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[371]
Mr. President: The Senator to whom we now say farewell, was generous in funeral homage to others. More than once he held great companies in rapt attention while doing honor to the dead. Over the coffin of Broderick he proclaimed the dying utterance of that early victim, and gave to it the fiery wings of his own eloquence: ‘They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of slavery, and a corrupt administration;’ and as the impassioned orator repeated these words, his own soul was knit in sympathy with the departed; and thus at once did he win to himself the friends of Freedom, though distant. * * 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. * * Child of Poverty; he was brought, while yet in tender years, to Philadelphia, where he began life, an exile, having being born on a foreign soil. 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 strangers from their walls, and that Athens was a city open to the Human Family. The same boast may be repeated by us, with better reason, as we commemorate our dead fallen in battle. * *

In the Senate, he took at once the part of Orator. His voice was not full and sonorous, but sharp and clear; it was penetrating rather than commanding; and yet, when touched by his ardent nature, became sympathetic, and even musical. Countenance, body and gesture all shared the unconscious inspiration of his voice, and he went on, master of his audience, and master also of himself. All his faculties were completely at command; ideas, illustrations, words, seemed to come unbidden, and range in harmonious forms—as in the walls of ancient Thebes each stone took its proper place of its own accord, moved only by the music of a lyre. * * His oratory was graceful, sharp, and flashing, like a cimeter; but his argument was powerful and sweeping like a battery.

Not content with the brilliant opportunities of this chamber, he accepted a commission in the army, vaulting from the Senate to the saddle, as he had already leaped from Illinois to California. * * His career as a

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