Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/111

Rh personal influence with the President, "Tom Cornelius' Rough Riders of Oregon" would have been the prototype in fame, as they were in fact, of "Roosevelt's Rough Riders" of the Spanish war. Colonel Baker was the colonel of the Fourth Illinois in the Mexican war, and it was hardly to be expected that a man of his ardent temperament could sit tamely in the halls of legislation while the rattle of musketry and the roll of drums were heard at the very gates of the national capital.

And thus it came to pass, for on June 28, 1861, he was mustered into service for three years as colonel of the First California Infantry, a regiment he recruited largely in Pennsylvania, and which was afterwards denominated the Seventy-first Pennsylvania. On August 6, 1861, he was commissioned Brigadier-General of Volunteers, to rank from May 17, which commission, although confirmed by the Senate, he declined, as he did also a later appointment as Major-General of Volunteers, as either appointment would have necessitated his resignation as senator from Oregon. It is stated that when General Scott had to give up general command of the army on account of his advancing years, President Lincoln tendered the succession to Colonel Baker, which was alike declined for the same reason.

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