By Cowan Brew

For all his great political skills, Abraham Lincoln was a man who made few close personal friends. He was both too private and too ambitious to court a large number of intimate acquaintances. One man, however, impressed Lincoln so much that he became almost a hero to the Illinois lawmaker. That man was Edward Baker, a transplanted Englishman who worked and campaigned alongside—and sometimes against—Lincoln for more than two decades in their adopted homeland in southwestern Illinois.

In many ways, Baker was Lincoln’s exact opposite—a handsome, vain, outgoing individual who was a natural-born politician. Gifted (like Lincoln) with a prodigious memory, Baker could effortlessly recall names and faces, an invaluable skill for anyone interested in frontier-style politics. Born in England in 1811, Baker immigrated to the United States with his Quaker parents at the age of four. Settling eventually in Carrollton, Illinois, he became a lawyer at the precociously young age of 19 and married a wealthy widow with two children. In 1835, Baker moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he met another up-and-coming young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

Baker and Lincoln became members of the local Whig Party “Junto,” a combination political group and social club that met weekly in the office of the Sangamon Journal, a Whig newspaper owned by town leader Simeon Francis, whose wife would help Lincoln reconcile romantically with his future wife, Mary Todd. The Junto, whose members were young lawyers, worked and planned to ensure a Whig majority in Sangamon County. Baker and Lincoln shared office space on the third floor of the Tinsley Building at Sixth and Adams Streets in Springfield. Lincoln liked his new friend well enough to name his second son after Baker. When the boy died at the age of three, both father and godfather were devastated.

Union artillery based in Maryland fires across the Potomac River prior to the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. Shelling of Confederate positions at Leesburg, Virginia, was a regular occurrence.
Union artillery based in Maryland fires across the Potomac River prior to the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. Shelling of Confederate positions at Leesburg, Virginia, was a regular occurrence.

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