Edward Dickinson Baker

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For other people with the same name, see Edward Baker.

Edward Baker
United States Senator
from Oregon
In office
October 2, 1860 – October 21, 1861
Preceded byDelazon Smith
Succeeded byBenjamin Stark
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Illinois
In office
March 4, 1845 – January 15, 1847
Preceded byJohn J. Hardin
Succeeded byJohn Henry
Constituency7th district
In office
March 4, 1849 – March 3, 1851
Preceded byThomas J. Turner
Succeeded byThompson Campbell
Constituency6th district
Member of the Illinois Senate
In office
1840–1844
Member of the Illinois House of Representatives
In office
1837–1840
Personal details
Born
Edward Dickinson Baker

(1811-02-24)February 24, 1811
71st Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment
Philadelphia Brigade
Battles/warsMexican–American War
 • Battle of Cerro Gordo
American Civil War
 • Battle of Ball's Bluff †

Edward Dickinson Baker (February 24, 1811 – October 21, 1861) was an American politician, lawyer, and US army officer. In his political career, Baker served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois and later as a U.S. Senator from Oregon. He was also known as an orator and poet.[1] A long-time close friend of the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, Baker served as U.S. Army colonel during both the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. Baker was killed in the Battle of Ball's Bluff while leading a Union Army regiment, becoming the only sitting U.S. senator ever to be killed in a military engagement.

Early life and education

Edward Baker in 1850 as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives

Born in London in 1811 to school teacher Edward Baker and Lucy Dickinson Baker, poor but educated

Philadelphia, where Baker's father established a school. Ned, as he was called, attended his father's school before quitting to apprentice as a loom operator in a weaving factory.[2]: p.2  In 1825, the family left Philadelphia and traveled to New Harmony, Indiana, a utopian community on the Ohio River led by Robert Owen and sought to follow communitarian ideals.[3]

The family left New Harmony in 1826 and moved to

St. Louis.[4]: p.12  Baker and his father bought a horse and cart and started a drayage business that young Ned operated in St. Louis.[4]: pp. 12–15  Baker met Governor Ninian Edwards, who allowed Baker access to his private law library. Later he moved to Carrollton, Illinois, where he was admitted to the bar in 1830.[2]
: p.5 

Marriage

On April 27, 1831, Baker married Mary Ann Foss; they would have five children together.[5]

Illinois lawyer

Edward Dickinson Baker

Shortly after his marriage, Baker affiliated with the

baptized Lincoln. However, this claim is denied as apocryphal by later leaders of the Restoration Movement with which Baker's church of Christ was associated.[6]

In September 1844, Baker exhibited impetuous bravado in an incident arising out of the murder of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, by a mob in a jail near Nauvoo, Illinois. As a colonel in the local militia, Baker was part of a group pursuing the mob leaders, who had fled across the Mississippi River into Missouri. Rather than wait for others to join him, Baker crossed the river and apprehended the fugitives.[2]: p.24 

Baker served in Congress from March 4, 1845, until his resignation on December 24, 1846, to take effect on January 15, 1847. He resigned in a dispute over the legality of his serving in Congress and the army. The controversy arose from Article I, Section 6, of the U.S. Constitution, the so-called

Incompatibility Clause, which prohibits an "officer of the United States" serving in either house of Congress.[7]: p. 99  The two remained close friends, however, with Lincoln naming one of his sons Edward Baker Lincoln, affectionately called "Eddie." Lincoln and Baker occasionally competed in Fives, a form of handball.[8]

During the

31st Congress
(March 4, 1849 – March 4, 1851). He was not a candidate for renomination in 1850.

In July 1850, he proposed to the

St. Louis and in Panama, and the company would send them on to San Francisco by May 1.[4]
: pp.167–68  He became ill in Panama with a tropical disease and had to return to the U.S.

Military service

Commissioned on July 4, 1846, as Colonel of the

Siege of Vera Cruz, and also commanded one of the brigades involved in the Battle of Cerro Gordo. He continued to serve with his regiment until he was honorably mustered out on May 29, 1847. After his honorable discharge, he engaged in a 14-year break from military service, during which he served in the Thirty-first U.S. Congress from 1849 to 1851, relocated to San Francisco, where he practiced law and, in 1860, relocated to Oregon, where he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy in the term beginning March 4, 1859.[4][9][10]

In response to President Abraham Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to help defend the nation's capital following the fall of

Seventy-first Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry and major-general of volunteers 1861; however, his tenure was short-lived. On October 21, 1861, he was killed in the Battle of Balls Bluff, Virginia. His remains were subsequently returned to California, and laid to rest at the San Francisco National Cemetery.[4][9][10]

California politician

Baker (1811–1861)

After Baker did not get a Cabinet position under President

faro debts. The two formed a successful partnership at Montgomery and Jackson Streets.[4]
: p.181 

California had been admitted to the United States in 1850 as a free state, but by the later part of the 1850s, the state was being pulled in different directions over the issue of slavery, and Baker became a leader in the movement to keep California in the Union. In 1855, he ran for a seat in the state senate as a Whig on the Free Soil Party party ticket but lost because the Whig party had collapsed.[2]: p.65 

It was in those days that Baker adopted the name "Gray Eagle" from a poem by

Belle Cora who hired and paid Baker to defend her husband, Charles Cora, a well-known gambler accused of killing a United States marshal.[13] The jury failed to reach a verdict, and then Cora was tried and lynched by a vigilante mob.[2]: pp. 66–67  The experience led Baker to become active in the Law and Order Party, which opposed actions of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, which took the law into its own hands. Because of the committee's criticism of his actions, Baker temporarily left the city and spent some time in the Sacramento area.[4]
: p.184 

Oregon politician

Frustrated by his failure to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1859, Baker looked to greener political pastures to the north. Oregon held special interest for people who had once lived in Illinois, including men he had known in Springfield. He had become interested in Oregon politics in 1857, when Dr. Anson Henry, a friend from Springfield who had moved to Oregon, told Baker he could win the Senate election there. After statehood was achieved on February 14, 1859, Oregon Republicans asked Baker to come to their state to run for the Senate and counter the Democratic strength there.[2]: p.93 

By the end of February 1860, the Baker family had moved into a house in Salem on what is now the campus of Willamette University.[2]: p.95  Baker opened a law office and started campaigning for Republicans around the state. In Salem on July 4, he acknowledged the rumbles of secession threats and proclaimed his willingness to die for his country: "If it be reserved for me to lay my unworthy life upon the altar of my country in defending it from internal assailants, I declare here today that I aspire to no higher glory than that the sun of my life may go down beneath the shadow of freedom's temple and baptize the emblem of the nation's greatness, the Stars and Stripes, that float so proudly before us today, in my heart's warmest blood."[14]: p.140 

The

Douglas Democrat, and Baker. The Douglas Democrats supported Baker because of his sincerity and support of popular sovereignty.[4]
: p.205 

U.S. Senator

Baker in American Civil War

Baker took his seat in the Senate on December 5, 1860. His Oregon colleague, Senator Joseph Lane, disliked him so much that he refused to follow tradition and introduce Baker to the Senate, so Democratic senator Milton Latham of California did it.[2]: p.115 

On December 31, Senator

Judah Benjamin of Louisiana argued that Southern states had a constitutional right to secede and that other states would soon join South Carolina, which had seceded on December 20. Baker refuted Benjamin's argument in a three-hour speech a day later.[4]: p.220  He acknowledged that he was opposed to interference with slave owners in slave states, but he was also opposed to secession and the extension of slavery into new territories and states. In March 1861, he indicated a willingness to compromise on some issues to prevent the breakup of the country.[4]
: p.226 

Lincoln inauguration

Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861. Baker and Senator

James A. Pearce of Maryland faced backward in the presidential carriage as they rode from the White House to the Capitol, and Lincoln and outgoing president James Buchanan faced forward. On horseback at the head of their cavalry escort was the man who would figure prominently as Baker's commander at the Battle of Ball's Bluff. Colonel Charles P. Stone was an up-and-coming Union officer who was responsible for security in Washington for the inauguration. Stone spurred his horse to excite other horses in the escort party because he believed the prancing horses would form a better protective barrier and protect the dignitaries in the carriage. Baker introduced Lincoln to the audience gathered on the east portico of the Capitol: "Fellow citizens, I introduce to you, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States."[4]
: p.231 

Lincoln did not name Baker to his cabinet because his support in the Senate was so critical. If Baker had resigned his Senate seat, Oregon's pro-slavery Democratic governor, John Whiteaker, would have appointed a pro-slavery Democrat to take his place.[2]: p.116 

Civil War

Death of Colonel Edward D. Baker at the Battle of Ball's Bluff, October 21, 1861
Marker for where Edward D. Baker was killed during the Battle of Balls Bluff

The

California Regiment with him as its commanding officer with the rank of colonel.[2]
: pp.125–26 

Baker telegraphed Isaac J. Wistar, his San Francisco law partner, who was back in Philadelphia, and asked him to help recruit and organize the regiment. When Wistar asked about rank, Baker replied, "I cannot at this moment accept military rank without jeopardizing my seat in the Senate. But you know my relations with Lincoln, and if you do that for me, I can assure you that within six months I shall be a Major-General and you shall have a Brigadier-General's commission and a satisfactory command under me." Baker wrote to Lincoln on June 11, asking that he be given a command that would "not make him second to everybody."[2]: p.126  His efforts paid off; on July 31, Lincoln sent the Senate names of men he was recommending for appointments as brigadier generals. On the list, besides Charles Stone, Ulysses Grant and others, was Edward Baker.[15]

He told the Senate he would refuse the commission because of its doubtful legality. He said he was pleased that the government would allow him a command with his rank of colonel, "quite sufficient for all my military aspirations," which indicates he believed he could be a colonel and remain in the Senate. He wrote to Lincoln on August 31 to decline the appointment as brigadier general, citing the problem of

incompatibility and implying that he had the government's permission to hold a colonel's commission.[2] : p.137  To add to the mystery, the War Department notified Baker on September 21 that Lincoln had appointed him to be a major general. A list of Civil War generals based on official records indicates Baker held the rank of major general.[16] However, the U.S. Senate states that he was a colonel.[17]

He was assigned command of a brigade in Stone's division, guarding fords along the Potomac River north of Washington. At a dinner with Journalist George Wilkes in August, Baker predicted he would die in an early battle of the war: "I am certain I shall not live through this war, and if my troops should show any want of resolution, I shall fall in the first battle. I cannot afford, after my career in Mexico, and as a Senator of the United States, to turn my face from the enemy."[18]

Baker stopped at the White House on October 20 to visit his old friend. Lincoln sat against a tree on the northeast White House lawn, while Baker lay on the ground with his hands behind his head.

Willie Lincoln played in the leaves while the two men talked. Baker picked Willie up and kissed him before shaking the President's hand as he left. Mary Lincoln gave Baker a bouquet of flowers, which he accepted graciously and sadly: "Very beautiful. These flowers and my memory will wither together."[2]
: p.157 

Death

On October 21, a false report of an unguarded Confederate camp at Ball's Bluff encouraged Brig. Gen. Charles Pomeroy Stone to order a raid, which clashed with enemy forces. Baker tried to reinforce the Union troops, but failed to ensure that there were enough boats for the river crossings, which were then delayed. At around four o’clock, Baker was struck by a volley of bullets through his heart and brain that killed him instantly. Wistar said that he and Baker had a brief discussion just prior to his being killed, and Baker said, "The officer who dies with his men will never be harshly judged."[19]: p.371 

Aftermath

President Lincoln was at General

George McClellan's headquarters that evening when he got the news of Baker's death. Charles Carleton Coffin of the Boston Journal saw Lincoln crying when he received the news of Baker's death: "With bowed head, and tears rolling down his furrowed cheeks, his face pale and wan, his heart heaving with emotion, he almost fell as he stepped into the street."[4]: p.1  At Baker's funeral, Mary Todd Lincoln scandalized Washington by appearing in a lilac ensemble, including matching gloves and hat, rather than the traditional black. Despite Baker's close friendship with her husband, she retorted, "I wonder if the women of Washington expect me to muffle myself in mourning for every soldier killed in this great war?"[20] After subsequent funerals in Philadelphia and New York City, Baker's body was sent by the steamer Northern Light and the Panama Railroad to San Francisco for burial.[3] He is buried in Section OSD, Site 488, San Francisco National Cemetery.[21] Of himself, Baker once said, "my real forte is my power to command, to rule and lead men. I feel that I could lead men anywhere."[22] Baker's friends, however, thought his true talent lay in his gift of oratory.[citation needed
]

Baker depicted on the Series 1875 $5000 Certificate of Deposit
Baker's statue

His death shocked official Washington and led to the formation of the Congressional

Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Almost three years after his death, Baker's widow, Mary Ann, was placed on the government pension roll, receiving $50 per month. The Congressional bill which provided this relief is also viewable at the Library of Congress website.[23]

Honors

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Horner, John B. (1919). "Edwin D. Baker" . Oregon: Her History, Her Great Men, Her Literature . J. K. Gill.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Blair, Harry C. and Rebecca Tarshis (1960). Colonel Edward Baker: Lincoln's Constant Ally. Portland, Ore.: Oregon Historical Society.
  3. ^ a b Masur, Louis P. (October 22, 2011). "Senator Baker's Waveless Shore". Opinionator. Retrieved March 22, 2017.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Braden, Gayle A. (1960). The Public Career of Edward Dickinson Baker, unpublished PhD dissertation. Vanderbilt University.
  5. ^ Samuel (?–1852), Caroline C. (?–?), Lucy (?–?), Alfred W. (?–1898), and Edward Dickinson Jr. (?–1883)
  6. ^ Martin, Jim (1996). "The secret baptism of Abraham Lincoln". Restoration Quarterly. 38 (2). Archived from the original on October 19, 2012.
  7. ^ "Debates and Proceedings, 1833–1873". Congressional Globe (29th Congress, December 30, 1846). Retrieved August 8, 2014.
  8. ^ Lincoln Institute. "Edward D. Baker". Mr. Lincoln and Friends. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  9. ^ a b Blair, Harry, and Tarshis, Rebecca. Colonel Edward D. Baker: Lincoln's Constant Ally. Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1960.
  10. ^ a b "Baker, Edward Dickinson". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
  11. OCLC 1056818562
    .
  12. ^ Hay, John (December 1861). "Colonel Baker". Harper's Magazine. Vol. 24. Retrieved May 3, 2021 – via Google Books.
  13. ISBN 978-0-313-33713-0
    . Retrieved May 3, 2021 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Kennedy, Elijah (1912). The Contest for California in 1861: How Colonel E.D. Baker Saved the Pacific States for the Union. New York: Houghton Mifflin.
  15. ^ "[Title unknown]". Congressional Globe. August 1, 1861.
  16. ^ "US Civil War Generals". sunsite.utk.edu. Archived from the original on February 20, 2012. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  17. ^ "U.S. Senate: Senator Killed in Battle". www.senate.gov.
  18. ^ Wilkes, George (October 30, 1861). "Death of Col. Baker". The Agitator.
  19. ^ Wistar, Isaac (1914). Autobiography of Isaac James Wistar. New York: Harper & Bros.
  20. ISBN 978-0-252-06667-2
    .
  21. ISBN 978-1-4766-2599-7
    .
  22. ^ Oscar Tully Shuck (1901). History of the Bench and Bar of California: Being Biographies of Many Remarkable Men, a Store of Humorous and Pathetic Recollections, Accounts of Important Legislation and Extraordinary Cases, Comprehending the Judicial History of the State. Commercial Printing House. pp. 434–.
  23. ^ S. 122
  24. ^ "Oregon Blue Book: Incorporated Cities: Baker City". Oregon Secretary of State. Retrieved March 23, 2017.
  25. ^ "Oregon Historical County Records Guide: Baker County History". sos.oregon.gov. Retrieved March 23, 2017.
  26. ^ H.R. 2762 and H.R. 2586
  27. ^ Library of Congress Journal of the Senate
  28. ^ "The Illinois State Capitol-First Floor-Legislative Reference Bureau Library". Retrieved August 8, 2014.
  29. ^ "Oregon Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of Ball's Bluff and the death of U.S. Senator Edward Dickinson Baker". Archived from the original on August 9, 2014. Retrieved August 8, 2014.
  30. ^ "Virginia's Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of Ball's Bluff and the death of U.S. Senator Edward Dickinson Baker". Archived from the original on August 9, 2014. Retrieved August 8, 2014.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edward Dickinson Baker.
U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by Member of the
U.S. House of Representatives
from Illinois's 7th congressional district

1845–1847 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of the
U.S. House of Representatives
from Illinois's 6th congressional district

1849–1851 		Succeeded by
U.S. Senate
Preceded by
James W. Nesmith
 		Succeeded by
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