acred' Virginia soil. Brave and
honorable, with fine powers cultured by study and earnest thought, death
took from him no portion of the fame life would have awarded him. Baker
rode into the jaws of death in that fatal autumn blunder; but the
ignominy of defeat rested upon other shoulders. His only to obey, even
while 'all the world wondered.' But he did not fall before the honor of
a country's admiration and the meed of her grateful thanks were his.
Soldier, orator and statesman, he had gained in a brilliant career a
glory earned by few, and could well afford to die, assured of a memory
justified from all reproach. But to Lyon, whom there were so few to
mourn, death in the midst of anticipated defeat was bitter indeed. No
time to retrieve the losses and disasters the cruel remissness of others
had entailed upon him; the fruit of the anxious toil of months wrested
from him even as it began to ripen; all his glad hopes chilled by
suspicion, but his faith, we may well believe, still strong in the
ultimate success of the cause he loved. A whole life he had given to his
country, and she had not thought it worth while to redeem it from
disgrace with the few thousands that he asked. He had outlived the
elasticity of youth, when wrongs are quickly remedied, and new impulses
spring, like phoenixes, from the ashes of the old. Uncertain whether he
were the victim of a conspiracy, the tool of a faction, or the martyr to
some unknown theory, he died, and as the country had been to him wife
and children, he left her his all.

It was known to but few that the soldier, whose career had been rather
useful than brilliant, had, when the scheming of politicians and their
doubly-refined arguments threatened to deceive and ruin the country,
put by his sword and taken up the pen. In a series of articles, short,
concise, and to the point, he effectually canvassed the State. They are
addressed to thinking men everywhere. Free from all trickery, strictly
impartial, relying entirely upon the soundness of his premises for
success,--for elegance of diction he had not, and he was too honest even
to become a sophist,--these papers manifest at once the true patriot and
the intelligent man. Thousands of adherents the Republican cause had in
1860, but not one more indefatigable or more heartily in earnest than
Lyon. Outside the limits of party interests, and uninfluenced personally
by the predominance of either faction, he had worked out in his own way