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.
“Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.”
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.
“The times have been,
That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again.”
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:--
“Bleed, bleed, poor country!
Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure,
For goodness dares not check thee!”[247]