Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/384

 356 T. W. Davenport. Deady, a pro-slavery Democrat of pronounced aristocratic type and a candidate of the Breckenridge wing of the party, would have been other than a critic and objector to all radical measures for crippling the resources of the rebels, cannot be doubted. As a Senator from a loyal State, it would have been against both his interest and his principles to secede, and con- ceding what has been claimed for him, that he was opposed to disunion, still favoring as he did a restored union with slavery, his course in the Senate would not have been in harmony with Lincoln, who would restore the union at all hazards. Deady was a large figure in Oregon, and though not an orator, yet with his grand physical proportions, his legal acquirements, his rigid respect for law and order and constitutional limitations, and his social accomplishments, he would have been a large figure even at the national capital, and perhi a boulder in the way of the providential tide which was uprooting the deadly Upas that had borne the fruit of disunion. He was, however, a sagacious person and practical withal, and his admirer, John R. McBride said of him, in his address to the Oregon pioneers in 1902, before quoted from: "He believed in a government that had force behind it, and when the rebellion began in 1861 he became as ardent a champion of the Government as any Unionist in the land." As Federal Judge in Oregon he accepted the new regime and occupied thenceforth a commensurate place in the affairs and affections of the people. But few men ever inherited such an admirable physical and mental constitution as Colonel Baker ; at once sensitive, elastic, strong and enduring. He seemed to be immune to the weak- nesses and ills which affect ordinary human beings, and so he was always ready for action. He was supremely ambitious, not, as is so common, for the acquirement of power and wealth, but for grand and brilliant achievement in the great contests of life. And in his exuberant imagination, opportunity be- came to him, who never felt humiliation, fruition and a crown of laurel. Hence his election to the Senate raised him to the summit in a career for which he had long striven and at a