Heading: (California)
Author: Baker, Edward Dickinson
Title: Speech of E.D. Baker. Delivered at Forest Hill, Friday Evening, August 19th, 1859. Phonographically reported for the Sacramento Union
Place Published: No place
Publisher:
Date Published: No date
Description:

49 leaves. Carbon typescript on rectos only. 27.5x20.5 cm (10¾x8"), brown cloth lettered in gilt.

Address by the noted lawyer, politician, soldier, preacher, and friend of Abraham Lincoln, active in Republican politics, who moved to California in 1852 and was briefly Senator from Oregon before his political career, and life, was cut short at the Battle of Balls Bluff in October 1861, when, commanding a brigade, he was shot though the heart by a volley from Confederate forces. The speech is to a large degree about slavery and the political divide being caused by the institution, and while as a Republican Baker was opposed to the practice, the oration does exhibit a degree of racism. This is a presentation copy, given by one California lawyer to another some 55 years after the speech was made. The ink inscription on the front free endpaper reads, "To Honorable George A. Knight, from his admiring and grateful friend, Samuel M. Shortridge, April 29, 1915." OCLC indicates that the University of Oregon possesses a "Mimeographed" copy of the speech, but investigation shows that the copy may no longer be in their collection. It seems the speech was never officially published, thus its extreme rarity.

George A. Knight was a famous California attorney and longtime Republican activist. Samuel M. Shortridge was a Republican Senator from California who became a prominent voice for racist anti-Japanese forces in California, declaring that a child of Japanese immigrants should regard "himself or herself as a native of Japan." Even some Senators who favoredf northern and western European immigrants found Shortridge's anti-Japanese position untenable.

*UPDATE Lot 56 – New information on publication history, see online catalogue** Very good of better condition.