Volume 7 — THE LATE SENATOR BAKER, WITH CALL FOR EMANCIPATION.

Speech in the Senate, on the Death of Hon. Edward D. Baker, late Senator of Oregon, December 11, 1861.

This occasion was remarkable for the presence of President Lincoln, thus described in the Congressional Globe:—

“The President of the United States entered the Senate Chamber, supported by Hon. Lyman Trumbull and Hon. O. H. Browning, Senators from the State of Illinois; he was introduced to the Vice-President, and took a seat beside him on the daïs appropriated to the President of the Senate. J. G. Nicolay, Esq., and John Hay, Esq., Private Secretaries to the President of the United States, took seats near the central entrance.”

MR. PRESIDENT,—The Senator to whom we now say farewell was generous in funeral homage to others. More than once he held great companies in rapt attention, while doing honor to the dead. Over the coffin of Broderick[243] he proclaimed the dying utterance of that early victim, and gave to it the fiery wings of his own eloquence: “They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of Slavery, and a corrupt Administration”; and as the impassioned orator repeated these words, his own soul was knit in sympathy with the departed; and thus at once did he win to himself the friends of Freedom, though distant.

There are two forms of eminent talent which are kindred in effect, each producing instant impression, each holding crowds in suspense, and each kindling enthusiastic admiration: I mean the talent of the orator and the talent of the soldier. Each of these, when successful, gains immediate honor, and reads his praise in a nation’s eyes. Baker was orator and soldier. To him belongs the rare renown of this double character. Perhaps he carried into war something of the confidence inspired by the conscious sway of great multitudes, as he surely brought into speech something of the ardor of war. Call him, if you will, the Rupert of battle; he was also the Rupert of debate.

His success in life attests not only a remarkable genius, but the benign hospitality of our institutions. Born on a foreign soil, he was to our country only a step-son; but, were he now alive, I doubt not he would gratefully declare that the country was never to him an ungentle step-mother. Child of poverty, he was brought, while yet in tender years, to Philadelphia, where he began life an exile. His earliest days were passed at the loom rather than at school; and yet from this lowliness he achieved the highest posts of trust and honor, being at the same time Senator and General. It was the boast of Pericles, in his funeral oration, in the Ceramicus, over the dead who had fallen in battle, that the Athenians readily communicated to all the advantages which they themselves enjoyed, that they did not exclude the stranger from their walls, and that Athens was a city open to the Human Family.[244] The same boast may be repeated by us with better reason, as we commemorate our dead fallen in battle.

From Philadelphia the poor man’s son was carried to the West, where he grew with the growth of that surpassing region. He became one of its children; and his own manhood was closely associated with its powerful progress. The honors of the bar and of Congress were soon his; but impatient temper led him from these paths into the Mexican War, where he gallantly took the place of Shields—torn with wounds and almost dead—at Cerro Gordo. But the great West, beginning to teem with population, did not satisfy his ambition, and he repaired to California. With infancy rocked on the waves of the Atlantic, and manhood formed in the broad and open expanse of the Prairie, he now sought a home on the shores of the Pacific. There again his genius was promptly recognized. A new State, which had just taken its place in the Union, sent him as Senator; and Oregon first became truly known to us on this floor by his eloquent lips.[245]

In the Senate he took at once the part of orator. His voice was not full and sonorous, but sharp and clear. It was penetrating rather than commanding, and yet, when touched by his ardent nature, became sympathetic and even musical. Countenance, body, and gesture all shared the unconscious inspiration of his voice, and he went on, master of his audience, master also of himself. All his faculties were completely at command. Ideas, illustrations, words, seemed to come unbidden and range in harmonious forms,—as in the walls of ancient Thebes each stone took its proper place of its own accord, moved only by the music of a lyre. His fame as a speaker was so peculiar, even before he appeared among us, that it was sometimes supposed he might lack those solid powers without which the oratorical faculty itself exercises only a transient influence. But his speech on this floor in reply to a slaveholding conspirator, now an open rebel, showed that his matter was as good as his manner, and that, while master of fence, he was also master of ordnance. His oratory was graceful, sharp, and flashing, like a cimeter; but his argument was powerful and sweeping, like a battery.

You have not forgotten that speech. Perhaps the argument against the sophism of Secession was never better arranged and combined, or more simply popularized for general apprehension. A generation had passed since that traitorous absurdity, fit cover of conspiracy, was exposed. For a while it had shrunk into darkness, driven back by the massive logic of Daniel Webster and the honest sense of Andrew Jackson.

As the pretension showed itself anew, our orator undertook again to expose it. How thoroughly he did this, now with historic and now with forensic skill, while his whole effort was elevated by a charming, ever-ready eloquence, aroused to new power by the interruptions he encountered,—all this is present to your minds. That speech passed at once into general acceptance, while it gave its author an assured position in this body.

Another speech showed him in a different character. It was his instant reply to the Kentucky Senator,[246]—not then expelled from this body. The occasion was peculiar. A Senator, with treason in his heart, if not on his lips, had just sat down. Our lamented Senator, who had entered the Chamber direct from his camp, rose at once to reply. He began simply and calmly; but, as he proceeded, the fervid soul broke forth in words of surpassing power. On the former occasion he presented the well-ripened fruits of study; but now he spoke with the spontaneous utterance of his natural eloquence, meeting the polished traitor at every point with weapons keener and brighter than his own.

Not content with the brilliant opportunities of this Chamber, he accepted a commission in the Army, vaulting from the Senate to the saddle, as he had already leaped from Illinois to California. With a zeal that never tired, after recruiting men, drawn by the attraction of his name, in New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere, he held his brigade in camp near the Capitol, so that he passed easily from one to the other, and thus alternated between the duties of Senator and of General.

His latter career was short, though shining. At a disastrous encounter near Ball’s Bluff, he fell, pierced by nine balls. That brain, once the seat and organ of subtile power, swaying assemblies, and giving to this child of obscurity place and command among his fellow-men, was now rudely shattered, and the bosom that throbbed so bravely was rent by numerous wounds. He died with his face to the foe,—and he died so instantly, that he passed without pain from the service of his country to the service of his God. It is sweet and becoming to die for country. Such a death, sudden, but not unprepared for, is the crown of the patriot soldier.

But the question is painfully asked, Who was author of this tragedy, now filling the Senate Chamber, as already it has filled the country, with mourning? There is a strong desire to hold somebody responsible, where so many perished so unprofitably. But we need not appoint committees, or study testimony, to know precisely who took this precious life. That great criminal is easily detected,—still erect and defiant, without concealment or disguise. The guns, the balls, and the men that fired them are of little importance. It is the power behind all, saying, “The State, it is I,” that took this precious life; and this power is Slavery. The nine balls that slew our departed brother came from Slavery. Every gaping wound of his slashed bosom testifies against Slavery. Every drop of his generous blood cries out from the ground against Slavery. The brain so rudely shattered has its own voice, and the tongue so suddenly silenced in death speaks now with more than living eloquence. To hold others responsible is to hold the dwarf agent and dismiss the giant principal. Nor shall we do great service, if, merely criticizing some local blunder, we leave untouched that fatal forbearance through which the weakness of the Rebellion is changed into strength, and the strength of our armies is changed into weakness.

May our grief to-day be no hollow pageant, nor expend itself in this funeral pomp! It must become a motive and impulse to patriot action. But patriotism itself, that commanding charity, embracing so many other charities, is only a name, and nothing else, unless we resolve, calmly, plainly, solemnly, that Slavery, the barbarous enemy of our country, the irreconcilable foe of our Union, the violator of our Constitution, the disturber of our peace, the vampire of our national life, sucking its best blood, the assassin of our children, and the murderer of our dead Senator, shall be struck down. And the way is easy. The just avenger is at hand, with weapon of celestial temper. Let it be drawn. Until this is done, the patriot, discerning clearly the secret of our weakness, can only say sorrowfully:—

APPENDIX.

The tributes to Bingham and Baker were accepted at the time as more than eulogies. The protest against Slavery and the cry for Emancipation were not lost. They were noticed extensively by the press and by correspondents. The effect shows the development of that sentiment before which Slavery was falling. A Philadelphia newspaper, even while praising the eulogy on Senator Baker, seemed to shrink from the demand with which it concluded.

“The speech of Senator Sumner surpassed all others in powerful effect, clear and manly style, and an undisguised expression of opinion which all must respect, and which but few can condemn at the present juncture. His learned eloquence captivated the heart, even where it did not convince the judgment.”

Another recorded the impressions of a correspondent.

“Mr. Sumner, in his splendid eulogy on Baker this morning, uttered a stupendous thought, when, in commenting on the unfortunate reconnoissance at Ball’s Bluff, he scoffed at the idea of an investigating committee to ascertain where the blame should justly be charged, and said that the great criminal stood before the country and the world, and that great criminal was Slavery. You will have his words in print, and can judge of this point for yourselves. I confess that it thrilled me like an electric shock.”

The Antislavery Standard, of New York, exulted that Slavery was arraigned.

“To see men like Bright and Powell sit still, when Charles Sumner charged Baker’s murder on Slavery, was worth at least ten years of Antislavery privations. The Proslavery interest in the Senate is quite respectful, and does not indulge in the old-time bluster and parade.”

On the contrary, the “Editorial Correspondent” of the New York Express, writing on the day of the eulogy on Baker, gave vent to his sentiments with regard to Mr. Sumner.

“Even in the burial services of the dead he mingles his sectional hate and personal wrath.

“Such a man will never consent to a peaceful reunion of the States, nor to an equal representation of all the States in the Federal Congress. He deeply wounds the self-sacrificing, loyal Union men of the Border States and Far South; in every breath he utters, and in every speech he makes, he sets back upon the clock of advancing time the hour-hand of Peace. His presence in the Senate Chamber is a signal of protracted war, renewed sectional hate, and offensive intermeddling.…

“If Massachusetts were to-day represented in the spirit of her early Revolutionary men, or in the spirit in which so many thousands of her sons have rushed to the defence of the country, Mr. Sumner, as a long standing enemy of the Constitution and the Union, would be sent back to Boston, and there sandwiched between Slidell and Mason within the casemates of Fort Warren. These three men are each old acquaintances here, and each old enemies of the Government, the Union, and the Constitution; and the only difference between the extremes is, that the Senator from Boston remains in council here to fight the Government, and men and institutions belonging to it from its foundation, while the others fled from its service to render more available aid to those in arms against it.”

Hon. Edward G. Parker, author of “The Golden Age of American Oratory” and “Reminiscences of Rufus Choate,” wrote from Boston:—

“I thank you sincerely for a copy of your exquisite panegyrics on Bingham and Baker. I often heard Baker, and recognize at once the beautiful fidelity of your description.

“The touch of Plutarch and of Addison—both, if you will allow me to say so—are there.

“I had, before receiving this, cut out of the newspaper your portrait of Baker, and put it in a choice book devoted to great men and memorable thoughts.

“It is to me like a medallion of that true man, who, in so shining a manner, and yet so suddenly, ‘passed from the service of his country to the service of his God.’

“Pardon what you may perhaps consider the superfluous enthusiasm of this note; but it is written right away upon reading these oratoric odes, and I feel a little of the lava struggling even in the attempt to acknowledge receiving them.”

Hon. John Jay, afterwards Minister at Vienna, wrote from New York:—

“They are not only eloquent tributes to the dead, but powerful appeals to the living.”

Epes Sargent, the friend and writer, showed his sympathy in a letter from Boston.

“Your remarks in the Senate on Senator Baker pleased me so much that I could not forbear speaking my pleasure in print. They are level with the theme and the time, and the trumpet-note at the close is in just the right key. Oh, if it were not for Kentucky, that neither hot nor cold State, we might hope for a policy up to the height of this great argument! ‘I would she were hot or cold.’

“Our Boston papers do not yet speak out, as I would like to see them, on this question of proclaiming emancipation to the slaves of Rebels. We need another disaster to carry us forward a little further.”

William Lloyd Garrison declared himself with his accustomed directness in a letter from Boston.

“Thanks for your eloquent eulogy upon the late Senator Baker, (which I have published in the Liberator this week,) and its forcible application to Slavery as the primary cause of his untimely death, as it is of all our national woes. Be in no wise daunted, but rather strengthened and stimulated, by the abusive clamors and assaults following all your efforts, on the part of the ‘Satanic press,’ and unprincipled demagogues generally. These are surer evidences of the wisdom, goodness, and nobility of your cause than all the praises of your numerous friends and admirers. You may confidently make ‘the safe appeal of truth to time,’ and rely upon a universal verdict of approval at no distant day. To be in the right is as surely to be allied to victory as that God reigns. When there is howling in the pit, there is special rejoicing in heaven.”