With impetuous courage and passionate desire to serve his country upon the field of battle as well as on the floor of the Senate, Colonel Baker could not stay at the rear, but joined his regiment at the front, and was as active in the work of the camp as he had been upon the stump and rostrum. Occasionally he would revisit the Senate and participate in a day's debate and then hurry back to his military duties. It was at such a time, sitting in his seat in the Senate, clad in his colonel's uniform that John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, late pro slavery candidate for the presidency with Joseph Lane, delivered a speech which was but a reflection of the secession views of those braver Southerners who were already in armed rebellion. Colonel Baker grew restive under the words of Breckinridge, his face glowed with passionate excitement, and he sprang to the floor when the senator from Kentucky took his seat and then and there without previous preparation delivered that wonderful philippic, abounding in denunciation and invective which alone would make a niche for him in the world's temple of fame. Passionately he asked "What would have been thought, if in another capitol, in a yet more martial age, a senator with the Roman purple flowing from his shoulders, had risen in his place, surrounded by all the illustrations of Roman glory, and declared that advancing Hannibal was just and that Carthage should be dealt with in terms of peace? What would have been thought, if after the battle of Cannæ, a senator had denounced every levy of the Roman people, every expenditure of its treasure, every appeal to the old recollections and the old glories?" Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, who sat near, responded in an undertone, "He would have been hurled from the Tarpeian rock;" and in tones of thunder Baker flashed forth the suggested fate and continued "Are not the speeches of the senator from Kentucky intended for disorganization? Are they not intended to destroy our zeal? Are they not intended to animate our enemies? Sir, are they not words of brilliant polished treason even in the very capitol of the Republic?" And then replying to a taunt of Breckinridge about the loyalty of the Pacific coast, he went on "When the senator from Kentucky speaks of the Pacific I see another distinguished friend from Illinois, now worthily representing the State of California, who will bear witness that I know that State, too, and well. I take the liberty, I know that I but utter his sentiments, to say that that State will be true to the Union to the last of her blood and treasure. There may be some disaffected men there and in Oregon, but the great portion of our population are loyal to the core and in every chord of their hearts. They are offering to add to the legions of the country, every day, by the hundred and the thousand. They are willing to come thousands of miles with their arms on their shoulders, at their own expense, to share, with the best