Edward Dickinson Baker was an American politician, lawyer, and US army officer. In his political career, Baker served in the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois and later as a U.S. Senator from Oregon. He was also known as an orator and poet. A long-time close friend of the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, Baker served as U.S. Army colonel during both the Mexican–American War and the American Civil War. Baker was killed in the Battle of Ball's Bluff while leading a Union Army regiment, becoming the only sitting U.S. senator ever to be killed in a military engagement.

The Battle of Ball's Bluff was an early battle of the American Civil War fought in Loudoun County, Virginia, on October 21, 1861, in which Union Army forces under Major General George B. McClellan suffered a humiliating defeat.