ew teaching of Lincoln and the Republican Party. Generously one
would like to accept this theory were not the evidence so strongly
against it. To Broderick belongs the high honor of inaugurating the
fight on the Pacific Coast against the extension of slavery. In the
outset of that conflict he perished, and the manner of his taking off
gave to his message something of the force of martyrdom. But not to
the extent his admirers have imagined. It should be clearly noted
that Broderick believed in local self-government regarding slavery. He
believed that the people of Kansas, and the people of Virginia (as of
all other states) possessed the right under our national constitution,
of deciding this question for themselves without let or hindrance by the
general government. Farther than this he did not go. To the day of his
death, he was a loyal Douglas Democrat. 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