deepened, his majestic eloquence was beyond question a force for freedom
in a community where the love of oratory amounted to a passion. In the
Fremont Campaign, at the grave of Broderick, and in his own canvass for
Congress in 1859, he rendered most valuable service in laying the
foundations of Republicanism on the Pacific Coast. But it should be
remembered by all who would deal with those great days fairly that the
work of Edward Dickinson Baker at its best was only the work of a
brilliant forerunner. Before the real battle was on he removed from the
State, and as the newly elected United States Senator from Oregon, from
this Coast. It is true that on his journey to Washington a few days
before the National election in November, 1860, Baker delivered in San
Francisco an effective speech on Lincoln's behalf, but it is foolish
hero-worship to say, of California! Not only had Baker been defeated
overwhelmingly a few months earlier as Republican candidate for
Congress, but Lincoln himself received the electoral vote of California
only as the result of a three-sided contest in which the combined
opposition polled nearly three-fourths of all the votes cast. In fact
Lincoln distanced his nearest Democratic rival by only 711 Votes. Out of
one hundred and fourteen members of the state legislature but
twenty-four belonged to the party of Lincoln. The Congressional
Delegation was solidly Democratic, and the Governor was a Southern
sympathizer. Such was the condition after Baker's work was done in
California, and when the greater work of Starr King was just beginning.

In justice to Colonel Baker, though it is no part of our duty here, we
make grateful mention of the fact that not on the Pacific Coast but in
Washington, as the friend and adviser of President Lincoln, and on the
floor of the United States Senate, this gallant defender of Union and
Liberty rendered a unique and memorable service to his country. His
replies in the Senate to those giants of the Confederacy, John C.