California -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865; King, Thomas Starr, 1824-1864; Unitarians -- Biography
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
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