Edward Dickinson Baker, died October 21, 1861

Edward Baker moved to San Francisco in 1852. He operated a successful law practice.  Baker received substantial fees, but his partner said he spent the money as fast as it came in, and some of those expenditures paid faro debts. 

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 ticket, but lost because the Whig party had collapsed. 

It was in those days that Baker picked up the name “Gray Eagle” because of his gray hair (though he was balding).  He was just under six feet tall. 

Baker became involved in a notorious criminal case in 1855 that threatened his legal and political future. He was criticized for defending Charles Cora, a gambler accused of killing a United States marshal. The jury failed to reach a verdict, and Cora was lynched by a vigilante mob.  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.

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. 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.  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.

The Oregon legislature met in Salem in September 1860 to elect two men to the Senate. In an effort to keep Baker from receiving the required majority of 26 votes, six pro-slavery senators left the meeting and hid in a barn to prevent a quorum. They were brought back, and the legislators reached a compromise on October 7 and elected James Nesmith, a Douglas Democrat, and Baker. The Douglas Democrats supported Baker because of his sincerity and support of popular sovereignty.  

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 introduced him.  

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.  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. 

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

Baker in carriage with Lincoln at Inauguration

 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.”

Lincoln's first inauguration at Capitol Building

In March, Baker indicated a willingness to compromise on some issues to prevent the breakup of the country.  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 proslavery Democrat governor, John Whiteaker, would have appointed a proslavery Democrat to take his place.

The Civil War began on April 12 when Confederate artillery fired on Fort Sumter, and three days later, President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Baker left the Senate to go to New York City, where he spoke for two hours to a crowd of 100,000 in Union Square on April 19.

The hour for conciliation is past; the gathering for battle is at hand, and the country requires that every man shall do his duty . . . 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. 

The following day, Baker met with 200 men from California who wanted to form a regiment that would symbolize the commitment of the West Coast to the Union cause. On May 8, Baker was authorized by Secretary of War Simon Cameron to form the California Regiment; he was its commanding officer with the rank of colonel.  He was assigned command of a brigade in Stone's division, guarding fords along the Potomac River north of  Washington, D.C.

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.

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.”

Willie Lincoln

On October 21 at the Battle of Ball's Bluff, Baker was struck at around four o’clock by a volley of bullets through his heart and brain that killed him instantly. 

Death of Edward Baker at the Battle of Ball's Bluff
Currier & Ives Print

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.”

Ball's Bluff

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?”  

After funerals in Philadelphia and New York City, Baker’s body was sent by ship and the Panama Railroad to San Francisco for burial. He was buried in the San Francisco National Cemetery.