Edward Dickinson Baker

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. 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 Quakers, the boy Edward Baker and his family left England and emigrated to the United States in 1816, arriving in 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. 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.

The family left New Harmony in 1826 and moved to Belleville in Illinois Territory, a town near St. Louis. Baker and his father bought a horse and cart and started a drayage business that young Ned operated in St. Louis.

Illinois lawyer

Shortly after his marriage, Baker affiliated with the Disciples of Christ and engaged in part-time preaching, which as a by-product served to spread awareness of his skill in public oratory, an activity that eventually made him famous. 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.

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.

During the Mexican–American War, Baker briefly dropped out of politics and was commissioned as a colonel of the Fourth Regiment of the Illinois Volunteer Infantry, on July 4, 1846. In the Battle of Cerro Gordo, the regiment was assigned to General James Shields's Illinois brigade in General David E. Twiggs's division. When Shields was badly wounded in an artillery barrage, Baker boldly led the brigade against the entrenched artillery battery, resulting in the capture of the guns. General Winfield Scott later said, "The brigade so gallantly led by General Shields, and, after his fall, by Colonel Baker, deserves high commendation for its fine behavior and success." Soon after Cerro Gordo, the enlistment period ended for men of the 4th Illinois and they returned to New Orleans and were discharged on May 25.

In response to President Abraham Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers to help defend the nation's capital following the fall of Fort Sumter to Confederate forces in mid-April 1861, he raised a regiment at the dawn of the American Civil War, recruiting soldiers from New York City and Philadelphia. Offered a commission as brigadier-general of volunteers on May 17, 1861, he declined the honor, opting instead to serve as the colonel of the 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 Ball's Bluff, Virginia. His remains were subsequently returned to California, and laid to rest at the San Francisco National Cemetery. 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 took up a job offered 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. The jury failed to reach a verdict, and then Cora was tried and lynched by a vigilante mob.

The Oregon Legislative Assembly 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.

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. However, the U.S. Senate states that he was a colonel.

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."

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."

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." 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. 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." Baker's friends, however, thought his true talent lay in his gift of oratory.

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.

Honors Baker City, Oregon and Baker County, Oregon, are named for him. The county was created on September 22, 1862. Fort Baker, located in the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, was established in 1864 and named in his honor. On April 29, 1897, the Lime Point Military Reservation, located near Sausalito, California, was renamed Fort Baker in his honor. There is also a Fort Baker in the District of Columbia named for him. It is located between Forts Meigs and Stanton, one mile east of Uniontown at Fort Baker Drive and 30th Street. A life-size marble statue of Baker was sculpted by Horatio Stone and placed in the Capitol Building. The Congressional bills that provided $10,000 in funds for its creation are viewable at the Library of Congress website. On December 12, 1861, after the announcement of Baker's death, a resolution was submitted, by James W. Nesmith of Oregon, and passed which stated that Senate members would go into mourning by wearing crepe on their left arms for thirty days. There is a plaster carving of his face at the Illinois State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. It is located in the Legislative Reference Bureau legal library, carved into the wall. San Francisco's Baker Street, extending from Haight Street at Buena Vista Park, past the Palace of Fine Arts to the marina within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area at Marina Boulevard, is named after Baker. On May 19, 2011, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber signed SB809 into law, designating each February 24 as Edward D. Baker Day in Oregon at the urging of local members of the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War. On October 23, 2011, the Oregon Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission held a special commemorative service honoring the life and public service of Baker in Salem, Oregon, held at the hour of his death at the Battle of Ball's Bluff, 150 years earlier. A simultaneous commemoration was held in Leesburg, Virginia.