, Senator Latham, of California,
presenting his credentials. Just four weeks later, on
Wednesday, the 2d of January, 1861, in the new arena of
his fame, he made the first of his two remarkable and
celebrated "Replies" the "Reply to Benjamin." No
intelligent visitor, uninformed on the point, could have
mistaken him for a " new Senator" then. He was never
more fluent and self-possessed, and commanded the undi-
vided attention, the unqualified admiration, of the Senate
from beginning to end. Indeed, this reply, and that to
Breckinridge, that was soon to follow, are among the
most powerful performances in debate in the history of
the American Congress.

It was in the closing days of the last Congress before
the War of the Rebellion. The Southern Senators and
Representatives were beginning to leave their seats. In
sixty days President Lincoln was to be inaugurated, and,
in sixty more, the South was to be in open revolt, and the
country in actual war. Messrs. Slidell and Benjamin of
Louisiana were to withdraw from the Senate on February
5th. On December 13th, Senator Johnson, of Tennessee,
(who became President in 1865,) had offered a joint reso-
lution, proposing certain amendments to the Constitution.
These provided that the President and Vice-president

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

should be chosen by the people, by Congressional districts,
each district to have one vote. The resulting debate,
which covered a period of weeks, was directed, generally,
to the critical condition of the country. Senator Benja-
min concluded a great speech on the subject, on the clos-
ing day of the year. Senator Baker took the floor to reply
on January 2d.

At the morning hour appointed for Baker to begin his
speech Senator Gwin, of California, reminded the Senate
that the bill passed by the lower house for a Pacific rail-
road, would come up at two o'clock that afternoon, as the
special order of the day; and he said that perhaps the
Oregon Senator would not be able to conclude before that
hour.

Senator Douglas, of Illinois, who had given notice of
a speech by him for the following day, also suggested that
he and the Oregon Senator might clash. There was con-
siderable discussion as to what should be the order of
precedence, which Baker interrupted to say:

" I did not quite hear what the honorable Senator
from California said upon the subject of the Pacific rail-
road bill, which I understand to be the special order for
to-day at two o'clock ; but, coming from the Pacific coast,
I feel it my duty to say, promptly and decidedly, that I
cannot feel for an instant that any word of mine for the
Union and the perpetuity of free government on this con-
tinent can compare in importance or value with the
Pacific railroad bill, which, in my judgment, is an act
tending to make perpetual the union of these States.
Therefore, I yield any pretension that I may have to the
floor now, at two o'clock, at any time, or, if need be,
forever, that that bill may pass."

It was then Thursday. It was moved that the special
order be postponed to Saturday, and that the floor be
reserved for Senator Douglas on Monday. During the dis-
cussion Senator Trumbull, of Illinois, who knew what
was in the old Illinois Whig, showed much concern lest
something should occur to postpone for some days, or
perhaps indefinitely, the delivery of the expected effort

132

The Reply to Benjamin.

He said in plain terms, that certain Senators were wasting
time. Baker again arose, and with that delightful urban-
ity that was one of his principal forces, said :

"Quite unused to the courtesies of the Senate, and
quite willing to submit to its habit, I feel myself entirely
unable to discuss these questions of precedence or regu-
larity, and profess myself totally indifferent at what time
I speak, or when I speak, or really whether I speak at all.
I will give way to the Senator from Illinois, or the Senator
from California, or to the Pacific railroad bill. I submit
myself entirely to the courtesy and justice of the Senate."

The plan to clear the way for Baker was at length
agreed to unanimously. He took the floor, and entertained
the Senate with the best speech it had heard (in the judg-
ment of many discriminating minds) since the days of
Webster. Not until then did his warmest admirers on the
Pacific know of the rapidity of his mental processes. He
promptly grasped the scepter in debate. He spoke then,
as on lesser occasions, in that atmosphere of enthusiasm
in which he lived. He stood an intellectual master in
that great presence, and every mind deferred to his per-
suasive authority.

133

THE EEPLY TO BENJAMIN.

MR. PRESIDENT, the adventurous trav-
eler who wanders on the slopes of the
Pacific, and on the very verge of civili-
zation, stands awestruck in that great
chasm formed by the torrent of the Co-
lumbia, as, rushing between Mount Hood
and Mount St. Helen's, it breaks through
the ridges of the Cascade Mountains to
find the sea. Nor is his wonder lessened
when he hears his slightest tone repeated
and re-echoed with a larger utterance in
reverberations that lose themselves at
last amid the surrounding and distant
hills. So I, standing on this spot, and
speaking for the first time in this cham-
ber, reflect with astonishment that my
feeblest word is re-echoed, even while I
speak, to the confines of the Eepublic.
I trust, sir, that in so speaking, in the
midst of such an auditory, and in the

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

presence of great events, I may remember
all the responsibility these impose upon
me to perform my duty to the Constitu-
tion of the United States, which I have
sworn to support, and to be in no wise
forgetful of my obligation to the whole
country, of which I am a devoted and
affectionate son.

It is my purpose to reply, as I may,
to the speech of the honorable and dis-
tinguished Senator from the State of
Louisiana. I do so because it is, in my
judgment at least, the ablest speech which
I have heard, perhaps the ablest I shall
hear, upon that side of the question;
because it is respectful in tone and ele-
vated in manner; and because, while it
will be my fortune to differ from him
upon many nay, most of the points to
which he has addressed himself, it is not,
I trust, inappropriate for me to say that
much of what he has said, and the manner
in which he has said it, has tended to
increase the personal respect nay, I

136

The Reply to Benjamin.

may say, the admiration which I have
learned to feel for him. And yet, sir,
while I say this, I am reminded of the
saying of a great man Dr. Johnson, I
believe who, when he was asked for
his critical opinon upon a book just then
published, and which was making a great
sensation in London, said: "Sir, the
fellow who has written that has done
very well what nobody ought ever to do
at all."

The entire object of the speech is, as I
understand it, to offer a philosophical
and Constitutional disquisition to prove
that the Government of these United
States is, in point of fact, no government
at all ; that it has no principle of vitality ;
that it is to be overturned by a touch,
dwindled into insignificance by a doubt,
dissolved by a breath ; not by maladmin-
istration merely, but in consequence of
organic defects, interwoven with its very
existence.

But, sir, this purpose strange and

15*7

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

mournful in anybody, still more so in
him this purpose has a terrible signifi-
cance now and here. In the judgment of
the honorable Senator, the Union is this
day dissolved ; it is broken and disinte-
grated; civil war is a consequence at
once necessary and inevitable. Standing
in the Senate chamber, he speaks like a
prophet of woe. The burden of the pre-
diction is the echo of what the distin-
guished gentleman now presiding in that
chair has said before [Mr. Iverson in
the chair] Too late ! too late ! " The
gleaming and lurid lights of war flash
around his brow, even while he speaks.
And, sir, if it were not for the exquisite
amenity of his tone and his manner, we
could easily persuade ourselves that we
saw the flashing of the armor of the
soldier beneath the robe of the Senator.

My purpose is far different; sir, I
think it is far higher. I desire to con-
tribute my poor argument to maintain
the dignity, the honor of the Government
138

The Reply to Benjamin.

under which I live, and beneath whose
august shadow I hope to die. I propose,
in opposition to all that has been said,
to show that the Government of the
United States is in very deed a real, sub-
stantial power, ordained by the people,
not dependent upon States ; sovereign in
its sphere ; a union, and not a compact
between sovereign States ; that, according
to its true theory, it has the inherent
capacity of self -protection ; that its Con-
stitution is a perpetuity, beneficent,
unfailing, grand; and that its powers
are equally capable of exercise against
domestic treason and against foreign foes.
Such, sir, is the main purpose of my
speech; and what I may say additional
to this, will be drawn from me in reply
to the speech to which I propose now to
address myself.

Sir, the argument of the honorable
Senator from Louisiana is addressed
first I will not say mainly to establish
the proposition that the State of South

139

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Carolina, having, as he says, seceded, has
seceded from this Union rightfully; and,
sir, just here he says one thing, at least,
which meets my hearty approval and
acquiescence. He says he does not deem
it such is the substance of the remark
unwise or improper to argue the right
of the case even now and here. In this
I agree with him most heartily.

Eight and duty are always majestic
ideas. They march an invisible guard
in the van of all true progress; they
animate the loftiest spirit in the pub-
lic assemblies; they nerve the arm of
the warrior ; they kindle the soul of the
statesman and the imagination of the
poet; they sweeten every reward; they
console every defeat. Sir, they are of
themselves an indissoluble chain, which
binds feeble, erring humanity to the
eternal throne of God. I meet the dis-
cussion in that spirit. I defer to that
authority.

I observe, sir, first, that the argument of

140

The Reply to Benjamin.

the gentleman, from beginning to end, m
based upon the assumption that the Con-
stitution of the United States is a compact
between sovereign States. I think I in
no sense misapprehend it; I am sure such
cannot be my desire. I understand him,
throughout the whole tone of his speech,
to maintain that proposition that the
Constitution of the United States is a com-
pact between sovereign States. Arguing
from thence, he arrives at the conclusion
that being so, a compact, when broken
by either of the other States, or by the
General Government, the creature of the
Constitution, South Carolina or Louisiana
may treat the compact as broken, the
contract as rescinded; may withdraw
peacefully from the Union, and resume
her original condition.

I remark next, that this proposition is
in no wise new ; and perhaps for that, as
it is a Constitutional proposition, it is
all the better; and again, the argument
by which the honorable Senator seeks

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

to maintain it is in no wise new in any
of its parts. I have examined with some
care the arguments hitherto made by
great men, the echoes of whose eloquence
yet linger under this dome; and I find
that the proposition, the argument, the
authority, the illustration, are but a
repetition of the famous discussion led
off by Mr. Calhoun, and growing out
of the attempt of South Carolina to
do before what she says she has done
now.

If the proposition is not new, and if the
arguments are not strange, it will not be
wonderful if the replies partake of the
like character. I deny, as Mr. Webster
denied; I deny, as Mr. Madison denied;
I deny, .as General Jackson denied, that
this Union is a compact between sovereign
States at all; and so denying, I meet just
here the authorities which the honorable
Senator has chosen to quote. They are,
substantially, as follows: first, not the
Constitution itself (and that is remark-

142

The Reply to Benjamin.

able); second, not the arguments made
by the great expounders of the Constitu-
tion directly upon this question, and on
this floor; but mainly fugitive expres-
sions, sometimes hasty, not always con-
sidered, upon propositions not germane
to the controversy now engaging us to-day;
and when made, if misapprehended, cor-
rected again and again in after years. To
illustrate : the gentleman from Louisiana
has quoted at considerable length from
the debates in the convention which
formed the Federal Constitution; he has
quoted the opinions of Mr. Madison, and
to those who have not looked into the
question it might appear as if those
opinions were really in support of his
proposition that this is a compact between
sovereign States. Now, sir, to show that
that is in no sense so, I will read, as a
reply to the entire quotations of the opin-
ions of Mr. Madison, what Mr. Madison
himself said upon that subject upon the
fullest consideration in the world. I

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

proceed to read what I suppose to be at
once argument and authority upon that
question I read the letter of Mr. Madi-
son to Mr. Webster, dated March 15, 1833.

[Letter read.]

Mr. President, I submit to the candor
of the Senator from Louisiana that this
is distinct, positive, unequivocal author-
ity to show that, so far as the opinions
of Mr. Madison were concerned, he did
not believe that the Constitution of the
United States was a compact between
sovereign States; but that he did believe
it was a form of government ordained by
the people of the United States.

Again: Mr. Webster is quoted. I
expected, when I heard Mr. Webster
named, to find that the honorable Sena-
tor would allude to the great discussion
which his genius had rendered immortal.
He does not do that; but refers specifi-
cally to a passage of Mr. Webster's in
an argument in the Supreme Court, I
believe, upon a question arising as to
144

The Reply to Benjamin.

boundary between Massachusetts and
Rhode Island.

Mr. BENJAMIN. If the Senator will
permit, he is mistaken. The question
that arose there was in relation to the
power of the people of Ehode Island to
constitute a new government, not a ques-
tion of boundary. I allude to his argu-
ment in the celebrated Dorr controversy.

Mr. BAKER. I feel obliged to the Sen-
ator for his correction; and I beg leave
to say that the mistake perhaps is not
a very unnatural one in me, living so
many thousand miles away; for, really,
Rhode Island, though very patriotic, is
so very small that I do not quite keep
up with her history as I ought. It is no
sort of difference whether Mr. Webster
made the speech on a boundary ques-
tion or on a rebellion question; the
speech was made. My criticism upon
the quotation is this : It has no relation
whatever to the controvesy now here, or,
if it has, it is so remote and indistinct

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

that it becomes him and me alike, to
refer to what Mr. Webster really did
say directly upon the controversy itself.
Now, I take the liberty of reading Mr.
Webster's views, as expressed and consid-
ered by himself. I read from Mr. Web-
ster's works, volume three, page 464:

" And now, sir, against all these theories and opinions,
I maintain

" 1. That the Constitution of the United States is not
a league, confederacy, or compact between the people of
the several States in their sovereign capacities; but a
government proper, founded on the adoption of the peo-
ple, and creating direct relations between itself and indi-
viduals.

" 2. That no State authority has power to dissolve
these relations ; that nothing can dissolve them but revo-
lution ; and that consequently there can be no such thing
as secession without revolution.

11 3. That there is a supreme law, consisting of the Con-
stitution of the United States, and acts of Congress passed
in pursuance of it, and treaties; and that in cases not
capable of assuming the character of the suit in law or
equity, Congress must judge of, and finally interpret, this
supreme law so often as it has occasion to pass acts of
legislation ; and in cases capable of assuming, and actually
assuming, the character of a suit, the Supreme Court of
the United States is the final interpreter."

Now, I submit again to the candor of
the honorable and distinguished gentle-
man, that there is the positive, unmistak-

146

The Reply to Benjamin.

able evidence of Mr. Webster, so far as
liis own opinion goes; that this is not,
according to his proposition, a compact
between sovereign States; but it is a
government made and ordained by the
people of the whole United States; a
government capable of acting directly
upon individuals, and made by individ-
uals. And, sir, it is remarkable that
these propositions of Mr. Webster grew
out of his desire to contradict the affirma-
tive propositions of Mr. Calhoun, upon
which the debate grew up. I read
them:

l The first two resolutions of the honorable member,
[says Mr. Webster,] affirm these propositions, namely"

And they are propositions sought to be
enforced by the distinguished Senator
from Louisiana

" 1. That the political system under which we live, and
under which Congress is now assembled, is a compact, to
which the people of the several States, as separate and
sovereign communities, are the parties.

" 2. That these sovereign parties have a right to j udge,
each for itself, of any alleged violation of the Constitu-
tion by Congress, and in case of such violation, to choose,
each for itself, its own mode and measure of redress."

147

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

There, sir, is the right of secession
upon the one hand, or at least of nullifi-
cation; and I may say here, once for all,
the difference between nullification and
secession is just this: secession bears
the same relation to nullification that
biography bears to history, somebody
having wittily said that history was
biography with its brains knocked out
I understand that nullification is just
secession with its brains knocked out;
and every argument applying to the
one applies to the other. So much for
the second authority upon which the
distinguished Senator from Louisiana
relies.

I now come to the third; and I trust
he will allow me to correct for him what
I know was an oversight, or, at least, an
entire misapprehension. The honorable
gentleman from Louisiana, during the
course of his speech, remarked, as I
remember it, that a valued friend had
placed in his hands a paper, from which
148

The Reply to Benjamin.

lie read, purporting to be the opinion of
John Quincy Adams upon this question
of the right of a State to secede. I did
not understand him as reading from a
manuscript of his own copy, but from a
paper placed in his hands, and perhaps
about the moment, by somebody else.

Mr. BENJAMIN. So far as that is con-
cerned, the paper that I read from was
sent to me as I read it, from a valued
friend from New York. As to the speech
of Mr. Adams, of course I cannot tell
anything about it; I have never seen it.

Mr. BAKER. The reason why I say
this it is proper to state here. It is a
remarkable fact that of all the passages
ever written by John Quincy Adams, of
all the passages ever written by anybody
from the beginning of the world, that
passage, taken altogether, part of which
was read by the honorable Senator from
Louisiana, is the passage, of all others,
which maintains the doctrine of the
oneness of this Government, its unity,

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

its creation by the people, its ordination
by them as one government, and an entire
annihilation of the whole doctrine of
secession. The difficulty was this: that
the gentleman who furnished it, and who
caused the unwitting reading of it, I
have no doubt, in its mutilated condition,
by the Senator from Louisiana, omitted
the most remarkable part of the whole
passage; and it is more remarkable in
this it is for that reason I hasten to
acquit my distinguished friend of any
knowledge of the misapprehension that
it is in the very same paragraph; and
there had to be in that paragraph this
very same process of separation and dis-
union which is getting to be fashionable
nowadays, to make it bear upon the
Senator's view of the question at all.
I will read it. It begins in this wise:

" In the calm hours of self-possession, the right of a
State to nullify an act of Congress is too absurd for argu-
ment, and too odious for discussion. The right of a State
to secede from the Union is equally disowned by the prin-
ciples of the Declaration of Independence."

The Reply to Benjamin.

Now, sir, there follows after that the
passage read by the distinguished gen-
tleman. It is a passage, as I understand
it, incorporated in his speech, which pre-
sents the opinion of Mr. Adams that
there may be extreme cases in which a
State or a community has a right to
revolutionize. So much for the third
authority quoted by the distinguished
Senator.

Now, speaking of authorities, let me
add once more, that this speech of Mr.
Adams, entitled the Jubilee of the Con-
stitution, delivered by him with all his
exhaustive power as to any subject to
which he turned his attention, is, in point
of fact, an irresistible argument in favor
of our proposition that the Constitution
of the United States is an ordained gov-
ernment by the people for the govern-
ment of the people, and that it is in no
sense, and can never be, taken or consid-
ered as a compact between sovereign
States. Nay, sir, throughout the whole

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

course of that speech, he goes much fur-
ther. He argues with great power, and
with great historical research, to show
that not only is the Constitution of the
United States a government formed by
the people and not a compact between
States, but that the old Confederation,
prior to the Constitution, was intended
to be that form of government also; that
really the people of the thirteen revolt-
ing or revolutionary colonies intended,
even at the time of the Declaration of
Independence, preceding both the Con-
stitution and the Confederation, to form
then a united government of one com-
mon people.

And yet once more, sir, I quote from
General Jackson. It is an authority which
I trust the distinguished gentleman will
revere. As I have said, South Carolina
attempted to do once before what it is
said she has accomplished now. There
was then a President of the United
States determined to do his whole duty.

The Reply to Benjamin.

Whether there be now, I leave others to
determine:

"The States severally have not retained their en tire
sovereignty. It has been shown that in becoming parts
of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered
many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right
to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclu-
sive judicial and legislative powers, were all functions of
sovereign power. The States, then, for all these important
purposes, were no longer sovereign. The allegiance of
their citizens was transferred in the first instance to the
Government of the United States; they became Ameri-
can citizens, and owed obedience to the Constitution of
the United States."

Another mistake which (speaking with
great deference) I think is obvious
throughout the whole speech of the Sen-
ator from Louisiana, is the assumption,
not only that the Constitution is a com-
pact, but that the States parties to it are
sovereigns. Sir, they are not sovereigns;
and this Federal Government is not sov-
ereign. Paraphrasing the Mahometan
expression, "There is but one God," I
may say, and I do say, not without rev-
erence, there is but one sovereign, and
that sovereign is the people. The State
government is its creation; the Federal

1ft*

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Government is its creation; each supreme
in its sphere ; each sovereign for its pur-
pose; but each limited in its authority,
and each dependent upon delegated
power. Why, sir, can that State either
Oregon or South Carolina be sovereign
which relinquishes the insignia of sov-
ereignty, the exercise of its highest
powers, the expression of its noblest
dignities ? Not so. We can neither coin
money, nor levy impost duties, nor make
war nor peace, nor raise standing armies,
nor build fleets, nor issue bills of credit.
In short, sir, we cannot do because the
people, as sovereigns, have placed that
power in other hands many, nay, most,
of those things which exhibit and pro-
claim the sovereignty of a State to the
whole world. Mr. Webster has well
observed that there can be in this coun-
try no sovereignty in the European sense
of sovereignty. It is, I believe, a feudal
idea. It has no place here. I repeat,
we are not sovereign here. They are

154

The Reply to Benjamin.

not sovereign in South Carolina; they
are not, and cannot be in the nature of
the case; and therefore all assumptions
and all presumptions arising out of the
proposition of sovereignty supremacy
upon the part of a State is a fallacy
from beginning to end.

Again, sir : Mr. Calhoun, in the course
of that celebrated argument, in well-
chosen words, insisted that the States in
their sovereign capacity, acceded to a
compact. Mr. Webster replied with his
usual force. The word " accede " was
chosen as the converse of "secede"; the
argument being intended to be that if
the State accedes to a compact she may
secede from that compact. But, said Mr.
Webster, and no man has answered the
argument, and no man ever will, it is
not an accession to a compact at all; it is
not the formation of a league at all ; it is
the action of the people of the United
States carrying into effect their purpose
from the Declaration of Independence

155

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

itself, manifested in the ordination and
establishment of a government, and ex-
pressed in their own emphatic words in
the preamble of the Constitution of the
United States itself.

In arguing upon the meaning and
import of the Constitution, I had hoped
that a lawyer so distinguished as the
gentleman from Louisiana, would have
referred to the terms of that document to
have endeavored at least to find its real
meaning from its force and mode of
expression. In the absence of such a
quotation, I beg leave to remind him
that the Constitution itself declares by
whom it was made, and for wha,t it was
made. Mr. Adams, reading it, declares
that the Constitution of the United States
was the work of one people the people
of the United States and that those
United States still constitute one people ;
and to establish that, among other things,
he refers to the fact the great, the patent,
the glorious fact that the Constitution

156

The Reply to Benjamin.

declares itself to have been made by the
people, and not by sovereign States, but
by the people of the United States; not
a compact, not a league, but it declares
that the people of the United States
do ordain and establish a government.
Now, I ask the distinguished Senator,
what becomes of this iteration and reit-
eration, that the Constitution is a com-
pact between sovereign States ?

Pursuing what I think is a defective
mode of reasoning from beginning to
end, the distinguished Senator from
Louisiana quotes Vattel, and for what?
To prove what, as I understand, nobody
denies that a sovereign State, being
sovereign, may make a compact, and after-
wards withdraw from it. Our answer
to that is, that South Carolina is not a
sovereign State; that South Carolina has
not made a compact, and that, therefore,
it is not true that she can withdraw from
it; and I submit that all these disqui-
sitions upon the nature of European

157

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

sovereignty, or any of those forms of
government to which the distinguished
author which he has quoted had his obser-
vation attracted, is no argument whatever
in a controversy as to the force and mean-
ing of our Constitution bearing upon
States, sovereign in some sense, not sov-
ereign in others, but bearing most upon
individuals in their individual relations.

But the object of the speech was two-
fold. It was to prove, first, that this
Union was a compact between States, and
that, therefore, there was a rightful
remedy for injury, intolerable or other-
wise, by secession. Now, sir, I confess
in one thing I do not understand this
speech, although it be clearly written and
forcibly expressed. Does the Senator
mean to argue that there is such a thing
as a Constitutional right of secession?
Is it a right under the Constitution, or is
it a right above it and beyond it ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. I do not know whether
the Senator desires an answer now.

158

The Reply to Benjamin.

Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir; now.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Well, sir, I will take
example from gentlemen on the other
side, and I will answer his question by
asking another.

Mr. BAKER. Do, sir.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I will ask him if the
State of South Carolina were refused
more than one Senator on this floor,
whether she would have a right to with-
draw from the Union, and if so, whether
it would arise out of the Constitution or
not

Mr. BAKER. Now, Mr. President, I
will do what the distinguished Senator
from Louisiana has not done: I will
answer the question. [Laughter.] He
asks me whether if the State of South
Carolina, sending two Senators here loy-
ally, with affectionate reverence for the
Constitution, were denied the admission
of one, or, if you like, of both, it would be
cause for withdrawal. I understand that
to be the question. Sir, I reply: that

159

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

would depend upon several things yet to
be stated and determined: First, I think
South Carolina ought to inquire what is
the cause of that refusal. I believe this
body is the judge of the qualification of
its own members. If the Senator was
disqualified, or if in any fair judgment
or reasonable judgment we believed he
ought not to occupy a seat upon this floor,
surely it would not be cause of with-
drawal, or secession, or revolution, or
war, if we were to send him back.

But, sir, I will meet the question in
the full spirit in which I suppose it is
intended to put it. It is this : the right of
representation is a sacred right. If that
right is fraudulently and pertinaciously
denied, has the State to which it is denied
a right to secede in consequence thereof ?
I answer, the right of representation is
a right, in my judgment, inalienable. It
belongs to all communities, and to all
men. It is of the very nature and essence
of free government ; and if, by force, by

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The Reply to Benjamin.

despotism of the many over the few, it
is denied, solemnly, despotically, of pur-
pose, the intolerable oppression resulting
from that may be repelled by all the
means which God and nature have put
in our hands. Is the honorable Senator
answered ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. Not yet

Mr. BAKER. What, sir ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. I was saying to the
Senator, not yet. I asked him whether
he denied the fact that, in the supposed
case, which he has very fairly met, the
right to withdraw resulted from the
breach of the agreement in the Constitu-
tion, and would be a right growing out
of the violation of the Constitution,
independent of the question of oppres-
sion at all ?

Mr. BAKER. Well, sir, I beg leave to
say, in answer to that, that is not the
question the honorable Senator put to
me, but I will answer that. The right
of South Carolina to withdraw, because

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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

the fundamental right of representation
is denied her, is the right of revolution,
of rebellion. It does not depend upon
Constitutional guarantees at all. It is
beyond them, above them, and not of
them. Now, is the Senator answered ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. I am fully answered.
I am only surprised at the answer.

Mr. BAKER. Now, will the distin-
guished Senator answer me ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. With pleasure. Will
the Senator state his question once more ?

Mr. BAKER. Is there such a thing as
a Constitutional right of South Carolina
to secede ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. I thought, Mr. Presi-
dent, that my proposition on that subject
could not be mistaken. I hold that there
is, from the very nature of the Constitu-
tion itself, from the theory upon which it
is formed, a right in any State to withdraw
from the compact, if its provisions are
violated to her detriment.

Mr. BAKER. Well now, sir, I under-

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The Reply to Benjamin.

stand what I did not quite understand
before, no doubt it was owing to my
obtuseness, that the gentleman contends
that there is in the State of South Caro-
lina a right to secede, to use his own
words, in the very nature of the Consti-
tution itself.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Ke suiting from the
very nature of the compact, which I con-
sider the Constitution to be.

Mr. BAKER. But that, Mr. President,
is not what the Senator did say. I
press him on this point again. Does the
right to secede spring out of and belong
to the Constitution. And if so, where ?
I am a strict constructionist.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I am, too; and if the
Senator will admit with me, what I
suppose he will scarcely deny, that the
States have reserved to themselves under
the Constitution, by express language,
every right not expressly denied to them
by the Constitution, I say that he will
find in the ninth and tenth amendments

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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

to the Constitution the recognition of the
very right which I claim.

Mr. BAKER. Well, sir, the answer to
that is just this: that we have been
endeavoring to show and I think irre-
sistibly that, so far from its being true
that the States do reserve to themselves
in the Constitution all rights not dele-
gated by it, they do not reserve any-
thing, for they are not parties to it; and
there is no such thing as a reservation
by the States at all. The instrument is
made by the people; and the reserva-
tions, if any, are made by the people,
not the States.

Mr. BENJAMIN. If I am not intruding
upon the Senator's line of argument or
time and if I am I will not say another
word

Mr. BAKER. Not at all.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I ask the Senator
whether, after the Constitution had been
framed, amendments were not proposed
by nearly all the States and adopted, for

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The Reply to Benjamin.

the very purpose of meeting that con-
struction for which he is now contending
for the very purpose of maintaining
the proposition against which he now
argues? His idea is that the Constitu-
tion of the United States formed a gov-
ernment over the whole people as a mass.
The amendments state distinctly that that
was not the meaning of the Constitution;
but that, on the contrary, it was a delega-
tion of power by the States, and that the
States and the people of the States
reserved to themselves all powers not
expressly delegated.

Mr. BAKER. "The powers not dele-
gated to the United States by the Con-
stitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States respect-
ively, or to the people," that is the
amendment. Now, in answer, I say that,
in full light of that amendment, every
authority which I have read, every argu-
ment at which I have glanced, from Jack-
son, from Madison, from Webster, from

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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Adams, all unite in the proposition that
still this is a government made by the
people of the United States in their char-
acter of people of the States, being one
government by them ordained.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Will the Senator be
good enough to allow me to call his at-
tention to the seventh and last article of
the Constitution, " The ratification of the
conventions of nine States shall be suffi-
cient for the establishment of this Con-
stitution between the States so ratifying
the same," not read the preamble, but
the bargain.

Mr. BAKER. Where shall I find it, sir?

Mr. BENJAMIN. In the very last article
of the Constitution.

Mr. BAKER. I am not sure that I un-
derstand the force of the distinction which
the honorable gentleman makes between
the preamble and the Constitution itself.
Following the example of Mr. Webster,
I love to read the whole instrument to-
gether ; but I will answer the Senator :

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The Reply to Benjamin.

"The ratification of the conventions of nine States
shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitu-
tion between the States so ratifying the same."

Mr. BENJAMIN. "Between the States."

Mr. BAKER. Mr. President, what are
the conventions of nine States but the
people of nine States? There is the
answer at once. It is not ratification by
the State Legislature.

Mr. BENJAMIN. What is the meaning
of the phrase "between the States"? Is
not that the language of compact?

Mr. BAKER. Well, it is obvious enough.
Ratification is to be done by the people.
It is made by the people in the first place.
It so proposes. It is to be ratified by
them in the second place; and being so
made by them, and being so ratified by
them, is binding upon the States, which
are the governments of the people that
ratified it. That is all. But, sir, the
Senator does not escape in that way. I
ask him yet once again, is the right to
secede a right growing out of the Consti-
tution itself? If so, where? What is

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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

that provision? I repeat, I am a strict
constructionist. He says he is. I am not
now going to hunt for a vagrant and doubt-
ful power; but when States propose to
secede, to dissolve the Union, to declare
war, to drench confederated States in
fraternal blood, I ask if they claim it as a
Constitutional right to take the step that
will inevitably lead to that? I ask for the
word, the page, the place, and I meet no
reply.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I again refer the Senator
to the words and place. If the right of
secession exists at all, under any circum-
stances, revolutionary or not, it is a State
right. Now, the question whether it
exists under the Constitution or not, can
only be determined in one way: first,
by examining what powers are pro-
hibited to the States; and next, whether
the powers not prohibited are reserved.
This power is nowhere prohibited; and
the tenth amendment declares that the
powers not prohibited by the Consti-

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The Reply to Benjamin.

tution to the States are reserved to the
States.

Mr. BAKER. Mr. President, I do not
perceive the importance, nay, the profit,
of pursuing that line of inquiry any fur-
ther. I have asked for the answer of the
honorable Senator to that question; and
if with that answer he is content, and if
by that answer he intends to abide, so be
it. I think that we have well disposed
of the right of secession under the Con-
stitution itself. I advance to another
proposition.

I admit that there is a revolutionary
right. Whence does it spring? How is
it limited? To these questions for a mo-
ment I address myself. Whence does it
spring? Why, sir, as a right in commu-
nities, it is of the same nature as the right
of self-preservation in the individual. A
community protects itself by revolution
against intolerable oppression under any
form of government, as an individual
protects himself against intolerable

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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

oppression by brute force. No compact,
no treaty, no constitution, no form of gov-
ernment, no oath or obligation can deprive
a man or a community of that sacred, ulti-
mate right. Now, sir, I think I state that
proposition as fully as I could be desired
to state it by the gentleman upon the
other side. The question that arises be-
tween us at once is: this right of revolu-.
tion springing out of the self-preservation
belonging to communities, as to individ-
uals, must be exercised how? In a case,
and in a case only, where all other reme-
dies fail; where the oppression is grind-
ing, intolerable, and permanent; where
revolution is in its nature a fit redress;
and where they who adopt it as a remedy
can do it in the full light of all the exam-
ples of the past, of all the responsibilities
of the present, of all the unimpassioned
judgment of the future, and the ultimate
determination of the Supreme Arbiter and
Judge of all. Sir, a right so exercised is
a sacred right. I maintain it; and I would

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The Reply to Benjamin.

exercise it. The question recurs: lias
South Carolina that right?

I think the honorable Senator will not
deny that one of the gravest responsibil-
ities which can devolve upon a community
or a State is to break up an established,
peaceful form of government. If that be
true as an abstract proposition, how much
more does the truth strike us when we
apply it to the condition in which we
found ourselves two months ago ! South
Carolina proposes now, according to the
later doctrine, to secede as a revolutionary
right; as a resistance against intolerable
oppression; as an appeal to arms for the
maintenance of rights, for the redress of
wrongs, where the one cannot be main-
tained and the other be redressed other-
wise. Now, sir, I demand of her and of
those who defend her, that she should
stand out in the broad light of history
and declare, if not by the Senators that
she ought to have on this floor, by those
who league with her, in what that oppres-
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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

sion consists; where that injury is in-
flicted ; by whom the blow is struck ; what
weapon is used in the attack. So much,
at least, we have a right to inquire. After
we make that inquiry, permit me to add
another thing : a State claiming to be sov-
ereign and a people part of a great gov-
ernment ought to act with deliberation
and dignity; she ought to be able to
appeal to all history for kindred cases of
intolerable oppression, and kindred occa-
sions of magnanimous revolution.

Sir, we are not unacquainted in this
chamber with the history of revolutions.
We very well know that our forefathers
rebelled against the domination of the
house of Stuart. And why? The causes
are as well known to the world as the
great struggle by which they maintained
the right, and the great renown which has
forever followed the deed. When Oliver
Cromwell brought a traitorous, false king,
and gave him, " a dim discrowned mon-
arch," to the block, he did it by a solemn

172

The Reply to Benjamin.

judgment in the face of man and in the
face of Heaven, avouching the deed on
the great doctrine of revolutionary right;
and although a fickle people betrayed his
memory although the traditions of mon-
archy were as yet too strong for the better
thought of the English people yet, still,
now, here, to-day, wherever the English
language is read, wherever that historic,
glowing story is repeated, the hearts of
brave and generous men throb when the
deed is avouched, and justify the act.

Again: there was a second revolution
the revolution of 1688; and why?
Because a cowardly, fanatic, bigoted mon-
arch sought, by the exercise of a power to
be used through the bayonets of standing
armies, to repress the spirit and destroy
the liberties of a free people ; because he
attempted to enforce upon them a re-
ligion alien to their thought and to their
hope; because he attempted to trample
under foot all that was sacred in the con-
stitution of English government
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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

And, sir, in the history of revolutions
there are examples more illustrious still
perhaps the greatest of them all, that
revolution which ended in the establish-
ment of the Dutch Eepublic. My honor-
able and distinguished friend, I know, has
read the glowing pages of Motley, perhaps
the most accurate, if not the most bril-
liant, of American historians. I am sure
that his heart has throbbed with generous
enthusiasm as he read the thrilling pages of
that story where a great people, led by the
heroic house of Orange, pursued, through
danger, through sacrifice, through blood,
through the destruction of property, of
homes, of families, and of all but the great
indestructible spirit of liberty, the tenor
of their way to liberty and greatness and
glory at last. Sir, I need not tell him the
oppression against which they rebelled;
that the intolerable tyranny under which
they groaned was of itself sufficient not
only to enlist upon their side and in their
behalf all the sympathies of civilized
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The Reply to Benjamin.

Europe then, but the sympathies of the
whole civilized world as they have read
the story since.

Yet once more, in the full light of these
revolutions, our forefathers rebelled
against a tyrant, declaring the causes of
the Revolution, proclaiming them to the
world in an immortal document that is
familiar to us all. We recognize the
right. Why? Because the oppression
was intolerable; because the tyranny
could not be borne; because the essen-
tial rights belonging to every human
being were violated, and that continually;
and in words more eloquent than I could
use, or than I have now time to quote,
Mr. Jefferson proclaimed them to the
world, and gave the reasons which im-
pelled us to the separation. Sir, I ask
the honorable Senator to bring his record
of reasons for revolution, bloodshed, and
war here to-day, and compare them with
that document.

If, then, Mr. President, the controversy
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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

is not upon the abstract right of seces-
sion, nor upon the revolutionary right of
secession in a case fit and proper; but if,
at last, it narrows itself down into a dis-
cussion of the reasons why South Carolina
is to revolt,! propose to enter with a little
minuteness of detail into the history of
those reasons. I shall find them in
several sources: first, chiefest, perhaps
best, in the speech now before me of the
Senator from Louisiana ; secondly, in the
very impulsive, very brilliant speech of
the honorable Senator from Texas [Mr.
Wigfall]; and, if I have time to pursue
the search, perhaps in the speech of the
excited and excitable Senator from Geor-
gia [Mr. Iverson]. The gentleman from
Louisiana says that not devoting very
much time to the catalogue, and not giving
it with any hope that it will avert the issue
of arms, he will yet suggest some of the
wrongs and outrages which that "dreary
catalogue" presents, as having happened
to the State of South Carolina. Before

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The Reply to Benjamin.

he does so, however, he says that the
wrongs under which she groans, the inju-
ries which justify and demand revolution,
are to be found " chiefly in a difference
of our construction of the Constitution.'*
Sir, is not that a "lame and impotent
conclusion" ? I was astonished. I have
known again to quote the words of Mr.
Webster I have known, perhaps I may
know again shortly, that there are cases
when the war does not always come up
to the manifesto; but from the serious-
ness with which the distinguished Sena-
tor approached the subject, I did not
expect to find a qualification which would
destroy the import and force of his cata-
logue altogether. Why, sir, can it be
that any man in his sober senses will
pretend that there can be cause for revo-
lution, war, because two parties in this
Government differ as to their construc-
tion of one article in the Federal Con-
stitution? Can that be so? And yet,
in the face of earth and Heaven, I recall
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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

the fact that the honorable Senator
declares that the principal causes of
grievance are to be found in a difference
in the construction of one article of the
Constitution of the United States.

Mr. BENJAMIN. The Senator will par-
don me. I do not think he will find
that in anything I said.

Mr. BAKER. Far be it from me to
misrepresent the gentleman. If I do
not find it, I will withdraw what I have
said. I quote his words, and they
were words well considered, beautifully
chosen :

" Before, however, making any statement that state-
ment to which we have been challenged, and which I shall
make in but very few words of the wrongs under which
the South is now suffering, and for which she seeks redress,
as the difficulty seems to arise chiefly from a difference in
our construction of the Constitution, I desire to read"

Something else. Now, sir, I ask him
whether I am not justified in saying that
his main ground of complaint in his
catalogue of dreary outrages and intol-
erable wrongs, is that that catalogue is
founded, to use his own words, chiefly

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The Reply to Benjamin.

upon a difference in a construction of
the Constitution of the United States ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. The Senator will par-
don me. He stated that I had said they
arose from a difference in the construc-
tion of one clause of the Constitution.

Mr. BAKER. Well, sir, let it be "two
rogues in buckram," or seven; the idea
is the same.

Mr. BENJAMIN. That is it. We have
eight or ten grievances; because you all
construe the Constitution on the errone-
ous principles you have announced this
morning.

Mr. BAKER. . . . Now, sir, suppose
we differed about a dozen articles of the
Constitution, what then ? I read the cata-
logue of wrongs, and I find, as a lawyer,
that they must refer themselves princi-
pally to one. But suppose there are
more, what then ? There are some things
that do not appear to strike the honora-
ble Senator in this connection. For
instance, does he remember that although

179

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

he may have one construction of the Con-
stitution, and I may have another, there
is between us a supreme arbiter, and
that upon every conceivable clause about
which we may differ, or have differed,
that arbiter has decided always upon
one side? To begin: there have been
debates in this Chamber, and elsewhere,
as to the true construction of that clause
of the Constitution which requires the
rendition of fugitive slaves. I will use
that term. There are very distinguished
members now upon this floor who have
argued with great gravity and wisdom
and research and eloquence, that it was
intended that the power of rendition
should be exercised by States. That
question, with all questions kindred to
it, about which any of us may have dif-
fered, has gone before the Supreme Court
of the United States, and has been decided
against us, or some of us, and in favor of
the Constitutionality of the law as it now
stands; and we have yielded to it, not

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The Reply to Benjamin.

a submission, but, a better word, obe-
dience. Is not that true ?

Again, we have differed in late days
and I am here to show, directly, how late
that difference is, and I trust I shall show
how ill-considered as to the construc-
tion of the Constitution upon the subject
of the government of the Territories.
That is not a political question merely.
That is capable of being made the sub-
ject of a suit in law or equity, under
the provisions of the Constitution. That
has gone before the Supreme Court of
the United States. There has been, as
we all agree, a judgment; there has been,
as most here contend, a decision ; there has
been, as everybody admits, an opinion.
All three have been adverse to us. Is
there in that any cause of complaint ?

There are the two points; and as the
honorable Senator asks me questions, I
will ask him another. Is there any other
cause of complaint, except under these
two clauses of the Constitution, belong-

181

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

ing to the Constitutional controversy?
The fugitive slave law is one, the right
to take your slaves into the Territories
the other. Are there any others ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. Undoubtedly, Mr.
President. I thought I enumerated six
on Monday. If the Senator will do me
the honor to read the complaints which
I made in behalf of the South, he will
find them. Then, if those are not suffi-
cient, I can furnish half a dozen more/

Mr. BAKEB. Mr. President, I may
remark that those other causes of griev-
ance which, upon an occasion so solemn
as that presented by the Senator the
other day, were not mentioned in that
category, were best left unsummed. If
they were not of sufficient importance to
be enumerated then, they ought not to be
brought up by way of makeweight now.
I hold him to his record.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Bead.

Mr. BAKER. I have now, as I under-
stand it, presented two main causes of

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The Reply to Benjamin.

grievance arising, as he says, out of
defective Constitutional construction ;
and, although I see many specifications,
I understand they are all parts of two
charges arising out of defective construc-
tion upon these two points. For instance,
one of the six charges is, that we slander
you. Surely we do not do that under
the Constitution. We slander you, we
vilify you, we abuse you, you say. Well,
that is not a Constitutional difficulty,
[laughter] ; and if my distinguished
friend will look at his "dreary cata-
logue," he will find that, save the two
which I have mentioned, the remainder
are but amplification, extension of griev-
ances, arising outside of the Consti-
tution, from difference of sentiment,
opinions, morals, or habits, and not the
cause of Constitutional complaint. There-
fore, I am not answered when he says,
"Look at my catalogue." I repeat once
more, to make it still plainer, that there
are but two Constitutional causes of com-

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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

plaint : one in regard to the rendition of
fugitive slaves, the other the government
of the Territories. The difficulties arise
out of those two provisions. All the
rest are matters of sentiment, of opinion,
of habit, and of morals, which neither
constitutions nor laws can cause or cure.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Mr. President, if the
Senator wants me to answer whether the
difficulties of which the South complains,
and in consequence of which she refuses
any longer to remain confederated with
her sister States at the North, arise
exclusively from violations of the rights
of the South in relation to her slave
property, I answer, yes. He may take
one, two, three, five, or six, clauses of the
Constitution ; they all come back to that
single point your constant, persistent
warfare upon our property, instead of
using the powers of the Federal Govern-
ment to protect, preserve, and cherish it.

Mr. BAKER. And thus, Mr. President,
after questioning and cross-questioning,
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The Reply to Benjamin.

and exercising that power of cross-exami-
nation which in courts, and I believe
elsewhere, we sometimes call the test of
truth, I bring the Senator, as I under-
stand him, at last to agree that when he
says in his labored speech the difficulty
arises chiefly out of a defective construc-
tion of the Constitution by us Black
Republicans, or us people of the North,
it is to be found upon two subjects : one
in relation to the fugitive slave question,
and the other to the government of the
Territories.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Not simply as to fugi-
tive slaves, but all slaves.

Mr. BAKER. But that is included in
this question of territorial government,
of the Wilmot Proviso, of the right of
the South to take her slaves there, and
go where she pleases and as she pleases.
These are the questions

Mr. BENJAMIN. Why, Mr. President,
if the Senator will look once again at
what I said, he will find that it does not

185

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

comprise only a reference to such slaves
as escape, but he will find that we refer
constantly and openly in debate to organ-
ized and persistent efforts on the part of
entire bodies of people at the North,
with the connivance, with the secret aid
of their fellow-citizens, to rob us of
our property not simply not returning
such slaves as may escape, but organ-
izing means to take away our property
and hide it beyond our reach, and
making the fugitive slave law utterly
valueless, even if it was executed, by
preventing our discovering even where
a slave is.

Mr. BAKER Mr. President, I reply to
that, that is nothing more than brilliant
amplification. The point that I press
the Senator upon is this he has no
reply to it : have you any other difiiculty
with us about Constitutional construction
except upon two subjects ? I do not ask
you now whether you complain that we
rob you of your slaves. That is not the

186

The Reply to Benjamin.

point. Do we do it under Constitutional
construction ? I repeat : take the whole
tenor of the speech, the complaint, the
catalogue, the " dreary catalogue "; it all
ends in this: that there are differences
of opinion among us of sentiment. You
complain of our bad morals and our
bad manners; you say we rob you; you
say we intend to establish a cordon of free
States around you ; you say that we are
persistent in what we do on this point ;
but at last, in your better and your more
candid moments, you say that the
difficulty seems to arise chiefly from
a difference in our construction of the
Constitution. I add to that (and you
will not contradict the addition), that it
is a difference in our construction of the
Constitution upon two subjects first,
the rendition of fugitive slaves; second,
the government of the Territories so as
to exclude slavery from those Territories
by the power either of the General Gov-
ernment or the Territorial Legislature.
187

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

I think we arrive clearly at the points
to be debated between us.

Now, sir, first, of the fugitive slave
law. What is the construction that we
give to the fugitive slave law, of which
the Senator complains ? I have already
answered that question. We did in
argument give a construction. We were
defeated. The question went before the
Supreme Court. We were overruled.
We have obeyed that decision loyally ever
since. We have never seriously endeav-
ored to repeal it; nor have we as a party,
nor as a North, endeavored to defeat its
execution. Nay, if we had, that is not
within the Senator's counts, because he
does not say that the difficulty arises out
of malexecution of the fugitive slave
law, but out of the differences of opinion
between us as to the construction of the
Constitution. Here I answer again, and
I will quote Mr. Lincoln, about to be
inaugurated as President of these United
States a man who seeks to make his

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The Reply to Benjamin.

opinions known in all proper ways and
upon all proper occasions; a man who,
for simplicity of purpose, directness of
expression, is not surpassed in this coun-
try; a man whose honesty has already
worthily passed into a proverb. You
will find in the history of the debates,
unsurpassed in ability in this country,
between the distinguished Senator from
Illinois [Mr. Douglas] and the President
elect, that he was asked, and for obvious
purposes, what his opinion was upon
this fugitive slave law question, and he
replied :

" Question. I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day
stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional
repeal of the fugitive slave law?

*' Answer. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor
of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive slave law."
Debates of Lincoln and Douglas, p. 88.

Is that clear and distinct ? And, sir, I
echo him, not because he is President,
but because he is honest and wise and true.
I, who want nothing of him; I, who am
not, and in no sense can ever be, depend-
ent on him; I reply with him; I, as a.

189

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Senator on this floor, repeating the opin-
ion of my constituents, without distinction
of party I, too, say that I am not, have
not been, never will be, in favor of the un-
conditional repeal of the fugitive slave law.
Again, sir: since the passage of that
law, the Republican party has sprung
into existence. We have had two politi-
cal campaigns. In one, untried, unor-
ganized, without reasonable grounds for
hope, we astonished ourselves, we aston-
ished the country, by our strength. In
the other, gathering together all the
irresistible elements of freedom in the
North and West, we have gained a great
political triumph, which we intend to
use wisely, but which we intend to guard
well. Have we, in any platform, in any
resolutions, by any bill, in any way evinced
a disposition to repeal that fugitive slave
law ? Do we not, upon all fit occasions,
say that, though many of us believe it is a
hard bargain, yet that it is so " nominated
in the bond," and we will endure it?

190

The Reply to Benjamin.

Now, sir, when we make these state-
ments we have made them in the can-
vass; I make them more deliberately
now what is the reply ? I know it of
old. Why, it is said, " While your plat-
form does not propose to repeal the
fugitive slave law, there are States which
pass personal liberty bills." Will gen-
tlemen listen to our calm, frank, candid
reply? First, the sense of the whole
North is opposed to nullification, in any
way or upon any subject. We will yield
obedience and I have said that it is
a better word than submission to any
provision of the Constitution of the
United States, as it is construed by the
ultimate tribunal. They have, as we
understand it, declared that law to be
Constitutional, and to that decision we
yield. If there be States which have
passed laws in violation of it, preventive
of it, to hinder, to defeat, to delay it,
in my judgment and, sir, what is of
infinitely more consequence, in the

191

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

judgment of the North and West those
laws ought to be repealed ; not because
South Carolina threatens; not because
Louisiana will secede: but because we
desire to yield obedience to those highest
obligations, right and duty, of which I
made mention in the commencement of
this argument.

But, sir, the honorable and distin-
guished gentleman upon the other side
knows very well that there is very seri-
ous and grave debate whether those laws
are in any sense unconstitutional. We
are told that some of them were made
before the fugitive slave law, bearing
upon other questions and directed to
other objects. We are told that the pro-
visions of many of them are provisions
intended to guard and secure personal
liberty, independent of any question as
to the fugitive slave law. But whether
that be so to any extent, or to what
extent, we say that if it shall be proved
before any competent tribunal, and most

192

The Reply to Benjamin.

of all, before the Supreme Court of the
United States, that those laws, or any of
them, in any of their provisions, do hin-
der, delay, defeat the execution of that
law, " reform it altogether." Sir, speak-
ing in my place, with some knowledge
of the Eepublican party, speaking by
no authority in the world for the Presi-
dent elect, but speaking of him because
I have known him from my boyhood, or
nearly so, I say that, when the time
arrives that he shall be inaugurated in
this capital, and exercise in the chair of
the Chief Magistrate all the high respon-
sible duties of that office, he will enforce
the execution of all the laws of this
Government, whether revenue, or fugitive
slave, or territorial, or otherwise, with
the whole integrity of his character and
the whole power of the Government.
Now, I ask my distinguished friend if that
is not a fair, frank reply to all the objec-
tions he may make as to differences of
construction about the fugitive slave law ?

193

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Mr. BENJAMIN. If the Senator wants
the answer now

Mr. BAKER. Certainly, sir; let the
blow fall now.

Mr. BENJAMIN. It is not at all satis-
factory; not in the remotest degree.

Mr. BAKER. My honorable friend will
not say that that is a reply. If I were
in court, or elsewhere, and not in so
grave a body as the Senate of the United
States, I would quote two very celebrated
lines in reply to that, to the effect that those
who suffer from the law do not always
have a good opinion of it; but I refrain.
I repeat that, in the judgment of reason-
able men, that is an answer, and a full
and complete answer to the objection
made against us, that you are going to
secede because of any difference of
opinion between us as to the construc-
tion of the provisions of the Constitution
and our duty about the fugitive slave law.

There are some other observations
with which I beg leave to detain the

194

The Reply to Benjamin.

Senate, however, upon that subject.
That can scarcely be considered one of
the objections; first, because the State
of South Carolina herself, through her
only authorized expositor, the Charleston
Mercury, declares, and has declared, that
she believes the fugitive slave law to be
unconstitutional anyhow. One of the
most distinguished of her sons, Mr.
Rhett, repeats and emphasizes the same
remark. A distinguished gentleman, the
Senator from Georgia, lately occupying
the chair, not now in it, [Mr. Iverson,]
has said lately upon this floor that the
South does not complain of any construc-
tion which the North gives to that law ;
nay, more, that the law is well made,
carefully guarded, just to the South,
and, so far as the Federal Government is
concerned, properly executed.

Now, sir, can that be the ground of
complaint about which South Carolina
is going out? Will she separate the
bonds that have bound us together for

195

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

more than seventy years, because she
does not think that we quite perfectly
obey a law which she herself, in the
person of her most distinguished ser-
vants, declares to be unconstitutional?
Not so, sir. Or will Georgia follow the
illustrious example of South Carolina,
and desert the Republic, when her rep-
resentative on this floor declares that
upon that subject the North performs
all its obligations ? These are questions
which I leave to their honor and their
dignity to decide.

The Senator from Louisiana tells me
that the Southern people have agreed
that slavery may be prohibited. How?
Sir, in passing the Missouri Compromise
bill, they did not merely agree to do it
the act of Congress is not a mere evi-
dence to be used in a court of honor that
the people of Louisiana will not inter-
fere with the bargain. That is not it;
but the act of Congress is a positive law,

196

The Reply to Benjamin.

made under the sanction of an oath, in
the light of the consciences of the men
who agreed to it ; and I ask him in all
fairness and honor, if he or I to-day vote
in this Senate chamber to prohibit slav-
ery in a certain Territory, whether, if we
believe that we have no right under the
Constitution to do that, we do not violate
both the Constitution and our oaths when
we render that vote ? I think that from
this position there is no escape. When
Mr. Clay gave that vote, he had no Con-
stitutional doubt. When the South urged
it, and the North agreed to it, they who
voted had no Constitutional doubt ; or if
they had, it vanished before the clear light
of reason and argument. The North, as
it is said, accepted it reluctantly ; at least
they abided by it. When gentlemen de-
stroyed it they ran after strange gods;
and now when many of them propose to
come back to it, they are offering a truer
and more acceptable worship. But, sir,
the point of the argument is not to be
197

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

evaded by any pretense that it is a mere
agreement in a court of honor to do that
which they have no legal and Constitu-
tional right to do. Suppose a gentleman
from Alabama comes up and says, " Sir,
you, the Senator from Louisiana, have
voted to prohibit me from taking my
slaves into the territory north of 36 30';
what do you mean by it ? have you any
right to do it? "Oh, no," the Senator
says, "no right in the world; it is just a
sort of legislative flourish, a compact
between us and somebody else, that hav-
ing done it, we will never take it back;
it is the exercise of a right which theo-
retically we do not claim; we have just
done it we do not exactly know why in
point of law, but we have done it because
we hope, having done it, nobody will undo
it." What will the strict constructionists
on the other side say to that? What
words will they put in my mouth ?

I do not think the argument can be
defended other than upon the ground

198

The Reply to Benjamin.

assumed by a justice of the peace, well
known to my distinguished friend from
Illinois [Mr. Douglas], old Boiling Green,
in answer to a little law advice that I
gave him on one occasion when the Sen-
ator and I were both very young men,
and (if he will excuse me for saying so)
very poor lawyers. [Laughter.] Old
Boiling Green, then a magistrate, came
to me and said, "Baker, I want to know
if I have jurisdiction in a case of slan-
der." I put on a very important air;
looked at him steadily looked as wise
as I could, and I said to him, "Squire,
you have no such authority; that is re-
served to a court of general jurisdiction."
"Well," said he, "think again; you have
not read law very well, or very long; try
it again; now, have I not jurisdiction?
can I not do it?" "No," I said; "you
cannot." Said he, "Try once more;
now, cannot I take jurisdiction?" "No,
sir," said I; "you cannot; I know it; I
have read the law from Blackstone to

199

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

; well, I have read Blackstone, and

I know you cannot do it." " Now, sir,"
said he, "I know I can; for, by Heaven,
I have done it." [Laughter.] I under-
stand, now, that the sum total of the
answer which is made to my objection as
to the Constitutionality of the Missouri
Compromise touching the consciences of
the gentlemen who proposed to pass it
without power, is just the reply of my
old friend Boiling Green. They say,
"Theoretically we have not the power;
constitutionally we have not the power ;
but, by Heaven, we have done it."
[Laughter.]

Well, sir, I do not assume to deal with
them in a court of conscience. That is
their matter. I do not pretend to discuss
the propriety of making a solemn act of
the Congress of the United States merely
evidence in a court of honor, subject, as
I think, to a demurrer to evidence at
least. That is none of my business.
What I am dealing with is this : if that
200

The Reply to Benjamin.

be the opinion of Virginia, of Louisiana,
of the entire South; if they have done it
by their leaders, by their speeches; if
they have lived by it; if, being a compact,
it is an executed compact; if under it
State after State has come into this
Union, is it not too late for them to deny
now that we are justified if we wish to
adhere to that principle? Have they
a right to come and say, "You are
declaring slavery to be a creature of the
local law, and we will justly dissolve
the Union by revolution in consequence
thereof ? " I think, from the conclusion,
that this is neither fair, nor just, nor
right, nor Constitutional. There is no
escape.

The Senator says, in substance, that we
attack slavery generally.

Mr. BENJAMIN. If the Senator will per-
mit me, the charge is not that Congress
does it, but that the States do it.

Mr. BAKER. Very well. I thank the
gentleman; and with the directness which
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Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

belongs to his character, and the cour-
tesy which he can never forget, I shall
be happy if, only to carry down the
argument, whenever he sees a proper
place, he will just direct my attention to
the pith and marrow of the matter as he
does now. Now, be it understood, on
this given day of January, in the year
of our Lord 1861, the great champion
of the South upon this question gets up
in his place in the Senate and admits
that there is no ground of complaint
that the Federal Government ever has
attempted to interfere with the existence
of slavery in the Southern States. We
will get that down upon the record, and
I apprehend it will be quoted before this
controversy is over, again and again.

But it is said that the Northern States,
the Western States in other words, the
free States do so interfere. Again we
deny it The fact is not so. The proof
cannot be made. Why, sir, I might ask,
in the first place, how can the States so

The Reply to Benjamin.

interfere? Suppose Illinois, of which
I desire to speak always with affectionate
solicitude, and of which I can speak with
considerable knowledge, were to violate
all the opinions which she has mani-
fested in her history, and desired to
interfere with the existence of slavery
in Virginia, how would she go about it ?
I have the profoundest respect for my
friend as a lawyer; but I would like to
know what bill he could frame by which
Illinois could interfere with the existence
of slavery in Virginia.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Mr. President, I will
tell the Senator, not how they can do
it by bill, but how they do it in acts.
A body of men penetrated into the State
of Virginia by force of arms, into a
peaceful village at the dead hour of night,
armed with means for the purpose of
causing the slaves to rise against their
masters, seized upon the public property
of the United States, and murdered the
inhabitants. A man was found in Massa-

203

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

chusetts who, in public speeches, declared
that he approved of that, and that the
invasion was right; and the people of
Massachusetts, by an enormous majority
the fact of that man's action placed
before the people as a ground why he
should be elected their Governor
elected him their Governor, indorsed
invasion of a sister State, indorsed the
murder of peaceful inhabitants of the
State of Virginia. The people of Massa-
chusetts, by the election of Andrews as
their Governor, have indorsed the act of
John Brown, have indorsed the invasion
of a sister State, and the murder of its
peaceful citizens at dead of night.

The people of Massachusetts, in their
collective capacity, have done more.
They have sent Senators upon this floor
whose only business has been, for year
after year, to insult the people of the
South; here, in this common assembly
of confederate embassadors, to cast slan-
der and opprobrium upon them ; to call

204

The Reply to Benjamin.

them thieves, murderers, violators ; charge
them as being criminals of the blackest
dye; and because the men who here rep-
resent Massachusetts did that, Massa-
chusetts has sent them back to repeat
the wrong. They have done that, end
nothing else, since ever I have been in
the Senate.

Mr. WILSON. Mr. President
Mr. BAKER. Oh, never mind. Mr.
President, I asked the gentleman from
Louisiana to point out to me and to the
Senate how, if the State of Illinois were
desirous to interfere with the existence
of slavery in Virginia, it could be done.
I leave to his cooler temper and his
better taste to examine how he has
answered me. Why, sir, he runs off into
a disquisition upon John Brown, which
would not dignify a stump. Now, I sub-
mit that that is not the point between us.
I hold that his answer is an acknowledg-
ment that a free State cannot, as a State,
interfere in any conceivable way with

205

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

slavery in a slave State ; and that being
so, we advance another step. We agree
now that Congress never have interfered,
and that States never can.

But the gentleman says (and I do not
reply to it now on account of what he
has said at this moment, but because it
is another of the counts in the indict-
ment), that individuals in the Northern
States have interfered with slavery in
the Southern States. I believe that to
be true; but being true, I ask, what
then ? Is that the chief ground of disso-
lution? Are you going to revolt for
that ? Will you plunge us into civil war
for that ? Is that all ? Sir, let us exam-
ine it a little more closely. I pass, as
unworthy of the dignity of the debate,
the incidental attack which the Senator
from Louisiana has chosen to make upon
the people of Massachusetts, upon the
Governor of that great State, and upon
the distinguished Senators from that
State, who, in my judgment, are an honor

206

The Reply to Benjamin.

on this floor to this body. It is not my
purpose they would not intrust me
with their defense ; nor is it needful that
I should make it here or anywhere.
That is not within the scope and pur-
pose of this debate; but it is within
the scope and purpose of this debate to
examine how much of truth there is in
the general sweeping charge which the
Senator has chosen to make, and how
much justification in the fact, if the fact
be true.

Sir, the people of the Northern and
Western States are a free people. We
have there various rights guaranteed to
us by our State constitutions, among the
chiefest of which are liberty of thought
and freedom of speech. We are an
inquiring people; we are an investigat-
ing people; and we are, no doubt, very
subject to the charge often made against
us that we are a people of isms. Where
there is perfect freedom of opinion,
that must be the case, in the nature of

207

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

things. It is in the nature of the human
mind itself. Laws will not restrain it.
We cannot bind the human mind with
fetters, nor can we limit it to modes of
expression. It will think and it will act,
spite of all government, and beyond all
law. It follows, as a consequence, that
the people will not think alike; and, of
course, as there cannot be two ways per-
fectly right upon any one subject, the
people will not always think truly and
wisely.

What then ? There are people in Mas-
sachusetts, and in Illinois, and in Oregon,
who will not only violate the rights of
the slave States but the rights of the
free. There are people in the North
who will not only steal niggers, but steal
horses. There are people in the North
who will not only try to burn down houses
in the slave States, but who will be in-
cendiary in the free States. It is the
duty of the distinguished Senator from
Louisiana, and myself sometimes, as

208

The Reply to Benjamin.

counsel, to defend such men. Nor do I
know that such men or such defenses are
confined to the North or the West alone.
I apprehend if a grateful procession of
the knaves and rascals who are indebted
to the distinguished Senator from Lou-
isiana for an escape from the penitentiary
and the halter were to surround him
to-day, it would be difficult for even
admiring friends to get near him to con-
gratulate him upon the success of his
efforts upon this floor. [Laughter.]
When, therefore, he says that individuals
not States, not Congress but indi-
viduals in the free States, do attack in
their individual capacity the honor and
dignity of the slave States, and do run
off their niggers, and do steal their
property, and do kidnap, and do various
other things contrary to their duty as
good citizens, I am inclined, while I
regret it, to believe the whole of it.

Springing from that, and evidenced, as
I think, by the excited enumeration

209

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

which the distinguished Senator has
chosen to make of the wrongs and crimes
of the State of Massachusetts and her
Senators, springing from that exagger-
ated mode of thought and expression,
as to the free States, arises the spirit of
the count in the indictment against the
whole of us. Now, I beg leave to say to
the honorable Senator, that the desire to
interfere with the rights of slavery in
the slave States is not the desire of the
Northern people. It is not the desire of
the people of Oregon, I know; it is not
the desire of the people of California, I
am sure ; it is not the desire of the people
of Illinois, I would swear ; and I may
say more, that in all my association with
the Republican party, I have yet to find
among them, from their chiefs down to
their humblest private, one man who
proposes to interfere with the existence
of slavery in the slave States by force,
by legislation, or by Congressional action.
I have known no such man in all my
210

The Reply to Benjamin.

short experience, nor do I believe that
the Senator from Louisiana can point
out any such man.

Mr. BENJAMIN. If the Senator merely
desires me to answer him, I will tell
him exactly what I said the other day:
that the belief of the South is, and I
admit I share it, that, without intending
to violate the letter of the Constitution
by going into States for the purpose of
forcibly emancipating slaves, it is the
desire of the whole Republican party
to close up the Southern States with a
cordon of free States, for the avowed
purpose of forcing the South to emanci-
pate them.

Mr. BAKER. Very well, sir. See how
gloriously we advance, step by step.
We abandon now the charge that Con-
gress does it; we abandon now the charge
that States do it; we abandon now the
charge that the individual members of
the Northern and Western communities,
as a body, desire to interfere with slavery

211

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

contrary to law, to violate any existing
right in the slave States; but we insist
tenaciously and pertinaciously on our
fourth count in the indictment; and it is
this

Mr. BENJAMIN. The Senator, I trust,
does not desire to misrepresent what I
said.

Mr. BAKER. I do not, sir.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I am confident that he
does not. I understood the Senator to
ask me, in relation to the Republican
party, what proof I had of their desire
to destroy slavery in the States. I gave
it to him. I did not say that, independ-
ently of that, there were not other attacks
upon Southern slavery. I just this mo-
ment referred him to the direct attack of
the State of Massachusetts the State as
a State. Independently of that, by the
further exemplification of the State of
Massachusetts, I will refer him to the
fact that her Legislature indorsed the
vituperations of her Senator on this floor,
212

The Reply to Benjamin.

by an enormous majority, and made that
a State act; and furthermore, that she
passed a law in violation of the rights
of Southern slaveholders, and all her
eminent legal men are now urging the
State to repeal the law as a gross out-
rage upon the Constitutional rights of
the South.

Mr. BAKER. Why, Mr. President, in a
State where all her eminent legal men
are desirous to rectify a wrong, I do not
think, if the Senator will wait a little
while, there can be any very great danger.
Our profession is a very powerful one;
and I have never known a State in which
we all agree upon a legal proposition
that we could not induce her to agree to
it too. That is a mere answer in pass-
ing.

I insist, however I know it is not
quite pleasant to my friend, and I regret
that it is not so that I have brought
him down to a clear statement by way of
abandonment of three or four of the
213

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

specifications. It is now true that the
great ground of complaint has narrowed
itself down to this: that, as a people, we
desire to circle the slave States with a
cordon of free States, and thereby destroy
the institution of slavery; to treat it like
the scorpion girt by fire. I take that to
be an abandonment of the main counts in
the indictment, unless that be considered
one of them. Now, I approach that ques-
tion: first, if we, a free people, really, in
our hearts and consciences, believing
that freedom is better for everybody than
slavery, do desire the advance of free
sentiments, and do endeavor to assist
that advance in a Constitutional, legal
way, is that, I ask him, ground of sepa-
ration ?

Mr. BENJAMIN. I say, yes; decidedly.

Mr. BAKER. That is well. And I say
just as decidedly, and perhaps more
emphatically, no ! And I will proceed
to tell him why. The argument is a
little more discursive to-day than yester-

214

The Reply to Benjamin.

day, but perhaps not less instructive.
Suppose that circling slavery with a cor-
don of free States were a cause of sepa-
ration, and therefore war, with us: is it
not just as much so with anybody else ?
It is no greater crime for a Massachu-
setts man or an Oregon man to circle, to
girdle, and thereby kill, slavery, than for
a Frenchman, or an Englishman, or a
Mexican. It is as much a cause of war
against France, or England, or Mexico,
as against us.

Again, sir: how are you going to help
it ? How can we help it ? Circle slavery
with a cordon of free States ! Why, if I
read history and observe geography
rightly, it is so girdled now. Which
way can slavery extend itself that it does
not encroach upon the soil of freedom ?
Has the Senator thought of that? It
cannot go North, though it is trying very
hard. It cannot go into Kansas, though
it made a convulsive effort, mistaking a
spasm for strength. It cannot go South,

215

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

because, amid the degradation and civil
war and peonage of Mexico, if there be
one thing under heaven they hate worse
than another, it is African slavery. It
cannot reach the islands of the sea, for
they are under the shadow of France,
that guards their shores against such
infectious approach. It is circled I
will not say girdled. I recollect the
figure, familiar to us all, by which he
intimates that that which is girdled will
die. Therefore, I do not say girdled;
I say circled, inclosed, surrounded; I
may say hedged in; nay, more, I may
say where is the Senator from New
York [Mr. Seward] ? he is a prophet,
and I will not predict; but, if I were not
warned by his example and his predic-
tion as to the " irrepressible conflict," I
might say that, being so hedged, circled,
guarded, encompassed, it will some day
it may be infinitely far distant, so far as
mortal eye can see but it will be some
day lost and absorbed in the superior

216

The Reply to Benjamin.

blaze of freedom. And, sir, that would
be the case, just as much as it is now, if
there were no Northern free States.
What harm do I, in Illinois or Oregon,
to the Senator from Louisiana? Where
can his slavery go, that it is not now,
unless it be in this disputed Territory of
New Mexico? Where else? If it go
anywhere else, it will go incursive, aggres-
sive upon freedom. It will go by invad-
ing the rights of a nation that is inferior
and that desires to be friendly. It will
go in defiance of the wish and will and
hope and tear and prayer of the whole
civilized world. It will go in defiance
of the hopes of civilized humanity all
over the world. The Senator will not
deny that. Therefore it is that it appears
to me idle and I had almost said wicked
to attempt to plunge this country into
civil war, upon the pretense that we are
endeavoring to circle your institution,
when, if we had no such wish or desire
in the world, it is circled by destiny,

217

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

by Providence, and by human opinion
everywhere.

The Senator asks, " How will you col-
lect your revenue ? " There is nothing
practical in the attempted idea that we
cannot punish an individual, or that we
cannot compel him to obey the law, because
a sovereign State will undertake to succor
him. There is no more sense in that than
there was in the excuse made by a cele-
brated commander -in -chief for profane
swearing. The Duke of York, as you may
rejnember, sir, was, during the reign of
George III., his father, not only comman-
der-in-chief of the British forces, but he
was titular Bishop of Osnaburgh ; that is,
he had a little principality in Germany
which was originally related to the Church,
and he was nominal bishop of that princi-
pality. At a tavern one day, while the com-
mander-in-chief was swearing profanely, a
gentleman of the Church of England felt
it his duty to reprove him, and said to
him, " Sir, I am astonished that a bishop

218

The Reply to Benjamin.

should swear in the manner that you do."
" Sir," said he, " I want you to distinctly
understand that I do not swear as the
Bishop of Osnaburgh I swear as the
Duke of York, the commander-in-chief."
"Ah, sir," said the old man, "when the
Lord shall send the duke to hell, what
will become of the bishop ? " [Laughter.]
Now, if, in consequence of an attempt to
violate the revenue laws, some persons
should be hurt, I do not know that it
will better their condition at all that
South Carolina will stand as a stake to
their back. I think that is the plain
common-sense answer to all that has been
said on that subject.

Sir, as I leave that branch of it, indeed
as I leave the subject altogether, I will
simply say that I hope it will never
come. Whatever moderation, whatever
that great healer, Time, whatever the
mediation of those allied to these people
in blood, in sympathy, in interest, may
effect, let that be done; but at last let

219

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

the laws be maintained and the Union be
preserved. At whatever cost, by what-
ever Constitutional process, through what-
ever of darkness or danger there may be,
let us proceed in the broad luminous path
of duty " till danger's troubled night be
passed and the star of peace returns."

As I take my leave of a subject upon
which I have detained you too long, I
think in my own mind whether I shall
add anything in my feeble way to the
hopes, the prayers, the aspirations that
are going forth daily for the perpetuity
of the Union of these States. I ask
myself, shall I add anything to that
volume of invocation which is everywhere
rising up to high Heaven, " Spare us from
the madness of disunion and civil war !"
Sir, standing in this chamber and speak-
ing upon this subject, I cannot forget that
I am standing in a place once occupied
by one far, far mightier than I, the lachet
of whose shoes I am not worthy to
unloose. It was upon this subject of

220

The Reply to Benjamin.

secession, of disunion, of discord, of civil
war, that Webster uttered those immortal
sentiments, clothed in immortal words,
married to the noblest expressions that
ever fell from human lips, which alone
would have made him memorable and
remembered forever. Sir, I cannot im-
prove upon those expressions. They
were uttered nearly thirty years ago, in
the face of what was imagined to be a
great danger, then happily dissipated.
They were uttered in the fullness of his
genius, from the fullness of his heart.
They have found echo since then in mil-
lions of homes and in foreign lands.
They have been a text-book in schools.
They have been an inspiration to public
hope and to public liberty. As I close,
I repeat them ; I adopt them. If in their
presence I were to attempt to give utter-
ance to any words of my own, I should
feel that I ought to say,

" And shall the lyre so long divine
Degenerate into hands like mine T"

221

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Sir, I adopt the closing passages of
that immortal speech; they are my senti-
ments; they are the sentiments of every
man upon this side of the chamber; I
would fain believe they are the sentiments
of every man upon this floor; I would
fain believe that they are an inspiration,
and will become a power throughout the
length and breadth of this broad con-
federacy; that again the aspirations and
hopes and prayers for the Union may
rise like a perpetual hymn of hope and
praise. But, sir, however this may be,
these thoughts are mine; these prayers
are mine; and as, reverently and fondly,
I utter them, I leave the discussion:

"When my eyes shall be turned to
behold for the last time the sun in
heaven, may I not see him shining on the
broken and dishonored fragments of a
once glorious Union; on States dissev-
ered, discordant, belligerent; on a land
rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may
be, in fraternal blood! Let their last

222

The Reply to Benjamin.

feeble and lingering glance rather behold
the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now
known and honored throughout the earth,
still full high advanced, its arms and
trophies streaming in their original luster,
not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a
single star obscured, bearing for its motto
no such miserable interrogatory as * What
is all this worth?' nor those other words
of delusion and folly, * Liberty first, and
Union afterwards ;' but everywhere, spread
all over in characters of living light, blaz-
ing on all its ample folds, as they float
over the sea and over the land, and in
every wind under the whole heavens,
that other sentiment, dear to every true
American heart, 'Liberty and Union, now
and forever, one and inseparable ! ' "

The Freedom of the Press.

The following memorable passage occurs in that part
of the Reply to Benjamin which has been omitted:

Sir, the liberty of the press is the highest safeguard of
all free government. Ours could not exist without it. It
is with us, nay, with all men, like a great exulting and
abounding river. It is fed by the dews of heaven, which
distill their sweetest drops to form it. It gushes from
the rill, as it breaks from the deep caverns of the earth
It is fed by a thousand affluents, that dash from the
mountain top to separate again into a thousand bounte-
ous and irrigating rills around. On its broad bosom it
bears a thousand barks. There Genius spreads its pur-
pling sail. The re Poetry dips its silver oar. There Art,
Invention, Discovery, Science, Morality, Religion, may
safely and securely float. It wanders through every land.
It is a genial, cordial source of thought and inspiration,
wherever it touches, whatever it surrounds. Sir, upon
its borders, there grows every flower of grace and every
fruit of truth. I am uot here to deny that that river
sometimes oversteps its bounds. I am not here to deny
that that stream sometimes becomes a dangerous torrent,
and destroys towns and cities upon its banks; but I am
here to say that, without it, civilization, humanity, gov-
ernment, all that makes society itself, would disappear,
and the world would return to its ancient barbarism.
Sir, if that were to be possible, or so thought for a mo-
ment, the fine conception of the great poet would be
realized. If that were to be possible, though but for a
moment, civilization itself would roll the wheels of its
car backward for two thousand years. Sir, if that were
so, it would be true that,

" As one by one in dread Medea's train,
Star after star fades off th' ethereal plain,
Thus at her felt approach and secret might,
Art after art goes out, and all is night.
Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,
Sinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,
And unawares morality expires."

AT THE GREAT MASS-MEET-
ING, NEW YOEK CITY.

THE last speech was, indeed, spoken "in the presence
of great events." South Carolina and other Southern
States had already seceded. Two months after this speech
the Administration of Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated.
Benjamin had left the Senate with the secession of Louisi-
ana. That body, held in session to act on Presidential
appointments, adjourned on March 28th. Within a fort-
night, Fort Sumter was bombarded and taken by the Con-
federates. Virginia seceded a few days later. Upon the
fall of Sumter the President called for seventy-five thou-
sand men to defend the Capital. His proclamation recited
that the laws were opposed and their execution obstructed
by " combinations " in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and called for
recruits " to suppress said combination, and to cause the
laws to be duly executed"; and at the same time sum-
moned Congress to meet in extra session of the 4th of
July. A second call for troops was made on May 4th. The
war spirit being thoroughly aroused, Union mass-meet-
ings were held throughout the Northern and Western
States, the most notable, in point of numbers and enthu-
siasm, being in Union Square, New York City, on Saturday,
April 19, 1861. From different stands twenty of the most
prominent men of the country addressed the multitude,
among them being Daniel S. Dickinson, James T. Brady,
John A. Dix, Henry J. Raymond, and the Oregon Senator.
This was the largest mass-meeting ever held in this coun-
try. It was generally estimated that one hundred thou-
sand people were in the throng. Dickinson, who had
been United States Senator from New York, and was a fine
speaker, addressing another meeting on a later occasion
in Brooklyn, after the death of Baker, thus alluded to
our orator : " He was swifter than an eagle ; he was stronger
than a lion, and the very soul of manly daring. He spoke

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

by my side at the great Union Square meeting in April,
and his words of fiery and patriotic eloquence yet ring
upon my ear. And has that noble heart ceased to throb
that pulse to play? Has that beaming eye closed in death?
Has that tongue so eloquent been silenced forever?"

Baker's speech follows. His happy reference to his
leadership of New York troops on the battle-field in
Mexico made sure of the affectionate sympathy of the
vast host before him.

Governor Stanly, on the occasion spoken of on page 65,
repeated the stirring words with which this speech con-
cluded, and declared Baker's effort to be " one of great
eloquence and power."

It was there in the great metropolis, before the
unreckoned multitude, in the face of an unexampled
crisis, and in the fullness of his fame our friend made
his last popular appeal.

AT THE GREAT MASS-MEETING,
NEW YOEK CITY.

THE majesty of the people is here
to-day to sustain the majesty of the Con-
stitution [cheers], and I come a wanderer
from the far Pacific to record my oath
along with yours of the great Empire
State. [Applause, and three cheers for
Baker.] The hour for conciliation is
passed; the gathering for battle is at
hand, and the country requires that every
man shall do his duty. [Loud cheers.]
Fellow-citizens, what is that country?
Is it the soil on which we tread? Is
it the gathering of familiar faces? Is
it our luxury, and pomp, and pride?
Nay, more than these, is it power, and
might, and majesty alone? No; our
country is more, far more, than all these.
The country which demands our love,
our courage, our devotion, our heart's

229

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

blood, is more than all these. [Loud
applause.] Our country is the history
of our fathers, the tradition of our
mothers. Our country is past renown;
present pride and power; future hope
and dignity; greatness, glory, truth, Con-
stitutional guarantees above all, free-
dom forever. [Enthusiastic cheers.]
These are the watchwords under which
we fight, and we will shout them out till
the stars appear in the sky in the stormi-
est hour of battle. [Cheers.] I have
said that the hour of conciliation is past.
It may return, but not to-morrow or next
week. It will return when that tattered
flag [pointing to the flag of Fort Sumter]
is avenged. [Prolonged and enthusiastic
cheers.] It will return when rebellious
Confederates are taught that the North,
though peaceable, is not cowardly;
though forbearing, not fearful. [Cheers.]
That hour of conciliation will come back
when again the ensign of the Republic
will stream over every rebellious fort

230

The New York Mass- Meeting.

IK

of every Confederate State [renewed
cheers], to be, as of old, the emblem of
the pride, and power, and dignity, and
majesty, and peace of the nation.
[Applause.] Young men of New York !
you are told that this is not to be a war
of aggression. In one sense, that is true ;
in another, not. We have committed
aggression upon no man. In all the
broad land, in their rebel nest, in their
traitor's camp, no truthful man can rise
and say that he has ever been disturbed,
though it be but for a single moment, in
life, liberty, estate, character, or honor.
[Cheers, and cries of " That 's so ! "] The
day they began this unnatural, false,
wicked, rebellious warfare, their lives
were more secure, their property more
secure by us (not by themselves, but by
us), more strongly guarded than the lives
and property of any other people from
the beginning of the world. [Applause.]
We have committed no oppression,
broken no compact, exercised no unholy

231

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

*

power, but have been loyal, moderate,
Constitutional, and just. We are a major-
ity, and will govern our own Union,
within our own Constitution, in our own
way. [Cries of " Bravo ! " and applause.]
We are all Democrats. We are all
Republicans. We acknowledge the sov-
ereignty within the rule of the Constitu-
tion; and under that Constitution, and
beneath that flag, let traitors beware!
[Loud cheers.]

In this sense, then, young men of New
York, we are not for a war of aggression ;
but in another sense, speaking for myself
as a man who has been a soldier, and as
a man who is a Senator, I say I am for
a war of aggression. I propose that we
do now as we did in Mexico conquer
peace. [Loud and enthusiastic applause.]
I propose that we go to Washington, and
beyond. [Loud cheers.] I do not de-
sign to remain silent, supine, inactive
nay, fearful until they gather their
battalions and advance upon our borders

232

The New York Mass-Meeting.

or into our midst. I would meet them
upon the threshold, and there, in the
very hold of their power, in the very
atmosphere of their treason, I would dic-
tate the terms of peace. [Loud cheers.]
It may take thirty millions of dollars,
it may take three hundred millions
what then? We have it. [Cries of
" Good !" and applause.] Loyally, nobly,
grandly do the merchants of New York
respond to the appeals of the Govern-
ment. It may cost us seven thousand
men ; it may cost us seventy-five thou-
sand; it may cost us seven hundred and
fifty thousand what then? We have
them. [Renewed cheering.] The blood
of every loyal man is dear to me. My
sons, my kinsmen, the men who have
grown up beneath my eye and beneath
my care, they are all dear to me ; but if
the country's destiny, glory, tradition,
greatness, freedom, Constitutional gov-
ernment demand it, let them all go.
[Enthusiastic cheers.]

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

I am not now to speak timorous words
of peace, but to kindle the spirit of
determined war; I speak in the Empire
State, amid scenes of past suffering and
past glory. The defenses of the Hudson
above me, the battle-field of Long Island
before me, and the statue of Washington
in my very face [loud, enthusiastic cheers],
the battered and unconquered flag of
Sumter is waving at my side, which I
can imagine to be trembling again with
the excitement of battle. [Great enthusi-
asm.] And as I speak, I say my mission
here to-day is to kindle the heart of New
York for war short, sudden, bold, deter-
mined, forward war. [Great applause.]

The Seventh Regiment has gone.
[Three cheers for the Seventh Regiment.]
Let seventy and seven more follow.
[Applause.] Of old, said a great his-
torian, beneath the banner of the Cross,
Europe precipitated itself upon Asia.
Beneath the banner of the Constitution
let the men of the Union precipitate

234

The New York Mass- Meeting.

themselves upon the Confederate States.
[Tremendous applause.] A few more
words, and I have done. [Cries of " Go
on; we '11 hear you all night."]

Let no man underrate the dangers of
this conflict. Civil war, for the best of
reasons upon the one side, and the worst
upon the other, is always dangerous to
liberty, always fearful, always bloody.
But, fellow-citizens, there are yet worse
things than fear, than doubt and dread,
and peril and bloodshed. Dishonor is
worse. [Prolonged cheers.] Anarchy
is worse. States forever commingling
and forever severing is worse. '[Renewed
cheers.] Secessionists are worse. To
have star after star blotted out [cries
of "Never! never!"] to have stripe after
stripe obscured [cries of "No! no!"]
to have glory after glory dimmed, to
have our women weep and our men blush
for shame through generations to come;
that and these are infinitely worse than
blood. [Tremendous cheers.]

235

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

People of New York! on the eve of
battle, allow me to speak as a soldier.
Few of you know, as my career has been
distant and obscure, but I may mention
it here to-day with a generous pride,
that it was once my fortune to lead your
gallant New York regiment in the very
shock of battle. [Applause.] It was
upon the bloody heights of Cerro Gordo.
I know well what New York can do
when her blood is up. [Loud applause.
"Three cheers for Baker!"] Again, once
more, when we march, let us not march
for revenge as yet we have nothing to
revenge. It is not much, that where that
tattered flag recently floated, guarded by
seventy men against ten thousand, it is
not much that starvation effected what
an enemy could not compel. [Prolonged
applause.]

We have yet some punishment to in-
flict. The President himself, a hero
without knowing it, and I speak from
knowledge, having known him from boy-

236

The New York Mass- Meeting.

hood, the President says: "There are
wrongs to be redressed, already long
enough endured ;" and we march to battle
and to victory because we do not choose
to endure this wrong any longer. [Cheers.]
They are wrongs not merely against us,
not against the President, not against me,
but against our sons and against our
grandsons that surround us. They are
wrongs against our ensign [cries of
"That's so!" and applause]; they are
wrongs against our Union; they are
wrongs against our Constitution; they
are wrongs against human hope and
human freedom.

While I speak, following in the wake
of men so eloquent, the object of your
meeting is accomplished. Upon the wings
of the lightning it goes out to the world
that the very heart of a great city that
New York, by one hundred thousand of
her people, declares that she will sustain
the Government to the last dollar in her
treasury to the last drop of her blood.

237

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

The national banners leaning from ten
thousand windows to-day proclaim your
reverence and affection for the Union.
You will gather in battalions, and, as you
gather, every omen of ultimate peace will
surround you. The ministers of religion,
the priests of literature, the historians
of the past, the illustrators of the present,
capital, science, art, invention, discoveries,
the works of genius, all these will attend
us, and we will conquer.

And if, from the far Pacific, a voice
feebler than the feeblest murmur upon
its shore may be heard to give you
courage and hope in the contest, that
voice is yours to-day. And if a man
whose hair is gray, who is well-nigh
worn out in the battle and toil of life,
may pledge himself on such an occasion,
and in such an audience, let me say as
my last word that when, amid sheeted
fire and flame, I saw and led the hosts
of New York as they charged in contest
on a foreign soil for the honor of the

238

The New York Mass- Meeting.

flag; so again, if Providence shall will
it, this feeble hand shall draw a sword,
never yet dishonored, not to fight for
honor on a foreign field, but for country,
for home, for law, for government, for
Constitution, for right, for freedom, for
humanity and in the hope that the
banner of my country may advance, and
wheresoever that banner waves, there
glory may pursue and freedom be estab-
lished. [Loud and prolonged applause.]

THE EEPLY TO BEECKIN
EIDGE

WHEN he spoke the warlike words last in place. Baker
had about made up hia mind again to "draw a sword
never yet dishonored," and on June 28th, one week
before Congress was to meet in special session, he was
mustered into service as colonel of the First California
Infantry (designation changed in November, 1861, to Sev*
enty-first Pennsylvania Infantry Volunteers,) to serve
three years. He was commissioned brigadier-general of
volunteers, August 6, 1861, to rank from May 17th. This
commission, although he was confirmed by the Senate, he
declined on August 31st. On September 21st, j ust a month
before his fall, he was appointed major-general of volun-
teers. This he also declined, because acceptance would
necessitate his resignation as Senator. It is not on his-
tory's page, but nevertheless true, that when General
Winfield Scott had to give up the general command of the
army, in consequence of old age, President Lincoln ten-
dered the succession to Colonel Baker. Lincoln and Baker
were old comrades in the campaigns of the Whig party.
They were together in the Black Hawk War, and Baker's
action in the war with Mexico was fresh in the mind and
heart of the President.

While Congress was in special session, the Federal
disaster at Bull Run occurred, on Sunday, July 21, 1861.
Baker was stationed at Fortress Monroe, but was ordered
with his command to Washington.

On August 2, 1861, the Senate having under considera-
tion a bill to suppress insurrection and sedition, intro-
duced on July 16th by the Hon. Lyman Trumbull, of
Illinois, Senator Breckinridge, of Kentucky, late Vice-
President of the United States, made a speech against the
proposed measure. Baker, in the double role of statesman
and soldier, heard this speech, sitting in his seat as Sena-

243

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

tor and clothed in the uniform of a colonel of the army,
and at its conclusion he arose to reply. Seldom, if ever
before, in the history of Congress did a speaker so chal-
lenge attention. Only once had there been a like scene,
and then, too, it was the same actor. In the war with
Mexico, when General Shields was badly wounded at
Cerro Gordo, Baker succeeded to the command of the
brigade, and led it through all the subsequent battles of
the war. At one time he availed himself of a furlough,
visited Washington, resum'ed his seat in the House as a
member from Illinois, made a brilliant speech in favor of
the prosecution of the war, then hastened back to his
regiment at Vera Cruz.

He was now to make his last pronunciation. He was
going into actual battle again to redeem his pledges. One
of these he had made at the reeent New York mass-meet-
ing, and another pledge he had given to Glory in his
youth that he would love her forever I In hi8 life, indeed,
were some sharp contrasts, as before observed this son
of Mars, this hero of three wars, was reared by Quaker
parents ! Baker had long borne the name of " The Old
Gray Eagle." It was a happy appellative. Behold his
white locks, his magnificent eyes, his lofty flights ! As he
took the floor now, in his uniform, to reply to Breckin-
ridge, perhaps a nobler or more picturesque figure never
stood in the presence of men. His altitude was five feet
ten and a half inches, his weight one hundred and ninety
pounds. Harmonious in person, and free in gesture, he
spoke, as usual, with animation, yet with undisturbed
dignity. The picture in this volume represents him as
he then appeared. It is from a photo by W. L. Germon, of
Philadelphia, taken between the dates of this last speech
and Baker's death. It gives the eagle look and the flash
of the eye.

Reader, you say, He was a fine-looking man. Yes, he
was a good man to look at, as well as listen to, and he was
universally beloved, being as good-hearted as he was good-
looking. You see his nature in his face.

The apparition of the Tarpeian Rock, brought into

244

The Reply to Breckinridge.

this speech at the suggestion of Senator Fessenden, of
Maine, was regarded as felicitous even by the orator's
political opponents. But Breckinridge at first believed
that it was Sumner, of Massachusetts, who whispered the
word to Baker, and that the act was more malicious than
clever.

245

THE EEPLY TO BBECKINBIDGE.*

MB. PBESIDENT, it has not been my
fortune to participate in, at any length,
indeed, nor to hear very much of the
discussion which has been going on
more, I think, in the hands of the Sen-
ator from Kentucky than anybody else
upon all the propositions connected with
this war; and, as I really feel as sincerely
as he can an earnest desire to preserve
the Constitution of the United States for
everybody, South as well as North, I
have listened for some little time past to
what he has said, with an earnest desire
to apprehend the point of his objection
to this particular bill. And now waiv-

*In this debate Senator Breckinridge referred to
Baker as " the Senator from California." Baker, correct-
ing, said "Oregon." Breckinridge responded: "The
Senator seems to have charge of the whole Pacific Coast,
though I do not mean to intimate that the Senators from
California are not entirely able and willing to take care
of their own State. They are. The Senator from Oregon,
then."

247

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

ing what, I think, is the elegant but loose
declamation in which he chooses to in-
dulge I would propose, with my habit-
ual respect for him, (for nobody is more
courteous and more gentlemanly,) to ask
him if he will be kind enough to tell me
what single particular provision there is
in this bill which is in violation of the
Constitution of the United States, which
I have sworn to support one distinct,
single proposition in the bill.

Mr. BRECKiNRioaE. I will state, in
general terms, that every one of them is,
in my opinion, flagrantly so, unless it
may be the last. I will send the Senator
the bill, and he may comment on the
sections.

Mr. BAKER. Pick out that one which,
in your judgment, is most clearly so.

Mr. BBECKINBIDGE. They are all, in
my opinion, so equally atrocious, that I
dislike to discriminate. I will send the
Senator the bill, and I te!4 him that
every section, except the last, in my

248

The Reply to Breckinridge.

opinion, violates the Constitution of the
United States; and of that last section I
express no opinion.

Mr. BAKER. I had hoped that that
respectful suggestion to the Senator
would enable him to point me to one
section, in his judgment, most clearly so,
for they are not all alike they are not
equally atrocious.

Mr. BRECKINRIDGE. Very nearly so.
There are ten of them. The Senator can
select which he pleases.

Mr. BAKER. Let me try, then, if I
must generalize as the Senator does, to
see if I can get the scope and meaning
of this bill. It is a bill providing that
the President of the United States may
declare, by proclamation, in a certain
given state of facts, certain territory,
within the United States, to be in a con-
dition of insurrection and war, which
proclamation shall be extensively pub-
lished within the district to which it
relates. That is the first proposition.

249

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

I ask him if that is unconstitutional.
That is a plain question. Is it uncon-
stitutional to give power to the President,
to declare a portion of the territory of
the United States to be in a state of in-
surrection or rebellion? He will not
dare to say it is.

Mr. BBECKINBIDGE. Mr. President, the
Senator from Oregon is a very adroit
debater; and he discovers, of course, the
great advantage he would have if I were
to allow him, occupying the floor, to ask
me a series of questions, and then make
his own criticisms on my responses.
When he has closed his speech, if I deem
it necessary, I may make some reply.
At present, however, I will answer that
question. The State of Illinois, I believe,
is a military district. The State of Ken-
tucky is a military district. In my judg-
ment, the President has no authority,
and Congress has no right to confer it
upon him, to declare a State to be in a
condition of insurrection or rebellion.

250

The Reply to Breckinridge.

Mr. BAKER. In the first place, the
bill does not say a word about States.
That is the first answer.

Mr. BRECKINRIDGE. Does not the Sen-
ator know, in fact, that those States com-
pose military districts ? It might as
well have said " States " as to describe
what is a State.

Mr. BAKER. I do; and that is the
reason why I suggest to the honorable
Senator that this criticism about States
does not mean anything at all. That is
the very point. The objection certainly
ought not to be that he can declare a
part of a State in insurrection, and not
the whole of it. In point of fact, the
Constitution of the United States, and
the Congress of the United States acting
upon it, are not treating of States but of
the territory comprising the United
States; and I submit once more to his
better judgment that it cannot be uncon-
stitutional to allow the President to de-
clare a county or a part of a county, or

251

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

a town or a part of a town, or part of a
State, or the whole of a State, or two
States, or five States, in a condition of
insurrection, if, in his judgment, that be
the fact. That is not wrong.

In the next place, it provides that that
being so, the military commander in that
district may make and publish such police
rules and regulations as he may deem
necessary to suppress the rebellion and
restore order and preserve the lives and
property of citizens. I submit to him
that if the President has power we
ought to have power to suppress insur-
rection and rebellion is there any better
way to do it, or is there any other way?
The gentleman says, Do it by the civil
power. Look at the fact. The civil power
is utterly overwhelmed; the courts are
closed ; the judges banished. Is the Pres-
ident not to execute the law ? Is he to do
it in person, or by his military command-
ers ? Are they to do it with regulation,
or without it ? That is the only question.

252

The Reply to Breckinridge.

The honorable Senator says there is a
state of war. The Senator from Ver-
mont agrees with him; or rather, he
agrees with the Senator from Vermont
in that. What then? There is a state
of public war; none the less war because
it is urged from the other side; not the
less war because it is unjust; not the less
war because it is a war of insurrection
and rebellion. It is still war; and I am
willing to say it is public war public,
as contradistinguished from private war.
What then ? Shall we carry that war on ?
Is it his duty as a Senator to carry it
on ? If so, how ? If it is a public war,
how? By armies, under command; by
military organization and authority, ad-
vancing to suppress insurrection and
rebellion. Is that wrong ? Is that un-
constitutional ? Are we not bound to
do with whoever levies war against us
as with a foreigner ? There is no dis-
tinction as to the mode of carrying on
war. We carry on war against an advan-

253

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

cing army just the same, whether it be
from Russia or from South Carolina.
Will the honorable Senator tell me if it
is our duty to stay here, within fifteen
miles of the enemy preparing to march
upon us, and talk about nice questions
of Constitutional construction, as to
whether it is war or merely insurrec-
tion ? No, sir. It is our duty to advance,
too, if we can; to suppress insurrection;
to put down rebellion ; to dissipate the
rising; to scatter the enemy; and when
we have done so, to preserve, in the terms
of the bill, the liberty, lives, and prop-
erty of the people of the country, by just
and fair police regulations. Did not we
do this when we took Monterey, in Mex-
ico ? Did we not do it when we took the
Mexican capital? Is it not a part a
necessary, an indispensable part of war
itself, that there shall be military regula-
tions over the country that is conquered
and held ? Is that unconstitutional ?
I think it was a mere play of words

254

The Reply to Breckinridge.

that the Senator indulged in, when he
attempted to answer the Senator from
New York. I did not understand the
Senator from New York to mean any-
thing substantially but this: that the
Constitution deals generally with a state
of peace, and that, when war is declared,
it leaves the condition of public affairs to
be determined by the law of war in the
country where the war exists. It is true
that the Constitution does not adopt the
laws of war as a part of the instrument
itself during the continuance of war. The
Constitution does not provide that spies
shall be hung. Is it unconstitutional to
hang a spy ? There is no provision for
it in terms in the Constitution; but
nobody denies the right, the power,
the justice. Why? Because it is a part
of the law of war. The Constitution does
not provide for the exchange of prison-
ers; yet it may be done under the law
of war. Indeed, the Constitution does
not provide that a prisoner may be taken

255

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

at all, yet his captivity is perfectly just
and Constitutional. It seems to me that
the Senator does not, will not, take that
view of the subject.

Again, sir, when a military commander
advances (as I trust, if there are no more
unexpected great reverses, he will ad-
vance) through Virginia, and occupies the
country, there, perhaps, as here, the civil
law may be silent; there, perhaps, the
civil officers may flee, as ours have been
compelled to flee. What then ? If the
civil law is silent, who shall control and
regulate the conquered district who but
the military commander? As the Sen-
ator from Illinois has well said, shall it
be done by regulation or without regula-
tion ? Shall the general, or the colonel,
or the captain, be supreme, or shall he
be regulated and ordered by the Presi-
dent of the United States ? That is the
sole question. The Senator has put it
well.

I agree that we ought to do all we can

256

The Reply to Breckinridge.

to limit, to fetter, to restrain, the use of
military power. Bayonets are, at best,
illogical arguments. I am not willing,
except as a case of sheerest necessity,
ever to permit a military commander to
exercise authority over life, liberty, and
property. But, sir, it is part of the law
of war; you cannot carry in the rear of
your army your courts; you cannot or-
ganize juries; you cannot have trials
according to the forms and ceremonial
of the common law amid the clangor of
arms ; and somebody must enforce police
regulations in a conquered or occupied
district. I ask the Senator from Ken-
tucky again, respectfully, is that Constitu-
tional ? Or if in the nature of war it must
exist, even if there be no law passed by
us to allow it, is it unconstitutional to
regulate it? That is the question to
which I do not think he will make a
clear and distinct reply.

Now, sir, I have shown him two sections
of the bill (which I do not think he

257

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

will repeat earnestly) are unconstitutional.
I do not think that he will seriously deny
that it is perfectly Constitutional to limit,
to regulate, to control to confer and
restrain at the same time authority in
the hands of military commanders. I
think it is wise and judicious to regulate
it by virtue of powers to be placed in
the hands of the President by law.

Now, a few words, and a few only, as
to the Senator's predictions. The Sen-
ator stands up here in a manly way in
opposition to what he sees is the over-
whelming sentiment of the Senate, and
utters reproof, malediction, and predic-
tion combined. Well, sir, it is not every
prediction that is prophecy. It is the
easiest thing in the world to do, except
to be mistaken, when we have predicted.
I confess, Mr. President, that I would
not have predicted three weeks ago the
disasters which have overtaken our arms;
and I do not think, if I were to predict
now, that six months hence the Senator

258

The Reply to Breckinridge.

will indulge in the same tone of predic-
tion which is his favorite key now. I
would ask him: What would you have
us do now a Confederate army^ within
twenty miles of us, advancing, or threat-
ening to advance, to overwhelm your
Government, to shake the pillars of the
Union; to bring it around your head, if
you stay here, in ruins ? Are we to stop,
and talk about an uprising sentiment in
the North against the war? Are we to
predict evil, and retire from what we
predict? Is it not the manly part to go
on as we have begun, to raise money, and
levy armies, to organize them, to prepare
to advance; where we do advance, to
regulate that advance by all the laws and
rules that civilization and humanity will
allow?

Can we do anythiDg more ? It is idle
to talk to us about stopping; we will
never stop. Will the Senator yield to
rebellion? Will he shrink from armed
insurrection? Will his State justify it?

259

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Will its better public opinion allow it?
Shall we send a flag of truce? What
would he have? Or would he conduct
this war so feebly that the world would
smile in derision? These speeches of
his, sown broadcast over the land, what
clear, distinct meaning have they? Are
they not intended for disorganization in
our very midst? Are they not designed
to dull our weapons, to destroy our zeal,
to animate our foes? Sir, are they not
words of brilliant, polished treason, even
in the very capitol of the Republic?
[Applause in the galleries, promptly
checked by the presiding officer.]

What would have been thought, if, in
another capitol, in another republic, in
a yet more martial age, a Senator as
grave, not more eloquent or dignified,
than the Senator from Kentucky, yet
with the Eoman purple flowing over his
shoulders, had risen in his place, sur-
rounded by all the illustrations of Koman
glory, and declared that advancing Han-

260

The Reply to Breckinridge.

nibal was just, and that Carthage ought
to be dealt with in terms of peace ? What
would have been thought, if, after the
battle of Cannae, a Senator there had
risen in his place and denounced every
levy of the Roman people, every expen-
diture of its treasure, and every appeal
to the old recollections and the old
glories?

[Senator William Pitt Fessenden, of
Maine, here whispered to the speaker:
"He would have been hurled from the
Tarpeian Rock."

Sir, a Senator, himself learned far
more than myself in such lore, tells me,
in a voice that I am glad is audible, that
he would have been hurled from the
Tarpeian Rock. It is a grand commen-
tary upon the American Constitution that
we permit the words of the Senator from
Kentucky to be uttered here. I ask the
Senator to recollect, too, what, save to
send aid and comfort to the enemy, do
these predictions of his amount to?

261

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Every word thus uttered falls as a note
of inspiration upon every Confederate
ear. Every sound thus uttered is a word
(and, falling from his lips, a mighty
word,) of kindling and triumph to a foe
that determines to advance upon us.
For me, I have no such word to utter as
a Senator. For me, amid temporary
defeat, disaster, disgrace, it seems that
my duty calls me to utter another word,
and that word is bold, sudden, forward,
determined war, according to the laws of
war, by armies, by military commanders,
clothed with full power, advancing with
all the past glories of the Republic
urging them on to conquest.

I do not stop to consider whether it
is subjugation or not. It is compulsory
obedience, not to my will, not to yours,
sir; not to the will of any one man,
not to the will of any one State; but
compulsory obedience to the Constitu-
tion of the whole country. The Senator
chose the other day again and again to

262

The Reply to Breckinridge.

animadvert on a single expression in a
little speech which I delivered before
the Senate, in which I took occasion to
say that if the people of the rebellious
States would not govern themselves as
States, they ought to be governed as
Territories. The Senator knew full well
then for I explained twice, he knows
full well now that on this side of the
chamber, nay, in this whole North and
West, in all the loyal States, in all their
breadth, there is not a man among us all
who dreams of causing any man in the
South to submit to any rule, either as to
life, liberty, or property, that we our-
selves do not willingly agree to yield to.
Did he ever think of that ? Subjugation
for what? When we subjugate South
Carolina, what shall we do ? We shall
compel her obedience to the Constitution
of the United States ; that is all. Why
play upon words ? We do not mean, we
have never said, any more. If it be slavery
that men should obey the Constitution

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

that their fathers fought for, let it be so.
If it be freedom, it is freedom equally
for them and for us. We propose to
subjugate rebellion into loyalty; we pro-
pose to subjugate insurrection into peace ;
we propose to subjugate Confederate
anarchy into Constitutional Union liberty.
The Senator well knows that we propose
no more. I ask him, I appeal to his
better judgment now, what does he
imagine we intend to do, if, fortunately,
we conquer Tennessee or South Carolina,
call it " conquer," if you will. They
will have their courts still; they will
have their ballot-boxes still; they will
have their elections still ; they will have
taxation and representation still; they
will have the writ of habeas corpus still;
they will have every privilege they ever
had. When the Confederate armies are
scattered; when their leaders are ban-
ished from power; when the people
return to a late repentant sense of the
wrong they have done to a Government

264

The Reply to Breckinridge.

they never felt but in benignancy and
blessing, then the Constitution made for
all will be felt by all, like the descend-
ing rains of heaven which bless all alike.
Is that subjugation? To restore what
was, as it was, for the benefit of the
whole country and of the whole human
race, is all we desire, and all we can
have.

Gentlemen talk about the Northeast.
I appeal to Senators from the Northeast.
Is there a man in all your States who
advances upon the South with any other
idea than to restore the Constitution of
the United States in its spirit and its
unity? I never heard that one. I be-
lieve no man indulges in any dream of
inflicting there any wrong to public lib-
erty; and I respectfully tell the Senator
from Kentucky that he persistently, ear-
nestly I will not say willfully misrep-
resents the sentiment of the North and
West when he attempts to teach these doc-
trines to the Confederates of the South.

265

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

While I am predicting, I will tell you
another thing. This threat about money
and men amounts to nothing. Some of the
States which have been named in that
connection I know well. I am sure that
no temporary defeat, no momentary dis-
aster, will swerve Illinois from her alle-
giance to the Union. It is not with us a
question of money or of blood ; it is a
question involving considerations higher
than these. When the Senator from Ken-
tucky speaks of the Pacific, I see another
distinguished friend from Illinois [Sen-
ator James A. HcDougall], now worthily
representing the State of California, who
will bear me witness that I know that
State, too, well. I take the liberty I
know that I but utter his sentiments to
say that that State will be true to the
Union to the last of her blood and
treasure. There may be some disaffected
men there, some few who would "rather
rule in hell than serve in heaven." There
are such men everywhere. There are a

266

The Reply to Breckinridge.

few men there, who have left the South
for the good of the South; who are per-
verse, violent, destructive, revolutionary,
and opposed to social order. A few, but
a very few, thus formed, and thus nur-
tured, in California and in Oregon, both
persistently endeavor to create and main-
tain mischief; but the great portion of
our population are loyal to the core, and
in every chord of their hearts. They are
offering to add to the legions of the
country, every day, by the hundred and
the thousand. They are willing to come
thousands of miles, with their arms on
their shoulders, at their own expense, to
share, with the best offering of their
hearts' blood, in the great struggle of
Constitutional liberty. I tell the Senator
that his predictions, sometimes for the
South, sometimes for the Middle States,
sometimes for the Northeast, and then
wandering away in airy visions out to the
far Pacific, are false in sentiment, false in
fact, and false in loyalty. The Senator

267

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

from Kentucky is mistaken in them all.
Five hundred million dollars ! What
then? Great Britain gave more than
two thousand millions in the great battle
for Constitutional liberty which she led
at one time almost single-handed against
the world.

Five hundred thousand men? What
then? They are the children of the
country, and we will give them all up
before we will abate one word of our just
demand, or retreat one inch from the
dividing line between right and wrong.

When we give them, we know their
value. Knowing their value, we give
them with the more pride and the more
joy. Sir, how can we retreat? Sir, how
can we make peace? Who shall treat?
What commissioners? Who would go?
Upon what terms ? Where is to be your
boundary line? Where the end of the
principles we shall have to give up?
What will become of Constitutional Gov-
ernment? What will become of public

208

The Reply to Breckinridge.

liberty? What of past glories? What
of future hopes? Shall we sink into the
insignificance of the grave, a degraded,
defeated, emasculated people, frightened
by the results of one battle, and scared
at the visions raised by the imagination
of the Senator from Kentucky on this
floor? No, sir; a thousand times no,
sir! We will rally, if, indeed, our
words be necessary, we will rally the
people, the loyal people, of the whole
country. They will pour forth their
treasure, their men, without stint, with-
out measure. The most peaceable man
in this body may stamp his foot upon
this Senate chamber floor as of old a
warrior and Senator did, and from that
single tramp there will spring forth
armed legions. Shall one battle de-
termine the fate of empire ? Or a
dozen? The loss of a thousand men? Or
twenty thousand? Or one hundred mil-
lion dollars? Or five hundred million
dollars ? In a year's peace, in ten years,

269

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

at most, of peaceful progress, we can
restore them all. There will be some
graves reeking with blood, watered by
the tears of affection ; there will be some
loss of luxury, some privation, somewhat
more need for labor to procure the neces-
saries of life. When that is said, all is
said. If we have the country, the whole
country, the Union, the Constitution, free
government with these there will return
all the blessings of well-ordered civiliza-
tion; the path of the country will be a
career of greatness and glory, such as, in
the olden time, our fathers saw in the
dim visions of years yet to come, and
such as would have been ours now, to-
day, but for the treason for which the
Senator too often seeks to apologize.

270

THE DEATH OF BAKEE

THE DEATH OF BAKEE.

THE reply to Breckinridge was Baker's
last speech. He went back at once to
the field of war, and in the uniform of a
colonel, but commanding a brigade, he
fell at the battle of Edward's Ferry, or
Ball's Bluff, on the Virginia side of the
Potomac, on the 21st of October, 1861.*

Any person, having known Baker well,
upon being told simply that he had been
killed in battle, could catch in fancy the
echoes of the conflict the beat of drums,
the blare of bugles, the clash of sabers,
all the roar of onset and the shock of
recoil. It was his proud claim that he
" could lead men anywhere " ; and with
his ardent nature, and the fields of glory
behind him, it seems he should have

* That love of country which has inspired the strongest
minds sways us most powerfully when it combines with
the tastes of the mind, the affections of the heart, and
the habitudes of the imagination. Madame de Stael.

273

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

died, if perish lie must, in actual charge,
or hand-to-hand struggle, yielding his
breath on severe terms; that it should
not have been a sudden extinguishment,
but that he should have continued to fight,
even after receiving mortal hurt; un-
horsed, but defiant still, beating down
his assailants, until nature could do no
more. The catastrophe recalls into view
over a wide stretch of time another
strong and martial figure (although
fictitious):

The war that for a space did fail,

Now, trebly thundering, swelled the gale,

And "Stanley! " was the cry ;
A light on Marmion's visage spread,

And fired his glazing eye.
With dying hand above his head,
He shook the fragment of his blade,

And shouted, " Victory !
Charge, Chester, charge ! on, Stanley, on ! "
Were the last words of Marmion.

A like stirring scene might have marked
Baker's end at a much earlier period of

274

The Death of Baker.

human warfare, when, with weapons now
antiquated, individual nobility was more
in view, and, by consequence, more in
peril. Or, struck down too soon, our
warrior might easily be pictured as in
the thick of the very metee his own fall
at once brought about.

A superior force had accumulated in
his front; the Potomac, which he had
just crossed, ran close in the rear. There
is a long and thrilling narrative by Geo.
Wilkes, in which he dwells on Baker's
fine bearing when he found that he was
taken in the toils. He caught sight of a
white-haired officer riding near the
enemy's front, and called for a pistol,
exclaiming "There is Gen. Johnston;
fire, boys, fire ! " As he reached forward
to receive the weapon, a very tall, red-
haired man emerged suddenly from the
smoke, and, walking quickly up to within
five feet of Baker, presented a self-cock-
ing revolver, and, rapidly as he could
crook his finger, delivered all the bullets

276

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

it contained into the hero's body. At
the very same moment a musket-ball
sped through his skull, and a terrific
whirling slug from a Mississippi yager
tore away the muscle of the right arm
and opened a large hole into his side.
"All these death-dealing shots seemed
to strike at once, and the noble leader
and orator, matchless of the earth, fell
mute, to speak no more. The tragedy
had paralyzed all beholders for the
moment; but Captain Beirel, recovering
his self-possession first, rushed at the
slayer as he bent to seize the General's
sword, took him by the throat, and,
placing his pistol at his temple, blew out
his brains in a red fume. Beirel had
been followed in his onslaught by several
members of his company, and numbers
of the enemy had pressed forward to
protect their red-haired comrade as they
saw the avenger rush toward him. A
savage hand-to-hand fight ensued over
the General's corse. Sword-thrust, bay-

276

The Death of Baker.

onet-stab, and pistol-shot intermingled
quickly in that ferocious episode, and
the body of the dead chieftain, though
trampled in the mele*e, lay smiling in its
new-found quiet, as if approving of the
scene."

Smiling in death ! To the eye of fancy
the bright form of GLORY was hovering
over the tumult. She had always lis-
tened to his pledges and applauded his
passion, and now she accepted his sacri-
fice. She had kindled his visage full
often at Cerro Gordo, at that trans-
cendent scene in the American Theater,
all along his shining path. She now
poured her illumination into his fine
face, before it could take on the inflex-
ible majesty of the last sleep.

The body was recovered and conveyed
to the river. "Then," says Wilkes, "a
sense of the great loss brought the tears
coursing down many a smoke-smeared
cheek."

Baker belonged to a healthy, long-
277

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

lived race; and he was, indeed, cut off
in his prime. His parents were members
of the Society of Friends, and their settle-
ment at Philadelphia, on removing from
England, was influenced by the fact that
a strong community of that sect existed
in that city. The father, Edward Baker,
introduced there the Lancaster ian System
of Schools.* The mother's maiden name
was Lucy Dickinson; she was a sister of
Thomas Dickinson, a high officer in the
British navy. She was an intellectual
woman, and a writer of verse. She saw
the whole career of her son, surviving
him and attaining a great age. Baker
wrote her the first letter bearing his
frank as United States Senator. She
was then past eighty, with mental powers

* Joseph Lancaster, educator, born in London, Eng-
land, 1788, came to America in 1818; and died in New
York City, October 24, 1838. He, too, was of the Society of
Friends. His "system" was the plan of employing the
more advanced pupils to instruct the class next below
them, a plan originally introduced into England from
India by Dr. Andrew Bell, with whom Lancaster had an
acrimonious controversy as to which of the two was
entitled to priority.

278

The Death of Baker.

undimmed. She had often taken down
her great son's speeches in shorthand,
which she wrote with ease and elegance.
Baker had three brothers. Alfred C.
Baker was a physician, who lived in Barry,
Illinois, and practiced medicine there all
his life, excepting a period of service in
the army as surgeon. He was himself a
clever public speaker. He died a few
years ago, at the age of eighty-three.
Thomas Baker, who lived in Carrollton,
Illinois, while yet a young man, was
thrown from his horse and dragged to
death, in 1846. Samuel Baker was also
a young man when he died of cholera in
Pekin, Illinois, in 1851. There was one
sister, who was born in Philadelphia,
and died a few years since at Sausalito,
California, at the age of seventy-three.
She was the wife of Theodore Jerome, a
California pioneer of '49, and the mother
of Edward Baker Jerome, now and so
long Chief Deputy Collector of Customs
at San Francisco. E. B. Jerome was

279

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

captain and aid-de-camp on his uncle's
staff in Virginia.

Baker's children were E. D., Jr.,
Alfred W., Caroline C., who became the
wife of Robert J. Stevens, and Lucy, the
wife of Charles Hopkins. E. D., Jr., was
a colonel in the army, and died at Van-
couver, Washington, while he was Chief
Quartermaster in the Department of the
Columbia, January 25, 1883, aged forty-
four. Alfred W. was a lieutenant, and
was aide to his father at the fatal day
already spoken of. He was a clerk in
the San Francisco Post Office for a very
long period, and died here in April,
1898. Mrs. Stevens, whose husband
was Superintendent of the San Francisco
Mint during the first half of President
Lincoln's first term, is a widow; so is
Mrs. Hopkins; and both are living in
Seattle, Washington. E. D., Jr., was
married, but had no issue. Alfred W.
never married.

Dr. A. C. Baker had three sons and

280

The Death of Baker.

two daughters. None of the sons have
had children. Lydell, the youngest,
married recently.

Colonel Baker's wife was born in Balti-
more, Maryland, and when sixteen years
of age was married to a Colonel Lee,
a very prominent man of education and
refinement. They removed to Carrollton,
Illinois, where they resided in their own
elegant dwelling, built for them. She
became a widow at the age of twenty,
having then two children, Frank and
Maria Lee. She and Colonel Baker inter-
married when she was twenty-three and
he twenty-one. She was a fine musician
and sang very sweetly, and the Colonel
having a fine tenor voice, they sang to-
gether, and naturally fell in love.

It is related that when the Colonel
proposed he did it in this way, standing
by her as she sat at the piano : He said,
"Mary, lend me five dollars." Upon
receipt of the money, he wrote the fol-
lowing promissory note :

281

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

" Received now, five dollars
From Mary Ann Lee,
Which sum to repay
I now do agree
Unless, in the mean time,
I shall, fond, take her,
And change her dear name
From Lee unto Baker."

Their pure and fresh life-currents,
united thus early, flowed on together for
thirty years.*

Mrs. Baker survived the Colonel a few
years, dying in San Francisco at the age
of fifty-seven. She was laid by his side.

The Colonel's "poetry," just quoted,
cost him less effort, although proving
more gainful, than the lines which follow
on the next page.

* Innocent child and snow-white flower,
Well are ye paired in your opening hoar I
Thus should the pure and the lovely meet,
Stainless with stainless, and sweet with sweet.

Bryant, to a young couple just wedded.

282

TO A WAVE.

DOST thou seek a star with thy swelling

crest,

O wave, that leavest thy mother's breast ?
Dost thou leap from the prisoned depths

below,

In scorn of their calm and constant flow ?
Or art thou seeking some distant land,
To die in murmurs upon the strand ?

Hast thou tales to tell of pearl-lit deep,
Where the wave-whelmed mariner rocks in

sleep ?
Canst thou speak of navies that sunk in

pride

Ere the roll of their thunder in echo died ?
What trophies, what banners, are floating

free
In the shadowy depths of that silent sea ?

It were vain to ask, as thou rollest afar,
Of banner, or mariner, ship or star ;
It were vain to seek in thy stormy face
Some tale of the sorrowful past to trace.

283

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Thou art swelling high, thou art flashing

free,
How vain are the questions we ask of thee I

I too am a wave on a stormy sea ;
I too am a wanderer, driven like thee ;
I too am seeking a distant land
To be lost and gone ere I reach the strand.
For the land I seek is a waveless shore,
And they who once reach it shall wander no
more.

These lines were written by Baker in
the year 1849. Shortly after his death,
Colonel John W. Forney, proprietor of
the Philadelphia Press, corresponding
with his paper from Washington City,
obtained a copy from an intimate friend
of Baker, and they appeared in the Press
in November, 1861.

284

THE DEFENSE OF COEA

ALTHOUGH Baker's profession was that of the law, and
he followed it through life, the Editor has not thought it
proper to make that fact especially prominent in these
pages, nor either to present him as a lawyer in the first
instance, or let his last words be spoken in that role.
Thus far his speeches have been given in the order of
time. It now becomes convenient to interrupt this
sequence, to give deserved place to the very best of his
reported efforts at the bar. The occasion furnishes
further illustration of the dissimilitudes in his career.
This jury address led to the speaker's social ostracism for
a time, at the hands of the same community which, five
years later, followed his mortality to Lone Mountain
amid emblems of universal sorrow. The offense of the
prisoner then at the bar, moreover, was one of the chief
inducements to that great popular uprising, the Vigilance
Committee of 1856.

On the evening of the 17th of November, 1855, General
William H. Richardson, United States Marshal for Call-
fornia, was shot and instantly killed by Charles Cora, a
gambler, on the sidewalk on Clay Street, southwest
corner of Leidesdorff, San Francisco. There had been a
quarrel between the two men over the circumstances of
their attendance at the theater a few nights before. Cora
had brought a notorious woman of means, who bore his
name, into the dress circle where General Richardson
was seated with his wife, and the General had expressed
his indignation in the hearing of Cora and the woman.
The true nature of the dispute (although there was no
allusion to it during the trial) and the opposed stations
of the characters to it, were sufficient to invest the homi-
cide with peculiar odiousness in the popular mind, and
press and people denounced it with much heat. This

287

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

feeling ran through all the State. Expressive thereof was
this editorial statement in the San Francisco Herald:

"The truth is, that, from all accounts, we have come
to the conclusion that the killing of General Richardson
was a most atrocious murder. He was assassinated in
cold blood, without a single effort at resistance. Those
who have known him as we have, must be assured he
would have sold his life dearly if he had the slightest
chance. The deceased gentleman was of a most kind, gen-
erous, and noble nature. That such a man should fall by
such a hand, is to be everlastingly deplored."

And this, from the Stockton Argnt:

"A man is shot down in one of the principal streets
in the chief city on the Pacific Coast, by a man who lives
in a bawd-house, and who is instigated to the murderous
deed by a harlot, and immediately $40,000 is raised by
subscription to cheat the law of its course, and protect
the murderer from suffering the penalty of his crime. Is
there nothing wrong in public opinion here? Those per-
sons who have raised this large sum are recognized as
acquaintances, and often as associates, of men who would
not stoop to any dishonorable act ; and the harlot who
instigated the murder of Richardson, with others of her
kind, are allowed to visit the theaters and seat themselves
side by side with the wives and daughters of citizens. Is
there nothing wrong in public opinion here? There is,
and it should and must be corrected."

As a ripple against the current, and as showing, in
charitable possibility, some slight mitigating circum-
stance, may be given this, from the evidence taken by
the Coroner:

"Dr. Mills sworn: I reside on Stockton Street; was
not present at the occurrence last night [the killing];
was present at the occurrence of the previous night; was
in the Cosmopolitan Saloon; General Richardson and
several others were there ; Mr. Cora was introduced to
General Richardson, and they all took a drink; went to
the door together; Cora returned, and asked, Have I any
friends in the room? This man is going to slap my face;'

The Defense of Cora.

General Richardson came in smiling, and said, 'I
promised to slap this man's face, and I had better do
it now;' some person then said, ' Oh, you must not do it,'
and the thing was stopped; some words afterwards
occurred; some person proposed to introduce General
Richardson to Cora again, but it was not done; don't
know why; think the General was a little tight; Cora
appeared to be sober." There was other like testimony.

The Coroner's jury, after hearing the evidence of
sixteen witnesses, among them the Governor of the State
John Bigler, found a verdict that the killing was prt
meditated, and there was nothing to mitigate the offense

Cora was indicted for murder, and his trial was
opened on the 8th of January, 1856, in the old Fourth
District Court, Judge John 8. Hager, presiding. Hon.
William A. Piper was foreman of the jury. This gentle-
man, now a large capitalist, was a pioneer of '49; he was
already a considerable holder of real estate, and had been
a member of the Board of Assistant Aldermen. In later
years he was a member of the National House of Repre-
sentatives (1876-76), and is still a citizen of San Francisco.
A. B. Forbes, now and for so many years the general
agent on this Coast for the Mutual Life Insurance Com-
pany, of New York, was another member of this jury. He
was then senior member of the firm of Forbes & Babcock,
agents of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. The other
names were Charles H. Vail, John J. Haley, Edward P.
Flint, M. Joyce, Jacob Mayer, Thos. C. D. Olmstead, Wil-
liam H. Stowell, John M. Easterly, A. Holmes, and I.
Ward Eaton. This was a strong and worthy array.

The prosecution was conducted by Henry H. Byrne,
then and for so many terms District Attorney. His asso-
ciates were Alexander Campbell, who made the opening
statement, (he is still in harness, at a great age, in Los
Angeles), and 8. W. Inge, who had represented Alabama
in the lower house of Congress, and who closed the argu-
ment. Baker made the closing address on behalf of the
prisoner. Hon. Thomas W. Freelon, the county judge
before whom Baker had made a great plea in a notable

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

case of embezzlement, went into Judge Hager's court to
listen to him now. Afterward he pronounced the speech
as " brilliant, eloquent, impassioned."

District Attorney Byrne had concluded his argument
with these words: "Gentlemen: We live in an age in
California resembling the days of the breaking-up of the
Roman Empire. Corruption sits in almost every quarter,
even in high places. A man's life is of less value than
that of a horse ; there is no security, for human life is
trifled with. Our character as a country has become
stained by the aspersion. And here is another victim.
Mercy murders in pardoning him that kills. Let this
man go, and you create a pandemonium in San Fran*
Cisco."

Gen. McDougall, Baker's associate, who followed
Byrne, had said : " We are compelled to fight a foregone
conclusion on the part of the community. They have
judged the prisoner already, and public opinion is press-
ing on us from all Bides. If this prisoner is convicted, 1
say it solemnly, it will be judicial murder."

Baker spoke on January 14th. He felt his environment,
and his sensibility constrained him to take notice of the
prevailing state of public opinion; and, in so doing, he
paid that tribute to the legal profession which is the most
beautiful utterance in the speech. His other bold decla-
ration, in regard to the union between Belle Cora and the
prisoner, that " they were bound together by a tie which
angels might not blush to approve," was the subject of
emphatic and persistent censure. The noble advocate
was misunderstood.

The jury were unable to agree upon a verdict. After
being out forty-one hours, they were discharged on Jan-
uary 17th. It was learned that they stood six for man-
slaughter, four for murder in the first degree, and two
for acquittal. The prisoner was remanded to the County
Jail. Belle Cora regularly visited him there. On one of
these occasions, in due form of law, she was united in
marriage to the man whose final ignominy was yet unseen ;
and then, quite possibly, " they were bound together by a

290

The Defense of Cora

tie which angels might not blush to approve." But it
was in the shadow of doom. Before the time set for
Cora's second trial, the GREAT COMMITTEE took him. His
fate was precipitated by the act of Casey in killing the
famous editor of the Bulletin. James P. Casey, a local
politician of some influence, and foreman of Crescent
Engine Company, No. 10, being editorially arraigned by
James King of William, in his paper, for offenses charged
to have been committed in New York City several years
prior, shot Mr. King fatally, on the street, May 14, 1856.
The editor expired on May 20th. On the 22d, while a
throng of friends bore his body to Lone Mountain, another
multitude, (his friends, too, THE COMMITTEE,) marched
by ranks to the County Jail, planted a cannon in front of
it, took both Casey and Cora from their cells, and publicly
hung them from the windows of the committee-rooms, on
Sacramento Street, near Front.

Belle Cora was then twenty-nine years of age. She
was a native of Baltimore, Maryland. (Gen. Richardson
was also a Marylander; Cora, an Italian.) Belle con-
tinued her residence and her occupation in San Fran-
cisco, dying on the 18th of February, 1862. A short history
of her life was circulated.

)uring the reign of THE COMMITTEE, lasting several
months, attended by other executions and many banish-
ments, the city being officially proclaimed by Governor
J. Neely Johnson as in "a state of insurrection," the
plumage of the "Old Gray Eagle" was badly ruffled by
the storm. He spread his wings and took flight (not met-
aphorically this time) to the mountains, resting for a
time in El Dorado County, and on the other side of the
Sierra, in Nevada.*

The Editor has seen the following eloquent allusion
to this experience of Baker, attributed to General John
A. Collins; but when he accosted him some years before
his death, that worthy man said he did not remember

* The spirit of the human race resembles that of the individual ma*; it
shines and is eclipsed by turns. Fontanes, 1800.

291

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

naving written it. If General Collins did not write it,
who did?

" Some years ago the people of San Francisco chased
away an eloquent old man [but he was only forty-five
EDITOK], who took refuge in the mountains of Nevada.
He was afterwards brought back from the sacrificial
heights of Stone River, a mangled and speechless prophet
of freedom, and fifty thousand people laid him tenderly
on the altitudes of Lone Mountain, within hearing of the
eternal dirges of the ocean while his glorious words
echoed and still echo in the valleys and mountains from
the fountains of the San Joaquin to the sources of the
Columbia: 'Years, long years ago, I took my stand by
Freedom, and where in youth my feet were planted, there
my manhood and my age shall march.' "

Our advocate will now address the jury.

292

THE DEFENSE OF COKA.

IF THE COURT PLEASE, AND GENTLEMEN
OF THE JURY: I sincerely trust that a
night of serene repose, after the exhaust-
ing labor that you have undergone, has
enabled you to return here to-day with
dispositions equal to those which you have
shown during the whole course of this
investigation ; and while I feel that upon
the defense, which I am about to end,
will, in some sense, depend the eternal
welfare of a human being, I feel myself
honored and happy in being allowed, in
such a case, and for such a purpose, to
address a jury who have proved, not to
the counsel alone, not to the audience
alone, but to the prisoner himself, a
determination to render strict and impar-
tial justice; and I am instructed to say
for him, what he could not have said
when the trial began, that whatever may

293

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Le the end of this day, he has a profound
and abiding conviction of your truth and
justice. He cannot but feel that to you
is delegated a little less than supreme
power that none but the Almighty can
control the consequences of your judg-
ment; and with this painful thought
pressing upon his mind and heart, I am
here to say for him that he is willing to
trust in your hands the issues of life and
death. And, gentlemen, while I advance
to the discussion of this case, I cannot
forget the imposing aspect that is thrown
around the prisoner on this occasion.
The whole majesty of the law of a great
and civilized country all that care in
the selection of a jury, and labor in the
arrangement of testimony, and zeal on
the part of the prosecution, and care on
the part of the defense could do, has
been done. And while it is true, while
it is very true, that the man who is before
you on trial for his life, is a man of base
character, and in some respects vicious

294

The Defense of Cora.

whose position in life is low whose
condition at this bar is that of loneliness,
and dependence upon one human being
alone for sympathy and kindness; with
all that, he is here guarded by the care
of the judge; hedged around by the
justice of the jury; protected by all the
sanctions of the law ; and poor and hum-
ble and degraded though he be, he is
fenced about and cared for " with all the
divinity that doth hedge a king."

It is a painful and impressive spec-
tacle. Nor are we to forget that it is
the province of the law to render justice
to the memory of one who is no longer
among us. It would be idle for us to
disguise that the appeal by Mr. Byrne
(though he disclaims it) his allusion
to the bloody grave, and the verdant sod,
and the tearful widow, and the uncon-
scious orphan must weigh, and will
weigh, upon your minds. We are but
men; we are not deprived, by being
selected for a seat in this place, of the

295

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

passions and sympathies of human na-
ture ; and I am far, and very far, from
complaining of anything that has been
said, or may be said, upon that subject.
I am not inclined at all to disguise it.
It is not they alone who feel an interest
in the case ; something more than a con-
cern for professional reputation presses
them to extremes. It may be that at the
very moment when I speak, some tearful
woman may be upon her knees in the
depths of her closet, imploring the
Almighty to open your hearts to do jus-
tice to the memory of the husband she
has lost. I don't complain of these
things; I don't shrink from their being
mentioned; I ^eel them; my heart quiv-
ers while I think of them. I do not
wish that in any portion of this trial
you should forget them.

But there is another aspect of this
case to be thought of. The man who
is here struggling for life who is
arraigned for the death of one claimed

296

The Defense of Cora.

to be one of the purest of our citizens,
is said to have followed degraded and
vicious pursuits. It is said of him that
he is cared for by a woman of very bad
relations in life, whose name, indeed, is
a reproach. Against this man at the bar
the whole public press that mighty
engine of passion and power have
poured out all the concentrated vials of
their wrath and indignation. Every por-
tion of his career has been maligned;
every motive of his heart has been per-
verted; every act of his life has been
misrepresented; and imagination, if not
upon its highest and purest, upon its
boldest wing, has applied to him every
epithet of reproach, and related every
narrative of shame. Against this we have
but one defense against this we have
but one resource, but one hope. It is to
be found in time, which tempers all
things it is to be found in human sym-
pathy and the justice of this tribunal
in the merciful consideration of human

297

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

infirmity and at last in stern, naked,
and irresistible truth. And if the lips
about to speak to you are feeble, and if
the thoughts about to be uttered are trem-
bling and uncertain, if our efforts shall
be marred by the ingenuity, skill, and
eloquence of the gentleman who is to
follow, it is but for us to rely solely
upon inflexible truth; and it may be
for him [pointing to the prisoner], with
heart and lips all unused to prayer, to
lift his thoughts to the Great Father of
life, who made him as well as his Honor
on the bench, and the jury in the box,
to guide, impress, stimulate, and en-
lighten his advocate to press his claims
to liberty, life, and hope.

The prosecution in this case charge
that the defendant, on the night of the
17th of November, 1855, maliciously and
without just cause took the life of Gen-
eral Wm. H. Richardson, Marshal of the
United States for the Northern District
of California; and that he is attempting

The Defense of Cora.

to sustain himself by a conspiracy against
truth, honesty, and honor; and the in-
ferences of his character are, by compari-
son, more fatal to his hopes, because they
say his victim was a man of elevated
character and mind. This is the begin-
ning of this case this is the end of this
case the comparison is pressed on us
at every step we take. It is idle for us
to deny that the shield of character which
we attempt to hold up before this de-
fendant is in many parts frail and broken.
He yielded in his youth to temptations
which, like thronging devils, have pur-
sued him all his life, and he feels to-day
more bitterly than words of mine can
express the want of a shield spotless
and pure in this moment of his great
trial. Whether he be a man of unmixed
evil, it is for you to determine; whether
there be not something of native good
in a man who, amid a life of such vice
and vicissitude, has congregated around
him the good wishes of many friends

299

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

early friends friends of a better day
it is for you, yes, to judge. No such temp-
tations crowd upon you. The men with
whom you mingle are not flushed with
passion or steeped in crime. With you,
and with all of us, it is peace, and calm,
and quiet content. With him it is far,
very far different; and I say, being so,
and so most undoubtedly, amid this career
he has been able to preserve the balance
of his mind and the control of his tem-
per in regard to public law, and in regard
to private right. His quiet career is so
much at least to be remembered in his
favor. I plead it for him; I lay it before
you; I ask you to consider it. Let it
be the wand that will bring up from the
depths of your hearts a bright, gushing
stream from the fountains of mercy.
But while we say this much, as to this
man, we are not willing that the com-
parison should be made worse than it is.
We are not willing that this man, while
in some respects so vicious, and in other

300

The Defense of Cora.

respects so amiable, should be arrayed,
by way of comparison, against the life,
conduct, and character of another man,
dead though he be, with every virtue
exaggerated and every good quality in-
creased. We are compelled to say that
the argument made against our client,
by comparison with General Kichardson,
is false in fact, and false in deduction.
We make the issue ; they force it upon
us. I would be recreant to our duty, in
pleading for this man's life, if I feared
to meet this issue, and I do not. We
attempted in the beginning of this con-
troversy to show

1. That Cora, whatever his other habits
may have been, was a man of peaceful
life and conduct;

2. That whatever the character of
Kichardson may have been in other
respects, he was a turbulent, dangerous
man.

This we announced. What have they
done ? They have forced upon us a

301

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

broader issue and a more extended
debate. They say, we will show, that
not only was Richardson kind, quiet,
orderly, peaceful, but that he was a man
of generous impulses, of magnanimous
conduct, of high tendencies of gallantry,
of bravery, of chivalry, incapable of
assailing a man without preparation,
incapable of deceit in action, incapable
of falsehood in statement, or of aught
unworthy of the high-sounding names
attached to him. They got Mr. Nugent.*
He says that General Richardson was
not only peaceable and kind, but chival-
ric, gallant, fair, honorable, incapable of
taking an advantage.

Well, now, it was impossible for us,
after that notice, and after we heard that
line of proof, not to turn our attention
to the facts, and inquire whether this be
so or not; and when we made up our
minds to accept the challenge, and to

* John Nugent, editor of the Herald, which had pro-
nounced the homicide murder. But Mr. Nugent and his
paper were soon to oppose the Vigilance Commitee.

The Defense of Cora.

enter into that controversy, we did it,
well knowing all the uses that could be
made of it in declamation, if we made
the attempt. I would be insensible to
the many merits of Colonel Inge and
Mr. Byrne if I did not know how well
they will declaim about the raking up
of the ashes of the dead. They will
say that Kichardson is lying now in his
bloody grave, and that not content with
that, we are arraying against his memory
all the forgotten stories that can be
recalled of his past career.

Is that true? Did we do it? Could
we avoid what we have done ? When I
stand up there and find my client over-
whelmed with a mountain of infamy, and
plunged into the depths of degradation
by comparison with the man who is now
lying in a bloody though quiet grave,
shall I suffer it to pass? Never. They
may declaim till the heavens fall they
may accuse us of want of feeling of
mercy, of anything else. I care not. I

303

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

appeal to the facts. Whatever the pris-
oner is, he was peaceful, amiable, kind.
Good though the other man was as a
husband and a father, he was violent,
dangerous, and, in his anger, deadly. As
for being magnanimous and honorable,
he was not so ; but what he was from the
first day that we hear of him, he remained
to the last full of faults, though not
without redeeming qualities. We must
prove it by his general reputation.
What was that reputation here? Why
did Mr. Turner tell us that when he
came in contact with him, had it not
been for his coolness he would have lost
his life? What was his reputation the
night Cora killed him? What did Tur-
ner think of him ? What is reputation ?
Why are not we allowed to make an in-
vestigation as to specific facts? Why is
it that, with the reputation of a peaceable
man, he is always in trouble ? Have you
been in trouble? Are you assaulted?
Are you seen belted behind a knife and

304

The Defense of Cora.

pistol day and night, in season and out
of season? Are you reputed to be sud-
den and quick in quarrel? Are your
past lives checkered with adventure after
adventure, which your best friends dare
not repeat? Is that peace? Are you
Been at the very depths of midnight in
more than doubtful company, and reck-
less, drunken, desperate, meditating as-
sassination, regardless whether your vic-
tim be friend or foe ? When they crowd
upon Cora, and upon Glennon, and upon
Thomas, and upon Whitnell, and upon
Smith, and upon Willis, and charge in-
famy and perjury, is not that, to use the
language of Mr. Byrne, "piling Pelion
upon Ossa, or Ossa upon Pelion"?
Shall we make no report? What could
Cora expect from Richardson? Could
he say, with the pistol to his breast,
" This man is too magnanimous to shoot
me, he is too honorable to assail me,
he has lived a life of purity and peace
too long to vary from his usual course."

305

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Gentlemen, there is no character to
throw into the scales against us. Eich-
ardson bore no flaming sword of repu-
tation to weigh against our cause and
make it touch the beam. [The advocate
here commented at great length upon the
various passages in the history of Gen-
eral Eichardson, as detailed by the wit-
nesses and then proceeded.]

The other side complain that we have
three counsel, and they say, "Cora is
well able to pay for their services. If
he had been poor, they would not have
been here." Mr. Byrne ought to think
better of his profession. Mr. Byrne
ought to be governed by better impulses,
or rather, he ought to refrain from doing
f injustice to his opponents.

The profession to which we belong is,

) of all others, fearless of public opinion.

It has ever stood up against the tyranny

I of monarchs on the one hand, and the

tyranny of public opinion on the other;

and if, as the humblest among them, it

306

The Defense of Cora.

becomes me to instance myself, I may
say with a hold heart, and I do say it
with a bold heart, that there is not in all
this world a wretch, 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 around
his head all the wrath of public opinion
should gather, and rage, and roar, and
roll, as the ocean rolls around the rock.
And if I ever forget, if I ever deny, that v
highest duty of my profession, may God
palsy this arm and hush my voice forever.

[Colonel Baker here went into a long
analysis of all the evidence.]

Mrs. Knight swears that Richardson
had one arm raised. Two others, for
the prosecution also, say he had not
Remember that the raising of his arm

307

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

is life or death to us. If Cora killed
him with his hands down, it is murder;
if there was a struggle, it was different.
I believe Richardson was brave. I don't
believe that the man lives who, twice in
one day, could back Richardson up
against a door, and put a pistol to his
bosom and hold it there, while he, Rich-
ardson, cowered like a slave. Is there no
moral law to be observed ? Is there no
correspondence in the nature of things ?
Did Richardson, as Mrs. Knight says,
raise his arms? Did he, as Getting
says, have his arms pinioned ? Now,
before you go one step farther towards
a conclusion, you must be satisfied on
that point, and you must all agree upon
it. Again, a pistol, cocked, was found
near his hand. Now, I want to utter
a word upon which eternal things may
depend. I ask you, was that pistol
drawn before Richardson was shot?
Can you believe he stood up in that
doorway for four minutes with a pistol

308

The Defense of Cora.

cocked and say he was unarmed? Mr.
Cook may have been mistaken, but
whether he was or not, the pistol was
there, the knife was there. They were
drawn ; he drew them ; they were drawn
in combat; and, being drawn, it justified
the utmost extremity of arms, before men
or angels.

In relation to the impeachment of the
witness Thomas, it is no argument that
he did not tell the truth because he sells
fruit, or because he failed in business,
or because his character in relation to
women is bad. I might enter into an
elaborate argument to show that because
he sells fruit he is all the more liable to
tell the truth, because he deals in the
fruits of nature. I would be very sorry
to say that he told a lie because he failed
in business, because, then, all the good
men who have failed here, and who will
fail, would be considered unworthy of
credence. And as to his character in
relation to women, I have only to say

309

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

that charity is one thing, and veracity
another. The theory of the prosecution
is that we bribed Thomas, and Glen-
non, and Marsh, and Corbiniere. II
would be strange if in all this bribery
we could not get one man who saw some
identical fact fatal to the prosecution
Why did not we get some one to pul
into the mouth of Kichardson such words
as "D n you, I '11 shoot you, anyhow."
I cannot see that there could be any
more perfect clincher to the case. ]
ask you, if our side intended to corrupl
or bribe, why could we not get some
man to prove that ? According to theii
account, could not Glennon swear to any-
thing? The case rests on the proba-
bility of statements as to facts, and there
is something in the human heart native
to truth which will give credence to the
story of our witnesses, unless there be
some specific affirmation to the contrary.
I will now proceed to grapple with
the great bugbear of the case. The

310

The Defense of Cora.

complaint, on their side, is that Belle
Cora has tampered with the witnesses.
Mr. Byrne has chosen to declare that the
line of defense was concocted in a place
which he has been pleased to designate
as a haunt of sensuality. In plain Eng-
lish, Belle Cora is helping her friend as
much as she can. It may appear strange
to him, but I am inclined to admit the
plain, naked fact ; and in the Lord's name,
who else should help him? Who else
is there whose duty it is to help him ?
If it were not for her, he would not have
a friend on earth. This howling, raging
public opinion would banish every friend,
even every man who once lived near him.
The associates of his life have fled in the
day of trouble. Sunshine friends, who
basked in the noontide of its beaming,
have vanished in the hour of its decline.
It is a woman of base profession, of more
than easy virtue, of malign fame, of a
degraded caste, it is one poor, weak,
feeble, and, if you like it, wicked woman,

311

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

to her alone he owes his ability to
employ counsel to present his defense.

What we want to know is, what have
they against that? What we want to
know is, why don't they admire it ? What
we want to know is, why don't they admit
the supremacy of the divine spark in the
merest human bosom, as if to teach that
there is good in things most evil ? The
history of this case is, I suppose, that
this man and this woman have formed a
mutual attachment, not sanctioned, if you
like, by the usages of society, thrown
out of the pale of society, if you like,
not sanctioned by the rights of the
Church. It is but a trust in each other,
a devotion to the last, amid all the dan-
gers of the dungeon and all the terrors
of the scaffold. They were bound to-
gether by a tie which angels might not
blush to approve. A bad woman may
lose her virtue; it would be infinitely
worse to lose her faith according to her
own standard. If you mean to say that

312

The Defense of Cora.

it is a reproach to this man that he has
one friend, and that a woman, to stand
by him, I say that that is, perhaps, her
greatest virtue. A man who can attach
to him a woman, however base in heart
and corrupt in life, is not all bad. A
woman who can maintain her trust, who
can waste her money like water to stand
by her friend, whether that friend be her
lover or paramour, amid the darkest
clouds that can gather, that woman can-
not be all evil ; and if, in vice, and degra-
dation, and pollution, and infamy, she
rises so far above it all as to vindicate
her original nature, I must confess that
I honor this trait of fidelity. That she
might go too far in the defense of her
friend, no man can doubt. If I were
charged with the crime of murder, and
my friends, insects born in a summer's
beam, were to flee from me, if my good
name stood me in no stead, if I were
bound at the altar, if the sacrificial priest
were to have his arm bared and knife

313

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

brandished to strike my wife would
stand by me, and if she should bribe a
juror, would I condemn her? Would
you? The rigid moralist would con-
demn, and the stern judge would punish,
but her act would accord with the prin-
ciples of human nature irrepressible,
uncontrollable, higher than all law.

That a woman should, in adversity and
bitterness, and sorrow and crime, stand
by her friend in the dungeon, on the
scaffold, with her money, and tears, and
defiance, and vengeance, all combined, is
human and natural. This woman is bad ;
she has forgotten her chastity fallen
by early temptation from her high estate ;
and among the matronage of the land
her name shall never be heard. She has
but one tie, she acknowledges but one
obligation, and that she performs in the
gloom of the cell and the dread of death ;
nor public opinion, nor the passions of the
multitude, nor the taunts of angry counsel,
nor the vengeance of the judge, can sway

314

The Defense of Cora.

her for a moment from her course. If
any of you have it in your heart to con-
demn, and say " Stand back ! I am holier
than thou," remember Magdalene, name
written in the Book of Life.

I feel prouder of human nature, I
have learned a new lesson. Hide him
in the felon's grave, with no inscription
consecrated to the spot; and when you
have forgotten it, and the memories of
the day are past, there will be one bosom
to heave a sigh in penitence and prayer,
there will be one eye to weep a refresh-
ing tear over the sod, one trembling
hand to plant flowers above his head.
Let them make the most of it. I scorn
the imputation that infamy should rest
on him for her folly and her faith. Let
them make the most of it, and when the
great Judge of all shall condemn, when,
in that dread hour, you and I and she
shall, stand at the common tribunal for
the deeds done or aimed to be done at
this day, if this be remembered against

315

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

her at all, it will be lost in the record of
a thousand crimes perpetrated by high
and noble souls. Let a man who feels
in his heart no responsive type of such
traits of goodness, of truest courage in
darkest destiny, let that man be the first
to put his hand to the bloody verdict.
Beyond this there is nothing more to be
said. The imputation on our witnesses
is that they went to Belle Cora's. The
imputation on their witnesses is the same
thing. What then? It proves nothing.
There is public opinion now ; there
was no such thing as genuine public
opinion at the time of the homicide it
was bastard. It is now calm, intelligent,
reflecting, determined, and just. If you
mean to be the oracles of this public
opinion, in God's name, speak ! If you
mean to be priests of the divinity which
honest men may worship, answer! If
you are the votaries of the other, you
are but the inflamed Cassandra of a
diseased imagination and of a prurient

316

The Defense of Cora.

public mind. If of the former, I bow at
your feet, in honor of the mysteries of
your worship. Against this man the
public press, so potent for good, so
mighty for evil, inflames and convulses
the public mind and judgment. There
is not one thing they have said that is in
accordance with truth and justice ; there
is not one version they have given that
is based on testimony and facts.

My task is performed. In the name
of our common humanity; in the name
of Him who died for that humanity ; by
the remembrance of your mothers and
fathers ; by your respect and admiration
for woman, the nearest and dearest ties
that we can feel ; by your consciousness
of your own imperfections, I adjure you
to consider in mercy. And, as you deal
with the prisoner, may the common
Father of us all deal with you. So
may the prayers of the mother whose
heart yet yearns toward him reach you.
So may his future life evince the sincerity

317

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

of his repentance in the solitude of the
jail. So may you be prosperous. And
so may you answer for your judgment on
that great day when you and the prisoner
at the bar shall alike stand up to answer
for all the deeds done in the body.

318

DEDICATION OF LONE
MOUNTAIN CEMETEEY

IMMOETALITY

DEDICATION OF LONE MOUNTAIN
CEMETEKY IMMOETALITY.

THE first shall be last Colonel Baker
delivered the address at the dedication
of Lone Mountain Cemetery on the 30th
of May, 1854. His body was there
interred, with imposing ceremonies, on
the llth of December, 1861. On the
last occasion, after all else had been
done, Thomas Starr King (whom Baker's
death had left greatest in the State),
standing by the unfilled grave, said:
" We have borne him now to the home
of the dead, to the cemetery which, after
fit services of prayer, he devoted in a ten-
der and thrilling speech, to its hallowed
purposes."

This speech has been lost, or it would
have the first place in this collection.

Bishop Kip, of the Episcopal Church,
and Bev. F. T. Gray, also made addresses
on that occasion.

321

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Frank Soule* and F. B. Austin read
original poems. The Mayor, C. K. Gar-
rison, gave a history of the private
enterprise resulting in the setting apart
of the cemetery. There were prayers
by Bishop Kip and Kev. A. Williams;
a selected choir rendered three anthems
and the Doxology; and the "Benedic-
tion" was by Eev. W. A. Scott, Pres-
byterian.

The city cemetery up to that time was
in the area now covered by the City Hall,
between Market, McAllister, and Larkin
streets. The Lone Mountain undertaking
was by a private corporation, composed
of Nathaniel Gray, Frank B. Austin, and
William H. Eanlett, who purchased a
tract of one hundred and seventy-three
acres. The title Lone Mountain, changed
many years later to Laurel Hill, was
selected by a council of advisers, after
the name of the elevation touching the
tract on the south.

It was a long time before the old ceme-

322

Lone Mountain Immortality.

tery was discharged of its solemn trust
and its precious dust, to make place for
the present City Hall. The remains of
Hon. Edward Gilbert were not removed
therefrom to Lone Mountain until May 2,
1863. This was done by Eureka Typo-
graphical Union, to which Mr. Gilbert
belonged. Baker, in his reply to Benja-
min, referred to the many defeats of the
Whig party. If he had arrived in San
Francisco a little earlier, he would have
seen a Whig, in the person of Gilbert,
representing the city in the lower House
of Congress. Gilbert came here as early
as the spring of '47. He was raised to
the printer's trade. On January 4, 1849,
he and others founded the Alia California
newspaper, and he wrote the editorials.
He was a member of the first Constitu-
tional Convention, 1849. On August 2,
1852, he fell in a duel with pistols with
General James W. Denver, in Sacramento
County. He was a native of New York,
and at his death was thirty years of age.

323

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

Baker, in his Broderick Oration, links
his name with those of Broderick and
Ferguson. General Denver was one of
three brothers very prominent in Demo-
cratic politics, all acquiring high official
station. The General was State Senator
from Trinity when he fought this duel.
Afterwards he was twice Secretary of
State, and resigned on being elected to
Congress. He was a brigadier-general
in the Federal Army during the War of
the Rebellion. Colorado's capital is
named after him.*

The attendance at the Lone Mountain
Dedication was large, the weather beauti-
ful and observe the date, MAY THIRTI-
ETH ! The ladies comprised at least one
half of those present. Of course there

* Broderick and Denver were in the State Senate at
the same time, 1852. Although belonging to the same
party, they were not cordial, and Broderick in conversa-
tion referred to Denver as " the huge-thighed Senator
from Trinity." Denver, who was a very large man, of
splendid presence, smarted under this, but it was hardly
provocation for a duel, even in those days. He was still
biding his time when Broderick was called out by Terry.

324

Lone Mountain Immortality.

were no street-cars at that day indeed,
there were no streets within miles of the
place. The only available route was
along Pacific Street, and the old road to
the Presidio, and thence south over the
high ridge leading out to Point Lobos.
Omnibuses left the City Hall (since the
Old City Hall now the Hall of Justice)
every half hour from 8 : 30 to 10 : 30 A. M.
The exercises were begun at eleven, and
occupied the rest of the day, with inter-
missions.

It was a pleasant nook, then called
" The Dell," not especially attractive but
for the circumstance that nature had
reserved and protected it from a girdle
of sand-dunes. Before they carried
Baker back to his illustrious sepulture,
the prospect far around was redeemed
by the hand of man, and was all green
and gold with the refreshment of streams
and fountains. "An air of such utter
loneliness and solitude pervades the
place," said a writer of that time, refer-

325

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

ring to " The Dell," " that a stranger, upon
entering it, before he had seen a grave
or a tomb, would at once come to the
conclusion that it was a cemetery. Na-
ture seems to have designed it for the
very purpose for which it has been set
apart."

The Editor, who arrived in San Fran-
cisco some weeks prior to this event,
would like to show the kind reader to
the spot where the ceremonies took
place.

" The Dell " was in the western end of
the cemetery, near the Old Lodge, which
was moved there in 1894, to make place
for the present splendid Lodge, or office
building. The then somewhat romantic
little hollow was cleared of underbrush
many years before that time, and filled
in with sand. Many hundreds of burials
have been made there, and it is still being
used for this purpose.

There is nothing to mark the old spot
or recall the old day. The old Lodge,

Lone Mountain Immortality.

at least, instead of being placed hard by,
might well have been planted on the very
site where Baker stood. The image of
Baker in white marble, " Godlike, erect,"
a shaft of light, would be fittest memo-
rial would it not ? The lips in speech,
a hand upraised, and the noble head un-
covered to the winds of heaven? But
read on.

The city and the State were very young.
Not many who made up that presence
recognized Baker as he stood before
them. He was even then quite gray, at
the age of forty-three.

An extract from Baker's speech has
been preserved. It is as follows :

Perhaps it may be well to acknowledge as a principle
the great fact of immortality. No man desires annihila-
tion. No man. whatever be his faults or his crimes, is
willing to go into endless night; and when we come here,
however loath we may be to stand in the Divine Presence,
still we recognize the fact that we are immortal, and the
truth peals like eternal thunder in our ears, "Thou ehalt
live forever!" With these thoughts we dedicate this
spot. Here future generations, in long and solemn pro-
cession, shall bring warriors who have given their lives
for their country; statesmen, remembered by the liberty
they helped to create, and the institutions they aided to
perfect. Here shall be brought the poet, who, buoyant,
327

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

passed through sea and land, through earth and sky, and
vale and river, penetrating the affections and accomplish-
ing the refinement of men. The projector worn with
toil and gray with thought leaving monuments to his
fame and memorials of his greatness, here, too, shall come
to end his life ; and, too, the tender maiden, smitten in
early blossom;* and the little child, the pledge of love,
to whose grave the aching heart shall oft repair to weep
and pray.

Rev. Albert Williams, who was present,
refers thus to this dedication, in his book,
"A Pioneer Pastorate":

Intensely interesting and ever-memorable was the
eloquent oration delivered by our singularly gifted Pacific
Coast orator, Colonel E. D. Baker. While every part of
that oration was most fitting and impressive, and passage
after passage thrilled the hearts of the large assemblage
gathered in "The Dell," especially sublime was that por-
tion of which the theme was the Resurrection, and which
the speaker closed with a recitation, iu truest pathos, of
the stanza from Dr. Watts:

God, my Redeemer, lives,

And often from the skies
Looks down and watches all my dust,
Till He shall bid it rise.

His aspiring spirit was advised of the
invisible things of a higher life.f He

* At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies.
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the Soul that warmed it, rise !

Holmes.

t Believe all that thy heart prompts; for everything
that it seeks, exists. Plato.

328

Lone Mountain Immortality.

could not be better pictured to aftertimes
than as he stood now nor have a more
commanding place in the memory of
men.

We will leave the great man there!
His mortality is there, indeed, to remain,
as he said over Ferguson, "in its last
resting-place until the trump of the
Archangel shall sound " ; but we will
leave the man there, also, in his abound-
ing prime. We will take our last affec-
tionate look at him, while he is speaking,
as it were, to time and to eternity, and
pointing upward.

It was with such a sentiment that
Dickens parted with AGNES, that best
creation of his mind, said to be the
finest character in the whole range of
fiction. He had seen her in that attitude
more than once, when she was more per-
suasive than speech an angel in the
house of sickness and the shadow of
death and he gave her this final apos-
trophe :

329

Masterpieces of E. D. Baker.

" Oh, Agnes! Oh, my soul ! so may thy face be by me
when I close my life indeed ; so may I, when realities are
melting from me like the shadows which I now dismiss,
still find thee near me, pointing upward!"

Very often, in professional and party
conflict, on the battle-field, and in the
high councils of State, Baker attracted
the universal eye. But he really never
stood on a more elevated tribune than
when, on the very verge of the continent,
under the inducement of the illimitable
sea and sky, and pointing upward, he
asserted the immortality of the soul of
man.

We will leave the great man there
rather we will keep him ever present to
the mind and heart, as he stood on the
ocean's bound that far-off day in the
new home for mortal rest, in "The
Dell " pointing upward !

INDEX

INDEX.

PAQB

Adams, John Quincy : Views on Secession 149, 151

41 Affection, Forgiveness, Faith " 52

American Theater Speech 89

Anecdotes: The Duke of York 218

Old Boiling Green 199

Dr. Johnson 137

Governor Low's Wagr. 89

Baker's Courtship 281

Apostrophe to Science...., 22

Atlantic Cable Address 15

Austin, F.B.: Poet at Lone Mountain Dedication 322

Baker, E. D. ; Introductory Notice 9

Further History. . . .13, 40, 63, 131, 227, 243, 273, 289, 319

Death of ! 273

Family of 278

Poem by 283

Benjamin, Judah P. : Reply to 131

Bigler, Governor John: Witness in Cora Case 289

Brady, James T. : Allusion to 227

Breckinridge, JohnC.: Reply to 243

Broderick, David C. : Noticeof 63,324

Duel with Judge Terry 64

Baker's Oration 67

Byrne, Henry H. : District Attorney in Cora Case 289

Campbell, Alexander : Counsel in Cora Case 289

Casey, James P.: Hung by Vigilance Committee 291

CerroGordo, Battle of: Allusion to 236

Character 44

Collins, John A. : Tribute to Baker 291

Cometof 1858: Allusion to 30

Cora, Charles: Trial of 287

His Execution 291

Marries Belle Cora in Jail 291

Baker's Defense of 293

333

Index.

Dedication of Lone Mountain Cemetery 319

Den ver, General Jas.W.: Duel with Ed ward Gilbert. 323-324

Dickens and " Agnes " 329

Dickinson, Daniel S. : Tribute to Baker 227

Dix, General John A. : Allusion to 227

Douglas, Stephen A. : Allusions to 93, 132, 189

Duels Dueling 48,64, 323

Baker's Protest.... 80-81

Duke of York as Bishop; Anecdote of 218

Eaton, L Ward: One of the Cora Jury 289

Easterly, Jno. M. " " 289

Enthusiastic Scene in American Theater 115

Eureka Typographical Union : Burial of Gilbert 323

Ferguson, Wm. I.: Notice of 39

Duel with Geo. Pen Johnston 39

Baker's Eulogy 41

Fessenden, Wm. Pitt: "The Tarpeian Rock". 244, 261

Flint, Edward P.: One of the Cora Jury 289

Forbes, A. B.: " " 289

Forney, John W. : Baker's Poem 284

" Freedom ": Tribute to 125

Freedom and Slavery 104, 109, 115, 124, 215

Freelon, Judge Thos.W.: Baker's Plea in Cora Case ... 289
Fremont, John C. : At the American Theater ... 92

Further Reference 117, 118

Fugitive Slave Law, The 188, 190, 195

Garibaldi : Allusion to 115

Garrison, Mayor C. K.; Presides at Lone Mountain

Dedication 322

Gilbert, Edward: Duel with Denver 323

Gray, Rev. F. T. : At Lone Mountain Dedication 320

Gray, Nathaniel : Lone Mountain Cemetery Association 322

'"~ Gwin, William M. : References to 63,132

Hager. Judge John S.: Presides at Trial of Cora 289

Haley, John J. : One of the Cora Jury 289

Halleck Block : On Site of American Theater 89

Holmes, A. : One of the Cora Jury 289

Immortality: Lone Mountain Cemetery 321

Inge, 8. W.: Counsel in the Cora Case 289

334

Index.

* Irrepressible Conflict, The" 121, 122

Jackson, Andrew: Views on Secession 162, 153

Jerome, E. B. : Captain on Baker's Staff 279

Johnson, Governor J. Neely: Proclaims San Francisco

in Insurrection 291

Johnson, Dr. Samuel: Anecdote of 137

Johnston, Geo. Pen : Duel with Ferguson 39-40

Joyce, M. : One of the Cora Jury 289

King of William, James: Killed by Casey 291

King, Thomas Starr : At Baker's Sepulture 321

Kip, Bishop W. I. : At Lone Mountain Dedication 321

Lane, General Joseph: Allusion to 103

Latham, Milton S. : Election as Governor. 64

Presents Baker's Credentials in Senate 131

Legal Profession, The : Baker's Tribute 306

Lincoln, Abraham : Carries California and Oregon 131

Further Reference .y.^^?.?^? 118 ' 188 189 193 Jn243
Lone Mountain Cemetery: Dedication in 1854 321

Original Incorporators 321

Low, Governor F. F. : Loses a Wager with Baker 89

Mayer, Jacob: One of the Cora Jury 289

Missouri Compromise, The : Reference to 1%, 198

Motley's "Dutch Republic": " " 174

McDougall, James A. : Counsel in Cora Case 290

Other Reference 266

Nesmith, James W.: Baker's Colleague in the Senate. . 120

New York Monster Mass-Meeting of 1861 227

Nugent.John: Witness in Cora Case 302

Views of the Herald on Cora's Act 288

"Old Boiling Green": Anecdote of 199

"Old Gray Eagle": Baker So Titled 244

Olmstead, Thos. C. D. : One of the Cora Jury 289

Perley, D. W. : Challenges Senator Broderick to a Duel 64

Pericles on the Grandeur of Athens 32-33

Politics: Pursuitof 53

Piper, William A. : Foreman of the Cora Jury 289

Ranlett, Wm. H. : Lone Mountain Cemetery Association 322

Raymond, Henry J. : Allusion to 227

Reply to Benjamin 135

335

Index.

Reply to Breckinridge 243

Revolution of 1688 173

Richardson, Wm. H.. U. 8. Marshal : Killing of. 287

" Right and Duty are Majestic Ideas " 140

San Francisco Proclaimed to be in Insurrection 291

"Science": Apostrophe to 22

Scott, Rev. W. A. : At Lone Mountain Dedication 322

Seward, Wm. H. : Allusions to 99, 121, 122

Shields, GeneralJames: Disabled at Cerro Gordo 244

Slavery in Southern States 210, 217

Soul6, Frank: Poet at Lone Mountain Dedication.. 822

Southern States, The: Peopleof 113-114

Stanly, Edward: Eulogy of Baker 66, 228

Stowell, Wm. H.: One of the Cora Jury 289

"Tarpeian Rock, The": Baker's Allusion. 244,261

Terry, David S. : Duel with Broderick 64

"ToaWave": Poem by Baker 283

Tribute to "Freedom". 125

" the Legal Profession ....306

Trumbull, Lyman : Allusions to 132. 243

Vail, Chas. H.: One of the Cora Jury 289

Victor Emanuel: Allusion to 115

Victoria, Queen: " " 115

Vigilance Committee of 1856 287, 291

War 23

Webster, Daniel: Views on Secession.. .146, 147, 155, 221, 223

Weller, John B. : Defeats Broderick for Senator 63

Whig Party, The : Allusions to 94, 95, 99, 243

Williams, Rev. A. : Baker's Lone Mountain Address. 322, 328
Wilkes, Geo.: Notices of Baker and Broderick. . .65, 275, 276
Yerba Buena Cemetery: Site of New City Hall 822

336