Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/17

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Edward Dickinson Baker. 9 Pacific. It is recorded that when this union was effected three years later, the second message sent over the wires was the announcement of the fall of Colonel Baker at Ball's Blufi:*. On September 16, 1859, David C. Broderick, United States Senator from California, and the leader of the Douglas forces in that state, was mortally wounded in a duel with Judge Terry. Baker delivered the funeral eulogy, which is charged with feeling and eloquence. This remarkable ad- dress electrified the nation, and did much to destroy a resort to the code of honor, and to unify those who believed in restriction and limitation of the slave power. Terry rep- resented in his life and conduct, the thoughts, habits and wishes of the Southern wing of his party. Broderick was a strong and aggressive representative of those who believed in limitation of further political influence in this direction. There was, therefore, more involved than a mere personal quarrel. They represented the hot blood and temper of con- tending and bitter factions, and in a large sense they rep- resented the forces that were soon to feel the shock of battle. Speaking of this oration, Mr. George Wilkes, of New York, has said: "At the foot of the coffin stood the priest; at its head, and so he could gaze fully on the face of his dead friend, stood the fine figure of the orator. Both of them, the living and the dead, were self-made men; and the son of the stone- cutter, lying in mute grandeur, wi.h a record floating- round the coffin which bowed the heads of the surrounding thou- sands down in silent respect, might have been proud of the tribute which the weaver's apprentice was about to lay upon his breast. For minutes after the vast audience had settled itself to hear his words, the orator did not speak. He did not look into the coffin— nay, neither to the right nor left; but the gaze of his fixed eye was turned within his mind, and the tear was upon his cheek. Then, when the silence was the most intense, his tremulous voice rose like a wail and with an uninterrupted stream of lofty, burning and pathetic words, he so penetrated and possessed the hearts of