Public pressure for action led to a humiliating fiasco on October 21 at Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, 40 miles from the capital, where Union forces under General Charles P. Stone, acting on vague orders from McClellan, crossed the Potomac to conduct a reconnaissance in force. During the Union repulse, the president’s close friend, Colonel Edward D. Baker, was killed, along with dozens of others. A few weeks earlier, when Baker predicted that he would die in battle, the president tried to get him to dismiss such thoughts. Awaiting reports from the front, Lincoln prophetically said of Baker, “I am afraid his impetuous daring will endanger his life,” and when this fear proved justified, he was devastated. Emerging from the telegraph office with his head bowed down in grief and his ashen face streaked with tears, he failed to return the salute of the sentinel guarding the door. That night, unable to sleep, he paced back and forth in profound sorrow. At the funeral, he wept uncontrollably. A member of Baker’s regiment, who attended that service and described the battle to Lincoln, said that the “President thought as much of Baker as a Brother.” William O. Stoddard also noted that Lincoln “loved him like a brother, and mourned his untimely death bitterly.” While listening to Colonel Charles Devens narrate the sad tale of Baker’s demise, Lincoln interrupted repeatedly to ask: “When will this terrible war be over? Is there no way of stopping this shedding of blood?” George Gibbs reported that things “certainly look very blue” at the capital and that Lincoln was so sure that Baker had been needlessly sacrificed that he “made a fuss” about it until shown evidence that the colonel had disobeyed orders. The president later deemed Baker’s death the “keenest blow” he suffered in the entire war.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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