When Congress met, December 2, 1861, no decisive military events had occurred, but the great drama of civil war was at hand. Thus far the work had been one of preparation. Nearly two hundred thousand Union troops, under General George B. McClellan, on the banks of the Potomac, confronted a rebel army, then supposed to number about the same, but now known to have been much smaller. The President in his message, congratulated Congress that the patriotism of the people had proved more than equal to the demands made upon it, and that the number of troops tendered to the government greatly exceeded the force called for. He had not only been successful in holding Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri in the Union, but those three states, neither of which had in the beginning given, or promised through state organization, a single soldier, had now forty thousand men in the field under the Union flag. In West Virginia, after a severe struggle, the Union had triumphed, and there was no armed rebel force north of the Potomac or east of the Chesapeake, while the cause of the Union was steadily advancing southward.
On the slavery question, he said: "I have adhered to the act of Congress freeing persons held to service, used for insurrectionary purposes." In relation to the emancipation, and arming the negroes, he said: "The maintenance of the integrity of the Union is the primary object of the contest..."
"The Union must be preserved, and all indispensable means must be employed. We should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the loyal, as well as the disloyal, are indispensable."
Before proceeding to view in detail the action, during this session, of Congress and the President on the slavery question, let us pause a moment to notice the honors paid in the Senate to the memory of Senator Baker. It will be remembered that he was killed at Ball's Bluff, on the 21st of October, while leading his troops against the enemy.
When Congress assembled in regular session, the 11th of December was fixed as the day on which the funeral orations in his honor should be pronounced in the Senate. The chamber of the Senate was draped in black; the brilliant colors of the national flag, which the war made all worship, were now mingled with the dark, in honor of the dead soldier and senator. The floor was crowded with senators, members of the House, governors of states, and distinguished civil and military officers, among whom Seward and Chase, and the Blairs and Stanton were conspicuous. The galleries were filled by members of the diplomatic corps, ladies, and prominent citizens from all parts of the republic. As soon as Vice-President Hamlin had called the Senate to order, President Lincoln, in deep mourning, slowly entered from the marble room, supported by the senators from Illinois: Trumbull and Browning. Not very long before he had been present among the chief mourners at the funeral in the White House of his protégé, young Ellsworth, shot down in the bloom of youth, and now it was Baker, his old comrade at the bar of Sangamon County; his successor in Congress; he for whom the President's second son, Edward Baker Lincoln, had been named, and to whom he was very warmly attached.
Senator Nesmith, of Oregon, sorrowfully announced the death of Baker, and was followed by McDougall of California, in one of the most touching and beautiful speeches ever heard in the Senate. Turning towards Lincoln, and alluding to the dead senator's enthusiastic love of poetry, he said: "Many years since, on the wild plains of the West, in the midst of a starlight night, as we journeyed together, I heard from him the chant of that noble song, 'The Battle of Ivry.'
"He loved freedom, if you please, Anglo-Saxon freedom, for he was of that grand old race."
As descriptive of the warlike scenes of every-day occurrence when Baker left the senatorial forum for the field, McDougall repeated in a voice which created a sensation throughout the Senate:
"Hurrah! the foes are moving. Hark to the mingled din
Of fife, and steed, and trump, and drum, and roaring culverin! The fiery duke is pricking fast across St. André's plain, With all the hireling chivalry of Guelders and Almayne. Now by the lips of those ye love, fair gentlemen of France, Charge for the golden lilies now upon them with the lance!"
And then comparing Baker at Ball's Bluffs with Henry of Navarre, McDougall quoted the words:
"And if my standard-bearer fall, as fall full well he may, For never saw I promise yet, of such a bloody fray-- Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day, the helmet of Navarre!"