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]