Starr King in California | Page 8

widely accepted among the people. It has been claimed

that the death of Broderick saved California to the Union; that the
revulsion of feeling following his bloody death was so great that his
beloved State became good soil for the new teaching of Lincoln and the
Republican Party. Generously one would like to accept this theory were
not the evidence so strongly against it. To Broderick belongs the high
honor of inaugurating the fight on the Pacific Coast against the
extension of slavery. In the outset of that conflict he perished, and the
manner of his taking off gave to his message something of the force of
martyrdom. But not to the extent his admirers have imagined. It should
be clearly noted that Broderick believed in local self-government
regarding slavery. He believed that the people of Kansas, and the
people of Virginia (as of all other states) possessed the right under our
national constitution, of deciding this question for themselves without
let or hindrance by the general government. Farther than this he did not
go. To the day of his death, he was a loyal Douglas Democrat. It should
be further noted that in this last campaign of Broderick's life the
pro-slavery Democracy swept the State, its candidate for Governor
being elected by a vote nearly twice the combined vote of the Douglas
and Republican candidates: And, also, that a year after Broderick's
death Abraham Lincoln polled only twenty-eight per cent of the
popular vote in California for President of the United States. Whatever
may have been the influence of the Senator's brave conflict in Congress,
or his untimely death, it is evident that the crisis in California's attitude
toward the Union had not yet arrived, that the hour in which any man
might change the course of events still lay within the unknown future.
The same may be said of the life and work of a still more brilliant
opponent of slavery on this Coast, Col. Edward D. Baker, a man of
phenomenal eloquence, with a well earned reputation as a successful
lawyer and politician, with an honorable record for gallant service in
the Mexican War, and for useful service in the House of
Representatives in Washington. When he located in San Francisco in
1852, an immigrant from the great State of Illinois, he brought new
strength to the minority who were in conscience opposed to the
growing dominion of the Slave Power. For certain reasons, well
understood at the time and which do not concern us here, Col. Baker
did not wield the influence which his talents would naturally have

secured for him. Yet as the contest 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.
Breckenridge and Judah P. Benjamin attained the dignity of national
events, and his heroic death early in the war on field of battle