Lines On The Death Of Colonel Edward Baker

There was no patriot like Baker,

So noble and so true;

He fell as a soldier on the field,

His face to the sky of blue.

His voice is silent in the hall

Which oft his presence graced;

No more he'll hear the loud acclaim

Which rang from place to place.

No squeamish notions filled his breast,

The Union was his theme;

“No surrender and no compromise,”

His day-thought and night's dream.

His Country has her part to pay

To'rds those he has left behind;

His widow and his children all,

She must always keep in mind.

            – William Wallace “Willie” Lincoln

SOURCES: Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, p. 99; The poem was published in The National Republican, Washington, D. C., Monday, November 4, 1861, p. 1.