160 



BALDWIN, ROGER S. 



BAPTISTS. 



rensic efforts ever made in that august court. 

 At the age of fifty lie was regarded, and justly, 

 as not only holding the highest rank as a 

 pleader in the Connecticut bar, but as being, 

 in the words of General Kimberly, himself one 

 of the finest legal minds of the century, " the 

 ablest lawyer that Connecticut has ever pro- 

 duced in any part of her history." In 1837 

 Mr. Baldwin was elected to the State Senate, 

 and reflected the following year, when he was 

 chosen president of that body pro'tempore. In 

 1840 and 1841 he was the representative of 

 New Haven in the General Assembly. In 1844 

 he was elected governor of the State, and re- 

 elected the following year. IB, 1847 he was ap- 

 pointed by the governor to the United States 

 Senate, to fill the unexpired term of the Hon. 

 Jabez W. Huntington, and in the following 

 May elected to the same position by the Legis- 

 lature. His course in the Senate was highly 

 honorable to himself and the State he repre- 

 sented. He took his place at once among the 

 giant intellects of the Senate of that time, and 

 though he spoke but rarely, his speeches were 

 always impressive and able. The exclusion of 

 slavery from the territory acquired in conse- 

 quence of the Mexican war was a measure to 

 which he bent the energies of his powerful 

 mind, and he had the happiness to witness the 

 passage of the resolutions on this subject which 

 he had introduced and advocated. His course 

 in this measure met with the approbation of 

 men of all parties in his native State. He also op- 

 posed with great vigor and eloquence the Com- 

 promise Bill of 1850, and especially that por- 

 tion of it which contained a new Fugitive Slave 

 Law. On one occasion Mr. Mason, of Virginia, 

 attempted to disparage Connecticut for retaining 

 3,500,000 acres of her western lands for State 

 purposes. Mr. Baldwin replied, in an eloquent 

 and spirited speech, in which he showed that 

 while Virginia had reserved fourteen millions of 

 acres of her western lands for military bounties 

 to her soldiers, Connecticut, with a larger patri- 

 mony, had reserved but three and a half mil- 

 lion acres, and that for a school fund, while her 

 patriotic soldiers, who outnumbered by one 

 half the Virginia soldiers, though from a State 

 with only one third its population, volunteered 

 without bounty. Gov. Baldwin was the candi-. 

 date of his party for the' senatorship for the term 

 of 1851-'57, and would have been elected but 

 for the opposition of four or five members of 

 the party, who insisted on pledges from him, 

 which he deemed it inconsistent with his char- 

 acter and independence to give, and the elec- 

 tion was postponed for a year, at which time 

 the democratic party were in the majority, and 

 their candidate was elected. From this time 

 Gov. Baldwin remained in private life, devoting 

 to his profession his grelit abilities, ripened and 

 mellowed by his increasing years. In I860 he 

 was one of the two electors at large on the 

 ticket for the election of President Lincoln, and 

 by appointment of Governor Buckingham, was 

 a member of the " Peace Congress" of Februa- 



ry, 1861. In that Congress he opposed the ac- 

 tion of the majority of the committee proposing 

 amendments to the Constitution. 



BAPTISTS. The Baptist Almanac for 1864 

 gives the following table of the different de- 

 nominations of Baptists on the American con- 

 tinent : 



_ Comparing the statistics of the Regular Bap- 

 tists, the most numerous of the Baptist bodies, 

 for 1863, with those for 1862, it appears that 

 the following States have suffered a loss in nu- 

 merical strength : 



Maine 70 



New Hampshire 129 



Connecticut 233 



California 4s4 



Kansas 78 



Maryland 279 



New Jersey 86 



Ohio 1,848 



Pennsylvania 800 



Total. 



.8.502 



Among the States which have witnessed an 

 increase in their Baptist membership, Illinois 

 stands first on the list, her net gain being 2,856, 

 more than that of all the other States put to- 

 gether, and nearly nine per cent, of her former 

 numbers. 



The anniversaries of the American Baptist 

 Missionary Union, of the American Baptist 

 Publication Society (inclusive of the American 

 Baptist Historical Society), and of the Ameri- 

 can Baptist Home Mission Society, were held 

 during the year in Cleveland, Ohio, from Au- 

 gust 19th to 21st. The receipts of the Mis- 

 sionary Union during the year amounted to 

 $103,956 (against $95,193 the year before). 

 The number of its missions is 19; the num- 

 ber of churches about 375, with 31,000 mem- 

 bers. The anniversary assembly of the Mis- 

 sionary Union unanimously adopted a series of 

 resolutions on the state of the country, of 

 which the following are the most important : 



Resolved, That the authors, aiders, and abettors of 

 this slaveholders' rebellion, in their desperate efforts to 

 nationalize the institution of slavery, and to extend 

 its despotic sway throughout the land, have them- 

 selves inflicted on that institution a series of most ter- 

 rible, and fatal, and suicidal blows, from which, we 

 believe, it can never recover, and they have, them- 

 selves, thus fixed its destiny and hastened its doom ; 

 and that, for thus overruling what appeared at first to 

 be a terrible national calamity, to the production of re- 



ISM. 1 1S. 



