Senator Edward Dickinson Baker
Edward D. Baker was a man of far-reaching experience, but like
many other regimental commanders who populated the novice armies at this early
stage of war, he lacked the requisite military experience to lead
citizen-soldiers. As a former member of the California Regiment wrote years
after the fact, the senator’s martial seasoning "was slight, when compared with
that of the regular army officers." Edward Baker was born in London on February
24, 1811, to poor but educated parents who were members of the Society of
Friends. When he was five-years-old, Edward and his family emigrated to
Philadelphia where his father established a school. Apparently seeking a more
enlightened existence, the Baker’s departed Philadelphia in 1825 bound for New
Harmony, Indiana, an idealistic community founded along the Ohio River by
British social reformer Robert Owen. Five years or so later they moved to
Belleville, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. It was
here that Edward attracted the attention of Governor Ninian Edwards who provided
the young man full access to his well-stocked law library. Before long, however,
the nomadic family packed its belongings and moved again, this time to the
village of Carrollton, Illinois, about 60 miles north of Belleville, where
Edward began reading law in the office of the town’s leading attorney. Shortly
after his twentieth birthday Baker married Mary Ann Lee of Baltimore,
Maryland.
Baker’s first taste of military action, other than some early
militia training, was rather benign. In the spring of 1832, Black Hawk, the
elderly chief of the Sac warriors, crossed the Mississippi River and entered
northern Illinois where he attempted to reclaim land that he believed had been
stolen from his people. Edward and a jobless young man named Abraham Lincoln
were among the first to respond to Illinois Governor John Reynolds’ call for the
state militia. Although he had volunteered for service as a private, Baker was
immediately elected second lieutenant of his company followed 10 days later by
promotion to first lieutenant. Edward’s command existed for about one month
before it mustered out, apparently having never fired a shot in anger.
Nevertheless, one of his biographers maintained that this brief and bloodless
martial episode "improved the opportunity afforded of gratifying his [Baker’s]
early predilection for martial pursuits." Later that summer, Baker and his
family, which by now included four children, relocated to Springfield, Illinois,
where he opened up a law office. The move afforded Baker the opportunity to
become acquainted with Abe Lincoln who frequently traveled to Springfield from
New Sangamon. Four years later, in 1837, Lincoln moved to Springfield and the
two lawyers to became close friends.
Edward Baker’s strong devotion to the ideals of the Whig Party
bore fruit on July 1, 1837, when he won election to the Illinois House of
Representatives. But the lawyer’s martial interests remained fervent and in the
fall of 1844, soon after he had been elected to the United States House of
Representatives, Baker found himself involved in a potentially dangerous problem
that found its origins in the community of Nauvoo, Illinois, about 100 miles
northwest of Springfield. Earlier that year, a group of Mormons living in the
village along the Mississippi River organized a large military force commanded
by Joseph Smith, the first elder and first president of the Mormon church.
Before long, Smith and his group came face to face with an angry mob that had
gathered near town intending to expel the Mormons from the state. Conditions
reached a critical point in June when Smith, who had been acquitted of inciting
a riot, and his brother were murdered. This turn of events did little to end the
trouble and in late September, the governor of Illinois and Edward Baker,
recently installed as colonel of the state militia, cobbled together a force to
apprehend those men responsible for the murders of the Smith brothers. In the
course of his mission the militia commander deemed it necessary to cross the
Mississippi and enter Missouri without proper authority. Nevertheless, Baker
negotiated with the fugitives and brought them back to Illinois for trial.
Baker did not take the congressional seat he had been elected to
in August 1844 until the first day of December 1845. When hostilities broke out
with Mexico over who held claim to the Rio Grande River the following May,
Baker, his "martial spirit fully aroused," requested that he be given command of
a volunteer regiment. Two weeks after Congress declared war on Mexico on May 13,
Baker’s wish was granted and the congressman quickly raised the 4th
Illinois Volunteer Infantry. Before long the Illinoisans found themselves
sweltering in Camp Belknap near Burrita, Mexico, along the Rio Grande, a
location described by one soldier as "fit only for the snakes, tarantulas,
centipedes, fleas, scorpions and ants that infested it." While here the
volunteers were ordered to reinforce General Zachary Taylor in his siege of
Monterrey. Baker’s men arrived at the village of Camargo, a bit more than 100
miles from the provincial capital, in the middle of October, by which time
Monterrey was in the hands of American forces.
The congressman’s concerns were not limited to his regiment in
Mexico and at the end of October, Baker returned to his seat in the House of
Representatives. Clad in the uniform of a colonel of volunteers, Edward
convincingly argued that more men were needed for the war effort in Mexico and
successfully engineered a resolution that authorized the Secretary of War to
supply much needed clothing to the troops in the field. Partisan politics may
have reared its ugly head when a Democratic representative from Ohio complained
that Baker was receiving pay as a colonel while he was a sitting congressman.
The colonel resigned his congressional seat and soon rejoined the 4th
Illinois in Tampico where he found that his men had been assigned to a brigade
commanded by General James Shields, that included the 3rd Illinois
Volunteer Infantry and a regiment of New York volunteers.
In middle of April, 1847, Baker and his men participated in a
move against 4,260-foot-high Cerro Gordo Pass, about 40 miles northwest of Vera
Cruz. General Shields had been charged with assaulting the left flank of a
Mexican camp outside of the village of Cerro Gordo. It was either as the
general’s regiments prepared to advance or as they were charging the camp that a
Mexican battery of five pieces unleashed a volley of canister into the
volunteers. A piece of iron struck Shields in the chest and passed through his
right lung, an injury which by all accounts should have been mortal. Brigade
command devolved to Colonel Baker who led the men through the Mexican camp and
seized the road to Jalapa. Baker’s role in the Battle of Cerro Gordo has been
disputed by some historians. Two of the colonel’s biographers claim that he and
his men drove the Mexican artillerymen away from the battery. On the other hand,
the author of a history of the Mexican War published in 1849 professed that
Baker led the charge against an "enemy, already disheartened" who, being flanked
by other American forces on the Mexican right, fired "a few random shots [and]
scattered in all directions, leaving his guns, baggage, specie, provisions, and
camp equipage, in the hands of the victors." In any event, while most of the
American troops took the National Road to Jalapa, 10 miles to northwest of Cerro
Gordo, Baker and his men made their way back to Vera Cruz and embarked on a
steamer bound for New Orleans.
After he returned to Springfield, Baker was re-elected to
Congress in 1848, and a few years later became involved in managing the
construction of the Panama Railroad. While he was in Central America, Baker
contracted a case of Yellow Fever that, according to one close confidant,
"permanently aged him in appearance although otherwise he seemed to recover his
full health and vigor." In April 1852, Baker and his family pulled up stacks and
moved to San Francisco where he started a thriving legal practice and became
acquainted with a 27-year-old lawyer from Philadelphia named Isaac Jones Wistar.
Legal adversaries in court, Wistar and Baker developed a close friendship and in
due time, the younger man joined Baker’s law practice. At the same time, Baker’s
strong interest in politics was rekindled and in 1855 he stood as the Whig
candidate for a seat in the United States Senate. He was certainly sagacious
enough to understand that he had little chance to win in such a Democratic
stronghold as California and, indeed, the result was as expected. Realizing that
his political future lay elsewhere, at the end of 1859 Baker accepted a
long-standing invitation to move to the new state of Oregon where he ran for the
Senate on the Republican ticket. Although an overwhelmingly Democratic state,
that party split along the slavery issue, and in October 1860, after a
protracted selective process, Baker won a seat in the upper house. The freshman
senator relocated his family to the familiar confines of San Francisco and set
off on the long trip to the nation’s capital. While laying over in Panama, Baker
learned that his friend Abraham Lincoln had been elected president of the United
States.
Edward Baker took his seat in the Senate on December 3, 1860,
two days after the start of the second session of the 36th Congress.
The only Republican sent to Washington from the west coast, Baker found himself
busy speaking out against secession and lending whatever support he could to
President-elect Lincoln. He sharpened his already acclaimed oratorical skills
gained from years of politicking and arguing at the bar. By the time of the
bombardment of Fort Sumter, Baker, an outspoken supporter of the Union and a
staunch backer of the president, longed to play a greater, possibly military,
role in what most people believed would be the quick destruction of the
rebellion.
Baker chose for his second in command Issac Jones Wistar, a
31-year-old Democrat, ardent Unionist and an adventurous man of varied and far
flung experiences. Descendent from a one of the oldest and best known Quaker
families of Philadelphia, he had attended the best schools money could buy,
including the venerable Haverford College, and was an esteemed member of the
Religious Society of Friends. When he was 22 years old, Isaac, in the company of
a party from Georgia, traveled to the west coast where he tried his hand at
mining and lumbering along the Bear River. He hired out as a sailor on several
Pacific Ocean voyagesand worked as a trapper for the Hudson’s Bay Company in
such remote regions as the northern Rocky Mountains and the Arctic. In the early
1850’s Wistar led a unit of Indian rangers against hostile tribes that were
threatening western settlements. He read law, passed his examination for the
California bar in 1854, and began practicing in San Francisco. In Isaac Wistar,
Edward Baker believed that he had a dependable man, a man whom he could count on
to raise and organize the California Regiment in the shortest amount of time.
Wistar appears to have been more than satisfied with Senator Baker’s assignment.
Writing many years after the fact, he admitted that the chance to embark upon
this project "was so tempting that my doubts and hesitations were swept aside."
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