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University of California.
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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
ON THK
LIFE AND CHARACTER
OF
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER,
(A SENATOR FROM MICHIGAN),
DELIVERED IN THE
SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
U-S.
FORTY-SIXTH CO^TG-RKSS, SECOND SESSION",
JANUARY 28, 1880.
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WASHINGTON:
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
I860.
JOINT RESOLUTION to print the eulogies delivered in the two houses of Congress
upon the late Zachariah Chandler.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled, That twelve thousand copies of the eulogies
delivered in the two houses of Congress upon the late ZACHARIAH CHAN
DLER be printed, eight thousand for the use of the House of Representa
tives and four thousand for the use of the Senate, and the Secretary of the
Treasury have printed the portrait of Mr. CHANDLER to accompany the
same, and for the purpose of defraying the expense of procuring the said
portrait the sum of five hundred dollars he, and is hereby, appropriated out
of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated.
Approved, February 17, 1880.
ANNOUNCEMENT
OV TIIK
DEATH OF ZAOHAEIAH CHANDLER,
A SENATOR FROM MICHIGAN.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1879.
llev. J. J. BULLOCK, Chaplain of the Senate, offered the fol
lowing
PRAYER :
Almighty and most merciful God, our Heavenly Father, we
adore Thee as the only true and living God, the creator, the
preserver, and the supreme ruler of the universe. We thank
Thee, O God, for all thy providential blessings to us. They
are more in number than the stars of heaven and the sands
of the sea-shore. Especially do we thank Thee for Thy kind
preservation of us since last we met together in this Chamber,
and that we are permitted to enter upon the duties and re
sponsibilities of another session of this venerable body, under
circumstances of great mercy, in the enjoyment of reason, and
of health and every needed blessing.
It hath seemed good unto Thee, O God, in Thine inscruta
ble providence, to remove by the hand of death from this body
one of its members. We pray that Thou wouldst bless his
afflicted family. Sustain them in their sore bereavement, and
r
ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE
comfort them with the consolations of our most holy religion.
And may we be deeply impressed, by this solemn event, of
our own mortality, of the shortness and uncertainty of life,
and of the importance of being prepared for our departure;
for we know neither the day nor the hour when we shall be
called hence.
And, O God, we invoke Thy blessing to rest upon another
member of this body, whom Thou hast sorely stricken, in re
moving by death from his companionship the partner of his
joys and his sorrows. We invoke Thy blessing to rest upon
him in his sore affliction. And if there be any other member
upon whom Thou hast laid Thy afflicting hand, we pray that
Thou wouldst remember them in great mercy and sanctify
their afflictions to them.
We commit ourselves and all that are dear to us to Thy
guidance and protection. We implore Thy grace, and the
forgiveness of all our sins. We pray for our rulers, for the
President and Vice-President, the Senators and Representa
tives in Congress, and for all others in authority. Guide their
counsels and lead them to the adoption of such measures as
shall redound to Thy glory and to the best interests of our
common country. Be Thou their guide and support through
all the trials and changes of life ; be with them in the solemn
hour of death ; and finally receive us all into Thine everlasting
kingdom, through the riches of grace in Christ, our Redeemer.
Amen.
Mr. FERRY. Mr. President, the sorrowful duty devolves
on me of announcing to the Senate of the United States the
recent and sudden death of my late colleague, ZACHAEIAH
CHANDLER, of Michigan, which occurred in the city of Chi
cago, on the 1st day of November just passed.
DEATH OF ZACHARIAII CHANDLER.
In making this announcement, it is not my purpose now to
speak of the character and services of one so long and so nota
bly a member of this body ; but at some suitable time I will
invite the Senate to express, by resolution and by eulogy, its
sense of the irreparable loss the nation sustains in the death
of so distinguished a citizen.
Mr. President, as a mark of respect for the memory of a
Senator present at our last adjournment but absent now for-
evermore, I move that the Senate do now adjourn.
The motion was agreed to ; and (at three o'clock and ten
minutes p. in.) the Senate adjourned.
ADDRESSES
DEATH OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER,
A SENATOR FROM MICHIGAN.
DELIVERED IN THE SENATE.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2&, 1880.
The VICE-PRESIDENT. By tlie unanimous order of the
Senate this day has been set apart for the delivery of eulogies
m commemoration of the death of the late Senator from Michi
gan, ZACHARIAH CHANDLER.
Mr. FERRY. Mr. President, the time having arrived for
the delivery of eulogies upon my late colleague, the announce
ment in the Senate of his death having already been made, I
now offer the following resolutions and move their adoption :
Resolved, That the Senate receive with profound sorrow the announce
ment of the death of ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, late a Senator of the United
States from the State of Michigan, and for nearly nineteen years a member
of this body.
Resolved, That to express some estimate held of his eminent services in
a long public career rendered conspicuous by fearless patriotic devotion,
the business of the Senate be now suspended, that the associates of the
departed Senator may pay fitting tribute to his public and private virtues.
The VICE-PRESIDENT. The question is, will the Senate
agree to the resolutions ?
The resolutions were agreed to unanimously.
ADDRESS OF MR. FERRY ON THE
Mr. FERRY. I send other resolutions to the desk and ask
that they be read.
The resolutions were read, as follows :
Resolved, That the loss the country sustained in the death of Mr. CHAN
DLER was manifest by expressions of public sorrow throughout the land.
Resolved, That as a mark of respect for the memory of the dead Senator
the members of the Senate will wear crape upon the left arm for thirty days.
Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate communicate these resolutions
to the House of Representatives.
Resolved, That as an additional mark of respect for the memory of the
deceased, the Senate do now adjourn.
The VICE-PRESIDENT. The question is upon agreeing to
the resolutions just reported.
Address of Mr. FERRY, of Michigan.
Mr. PRESIDENT : The observance of the Senate this day is in
memory of no common man. The sterling qualities of his man
hood none ever dare assail. He wore his faults upon his
sleeve. Charges of his defamers were frivolous and discred
itable to themselves ; for of all the great men who have lived
and died in this generation, there was no keener seer, no
shrewder organizer, no franker partisan, no truer patriot than
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER.
The Chandlers of Bedford, New Hampshire, were well-to-do
farmers of the Puritan Mayflower stock. There, in 1813, he
was born, and there he passed his childhood, receiving what
was then thought a good primary education. As the boy
grew up his father gave him his choice, a college training or
a thousand dollars to stock a business life. He chose the
latter, and, with the spirit of adventure which has always
marked the New England race, he made for western wilds.
Michigan at that time was a trackless wilderness, whose
solitude lay unbroken save by the roar of surrounding waters.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIAKIAII CHANDLER. !)
Detroit then was a town on the border, with a population of
some five thousand souls. There he stuck his stake and be
gan his mercantile career, llis main object in those days was
to win commercial success. This he achieved by his self-denial,
energy, fidelity, sagacity, and integrity. No man worked
harder, lived more frugally, or upheld a higher standard of
business morality. Many a night he slept on the floor or
counter of his store, and many other nights, through the for
est roadway, under the light of the stars, he traversed the
peninsula from point to point, doing business by day and
pushing his way by night. For several years he thus had
been toiling, when the great financial crash of 1837 overtook
him. Smaller country merchants could not meet their paper.
CHANDLER'S store in Detroit felt the wave of disaster, and,
gathering up all available effects, he pushed for New York
and laid before his creditors the exact situation, proposing to
make to them an assignment of all ho had. Their answer
was equally creditable to him and to them : " CHANDLER,
you are too good a man to be lost for want of confidence ; go
back and go on with your business, and if you want more
goods send on your orders." The result showed they had not
misjudged. In a couple of years he had weathered the storm,
and paid every debt, dollar for dollar ; and from that hour his
fortune was assured.
Meanwhile he became most thoroughly identified with his
city and State. Generally known as a thorough business man,
his acquaintance with the business men of Michigan was bet
ter than any one of his associate pioneers. His public spirit
led him into all relations with his fellow-citizens which prom
ised to promote the welfare of his adopted home. Then, in his
earlier vigor, he took part in the various organizations of the
young men of Detroit, and first became known as a speaker in
2 c
10 ADDRESS OF ME. FERRY ON THE
the debating society of the city, attracting special attention by
a public lecture on the " Elements of Success." At that time
the whigs and democrats were the contending political parties,
and Michigan was controlled by the then powerful democratic
party, under the distinguished leadership of General Lewis
Cass, himself a worthy, honored, and influential resident of
Detroit. CHANDLER, as became his New England origin, sided
with the whigs. His first decidedly political speech was made
in 1848, at Detroit, one evening, upon a box at a corner of the
street, in favor of the presidential candidacy of General Zach-
ary Taylor. He began that speech by saying in a sprightly
way that one of the reasons he had for supporting his candi
date was that his name was " Old Zach," a name he honored,
for his name too was "Zach," scarcely dreaming as he said
it that thirty years afterward, from the platform of a crowded
hall in a great city west of Detroit, on the eve of his death, he
himself, as "Old Zach," would be greeted by admiring thou
sands of his fellow-citizens, assembled to hear the last and
ablest speech of his life.
From the election of General Taylor to the Presidency,
CHANDLER took a more active part in the local politics of
Michigan. In 1851 he was chosen mayor of Detroit, against
the powerful influence of his political opponents, through his
personal popularity. The next year he was nominated by the
whigs for governor of the State, but the time for party change
had not then come, and he sustained defeat. Undaunted he
bore the taunts of democratic leaders in those days, who con
temptuously smiled upon his political aspirations and jeered
him with the hint that a mere merchant and business man
should never aim so high! !
Controversy in national politics gradually ripened a new
order of things. The issues forced upon the people by the
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAII CHANDLER. 1 1
repeal of the Missouri compromise and the consequent scenes
in Kansas gave birth to a new party, whose history should
surpass all others since the foundation of the Government.
CHANDLER was one of the fathers and founders of that repub
lican party, and, notwithstanding his pretensions were so de
rided by his political adversaries, he displaced the honored
democratic champion, General Cass, by taking his seat in the
Senate of the United States -on the 4th of March, 1857.
In a single week after his election to this high place he had
retired from an active and large mercantile business, with all
its aft'airs definitely arranged, that private matters should not
divert him from his more responsible duties to the people of
State and country. When this change of pursuit occurred he
was in business capacity the peer of Astors, Stewarts, and
Vanderbilts. The secret of success he had found. His wealth,
already assured, was so disposed that before his death he was
accounted with the country's millionaires. The energy and
zeal which had wrought out so large a fortune was now di
rected to questions of public interest which for years he had
seen arising, and had been preparing himself to meet, with a
faith as clear as his courage was invincible. Elected to this
body, he continued a Senator for three consecutive terms, end
ing March 4, 1875. At the choice for the fourth term he was
defeated, when the qualities of the man shone forth as never
before. Silent and serene he bided his time. He well knew
that the body of the State was with him, and that he had been
abandoned by a handful of men who in an hour of fatality were
incapable of measuring either him or themselves. Knowing it
was unjust, he felt sure that his own State, for which he had
labored for years, would on the first occasion right the blun
dering wrong. She was early to discover and prompt to cor
rect her mistake. Happily, too, that she rejected the example
12 ADDRESS OF MR. FERRY ON THE
of the Greeks, who persecuted their sages and heroes to death,
then afterward repented in monuments and tears. The inter- .
val of loss to the State was gain to the nation. The lapse
proved auspicious. It was needed to furnish opportunity for
his commanding business capacity and Spartan virtue to dis
play on another field. Eetiring from the Senate did not long
end his public service. The Department of the Interior, one
of the most important and complicated branches of the Gov
ernment, was suffering under the cloud of evil repute. He
was invited by President Grant to assume its charge, and, in
October, 1875, took the office. Those who knew him well at
once predicted that he would clear that Department of long-
prevailing scandals, and manage its affairs vigorously, wisely,
honestly, and for the best interests of the country. How well
he met this expectation the record of his official relation to it
will best answer. Upon the inauguration of President Hayes,
CHANDLER was superseded and returned to his home in De
troit, ending apparently his official life. For himself he could
well then, and honorably, withdraw from all active participa
tion in the political struggles of the day; but the public felt a
loss which he alone could repair. On the resignation of Sen
ator Christiancy, by whom he was defeated, he was replaced in
the Senate by an overwhelming voice of the Legislature of his
State, and at once resumed his seat here, which he held to the
close of the late extraordinary session.
To justly take the measure of this man we must recall the
times and associates of his labors. CHANDLER first came to
his senatorial seat at the called session of March, 1857. He
stood up in this Chamber and took the oath of office with
HAMLIN, of Maine ; Bayard, of Delaware; Bright, of Indiana;
Broderick, of California; Sumner, of Massachusetts; Preston
King, of New York; Rusk, of Texas; Cameron, of Pennsyl-
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAH CHANDLER. 13
vaiiia; Dixou, of Connecticut; Wade, of Ohio; Doolittle, of
Wisconsin; Mallory, of Florida; and Jefferson Davis, of Mis
sissippi. That oath was administered by Mason, of Virginia,
and faithlessly as some came to regard it, CHANDLER meant
every word of it, officially lived it, in his last public words in
the presence of assembled thousands glowed with it, and died
with the supreme joy of having through all tests of ambition,
fortune, and peril obeyed its obligations faithfully to the end.
On taking his seat and casting about him he saw the veterans
of the Senate, the venerable fathers and orators of the Be-
public, and men, too, as he gazed, who even then were pre
paring for revolt upon the contingency of an adverse pres
idential election. He saw Breckinridge, of Kentucky, just
then sworn into the office of Vice-President of the United
States and President of the Senate. lie saw here then, as
seen now, a democratic majority and the leading spirits of the
then policy of that proud party. There were the venerable
Butler, of South Carolina; Slidell and Benjamin, of Louisiana;
Toombs, of Georgia; Houston of Texas; Johnson, of Tennes
see; and greatest, if last, Douglas, the giant of Illinois. And
among the master spirits of the policy of the broadest liberty
as the true construction of the national character, were Sew-
ard, of New York; Wade, of Ohio; HAMLIN and Fesseuden,
of Maine; Sumner and Wilson, of Massachusetts; Hale, of
New Hampshire; Crittenden, of Kentucky; Collamar and
Foot, of Vermont; Broderick, of California; Harlan, of Iowa;
Cameron, of Pennsylvania; and Trumbull, of Illinois. Many
of these were lawyers and statesmen of ripe experience in
these halls, some of whom had sat with Calhoun and Clay and
Webster and Benton, sharing in the debates of those giants of
earlier days. CHANDLER, fresh from the counter, had many
things to learn; but he was not long in taking his bearings.
14 ADDRESS OF MR. FERRY ON THE
The whole country was then profoundly agitated. President
Buchanan was surrounded by Cass and Cobb, Jacob Thomp
son, Toucey and Floyd, Brown and Black, and Chief -Justice
Taney. Filibuster Walker was maneuvering in southern
waters, threatening by his piratical movements to embroil the
nation in foreign war; the Kansas conflict was raging with in
creasing fury, and Abraham Lincoln, then a quiet country law
yer in Illinois, was carefully noting the situation and uncon
sciously bracing for his herculean labor. CHANDLER lost no
opportunity to express concern for manifest disregard for the
welfare of the North and West. Observing this early, in place
ment on committees in the first session of the Thirty-fifth Con
gress, when committees were announced, he rose and in earnest
but dignified remonstrance said, " Sir, we are not satisfied, and
we desire to enter our protest against any such formation of
the committees as is here proposed"; and, on one of his first
measures — a bill to deepen the Saint Clair Flats — said, "I
want to see who is friendly to the great Northwest and who
is not, for we are about making our last prayer here. * * *
After 1860 we shall not be here as beggars." Upon the ques
tions of more general character in the national policy he, with
becoming reserve, deferred in debate to more experienced mem
bers; but when measures were proposed which he could not
indorse, he was of such a mold that he could not sit by in'
silence. His face was squarely set against the Lecompton
constitution and the acquisition of Cuba. His speeches on
those projects are among the most telling protests raised in
the Senate upon kindred measures. In the fiercer debates
which followed, the custom of the duello — popular at the
South, but deprecated at the North — received new life. Me
nace and insult had reached their limit. They were no longer
to be borne. CHANDLER, Wade, and Cameron signed a com-
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 15
pact to fight on the first provocation. It certainly was a
bold step, but it was effectual. CHANDLER and Wade soon
had occasion to act upon their purpose. Seward's "irre
pressible conflict" drew insult, and CHANDLER took up his
cause. Sumner was smitten down and Wade repelled the
dastardly act. Whatsoever may be said of the means em
ployed, the code thenceforth practically came to an end.
CHANDLER was as ready with words as with blows. When
the John Brown raid at Harper's Ferry was under discussion
his allusion to the fury which sealed the fate of those whose
zeal for human liberty knew no bounds, was a most biting
piece of satire.
If—
Said he—
seventeen men were to attack the city of Detroit in any capacity, and the
mayor should appoint as a guard more than seventeen constables to take
care of them, the city auditor would decline to audit the account. He
•would not pay it.
His foresight was even more remarkable than his fearless,
patriotic zeal. In the great presidential contest of 1860, when
four candidates were before the people and the whole land was
kindled to the highest state of excitement, his belief that on
the success of Lincoln hinged the life of the nation made him
most active and conspicuous in the campaign. He may be
said to have been the triumphant knight of that great tourna
ment. When Congress assembled, following this presidential
race, he, with others, saw the national heavens black with
portent. He watched with anxiety the days of winter unfold
ing signs of national disintegration, and marked the powers of
national self-preservation scattered, and the Chief Magistrate
in grave message declaring the Government powerless to pre
vent separation. In these and other unmistakable signs he
16 ADDRESS OF MB. FERRY ON THE
read the deep-seated purpose of destroying the Union, and
when a peace convention of all the States was called to meet
in Washington he could not restrain or disguise his judgment.
The cry for "peace" then, and under such indications and
preparations, was to him a pretext, the outcome of which was
war. He so penned a private letter to the governor of Michi
gan, which, purloined, was made the subject of mock solemnity
of horror by Powell, of Kentucky, and the occasion for Eich-
ardson, of Illinois, to taunt him with the authorship of what
has come to be known as "CHANDLER'S blood-letting letter."
CHANDLER'S reply to these was a manly, frank utterance, and
such a scathing arraignment of the scheme of secession and
rebellion that the loyal spirit of the country was roused, mock
oratory in the Senate for the time put at rest, and this famous
letter signalized as the one prophecy of patriotic foresight
which the muse of history writes down sadly fulfilled. It was
by him then memorably said that peace conventions would
prove vain and fruitless. The 4th of March found many seats
in this Chamber vacated. Subsequent events developed seven
States of the Union organized at Montgomery into a separate
government, with Jefferson Davis its president and ALEXAN
DER H. STEVENS, now a distinguished member of the other
House, its vice-president, Fort Sumter invested, fired upon,
and war suddenly opened on a generation that had as little
practical knowledge of war as belief that arms were to settle
what votes had legally expressed as the will of loyal people.
The lack of the art and practice of warfare was, however, more
than made up by the spirit and enthusiasm for the old flag,
which knew no bounds.
Of the few rare men reared and raised into prominent place
by an all- wise Providence for the matchless struggle, CHAN
DLER was one. He had in large measure the very qualities
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 17
to animate and inspirit a bravo and willing, but unmartial
people, loving country above peace and life. Such men were
needed to quicken and encourage the forces on the field amid
the reverses which fell to our Army during the first years
of the war. Congress met in December, '61 ; a great shadow
lay on the loyal heart; undismayed, and firm and hopeful
midst disaster, CHANDLER was the first to move in this body
a committee on the conduct of the war, which was on the part
of the Senate composed of Wade, CHANDLER, and Johnson.
And well did it perform its great task. Keports from it fill
seven large volumes of the public records. To give a glimpse
of the character of its work, and the lamentable national situ
ation calculated to appall the bravest, it seems due at this
time to this stout heart that his own words should voice that
work and that situation. He said in this Senate, July 16,
1862:
At an early day of the present session of Congress the Committee on the
Conduct of the War was raised. * • * The committee has been in con
stant, almost daily, communication with the Administration, and has from
time to time submitted such information as, in their opinion, should be fur
nished to the Executive. How valuable this information may have been to
the Administration is not for mo or the cou.mittee to decide, but, in my opin
ion, when the history of the war shall have been written the country will
give credit where credit is due.
The last one of that valiant trio of this body has gone to
join his colleagues where just merit is rewarded ; and on this
occasion and in this presence, one voice at least of that coun
try shall say that it already gives and will thenceforth " give
credit where credit is due." As to the situation, he continued:
The battle of Bull Run seems to have been the culminating point of the
rebellion. Up to that time the North hardly seemed to appreciate the fact
that we were in the midst of war; that a gigantic and wicked rebellion
was shaking the very foundation-stones of our political institutions ; that
the rebels meant a bloody, fratricidal war. The firing upon Sumter was
considered rather the action of a frenzied mob than the fixed, determined
3 c
18
ADDRESS OF ME. FERRY ON THE
intent to break up and destroy the best Government the world had ever seen.
That battle left the enemies of the country masters of the field and virtually
besiegers of the capital. From that 21st day of July, 1861, the nations of
the earth considered the experiment of republican institutions a failure, or
at least an untried experiment. Rebellion had triumphed, and the nations
believed the Republic was tottering to its fall. Our securities became val
ueless outside our borders, and our armies to be raised were considered men
in buckram. Not so the brave and loyal millions of the North. They knew
that the resources of the North had not been touched, that the battle of
Bull Run was but an insignificant skirmish, without results to either side,
and forthwith began to put forth their mighty energies. Up to this time
the earnestness of this rebellion had not been appreciated by the North.
Later than this painful recapitulation of our then sorry con
dition, and in the second year of the war, our fortunes proved
no better than the first. Eepeated disasters not only thinned
our ranks and spread distrust of success, but made the enemy
bold and defiant. The hearts of the loyal people sank within
them. A peace party began to develop in their midst. Mc-
Clellan, the popular idol of the hour, was at the head of the
finest army the world ever saw. Instead of fighting the enemy
in the field, peninsula malaria was permitted to decimate that
army, which, later, emerged from the seven days' disaster in
covering an inglorious defeat. Still an idolized commander,
no one dared arraign him — notwithstanding the Union cause
was on the brink of ruin — till on the 1st day of July, 1862,
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER pronounced his master speech on the
conduct of the war, and closed by demanding the removal of
McClellan. It fell like a thunderboldt, but it cleared the sky.
From that hour hope, and new vigor, stirred the masses of
the Xorth.
To speak of his labors during the years of the war — how
watchful, useful, tireless, fearless, hopeful, defiant, and active
everywhere — would be to reflect upon the memories of our
country and households for whose sake he battled in this Sen
ate and elsewhere ; visited field and camp ; viewed the hospi-
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 10
tills; cared for the maimed and dying; cheered and upbore the
President and his sorely pressed Cabinet, until victory perched
upon the Union banner. Congressional records will reveal
the multiplied forms in which his sagacious and practical
mind shaped the measures which were so vital during the
years of the war, and which now stand as the policy of the
Government, and his memorial legacy, bequeathed to a saved
and grateful nation.
Of his labors since that period, time will not permit me to
speak at length. As chairman of the Committee on Commerce
of the Senate, and of which he was a member at his death, he
imparted to its varied labors that freshness and vigor of
thought and breadth of suggestion for which he was ever noted.
As in war, so in peace, anything which concerned the honor
of, or advanced American interests never escaped his ready
attention. Whether at home or abroad, her rights and wel
fare were to him of the first importance. To the revenue and
financial measures which have contributed to restore the nation
to a condition of prosperity, and have raised our commercial
credit and standing to the front rank with the powers of the
globe, he gave the aid of his rare experience and ripest judg
ment. Occupied with the exhaustive labors that grew out of
the attempt to destroy the Union by force of arms ; with the
care, thought, and legislation demanded to provide adequate
organic guarantees to forever remove the source of national
division ; to assure to slaves made free their rightful citizen
ship, and utterly extirpate every vestige of electoral disqualifi
cation ; to retire to the body of the people an army millions
strong ; to safely reconstruct and restore desolated States ; to
re-establish civil service upon the basis of preference given to
maimed Union soldiers in Government employ ; to provide
ways and means to meet the cumulative obligations of the na-
20 ADDRESS OF MR. PERRY ON THE
tion and place the money of the people upon a safe and stable
basis 5 to prove that under monarchies and not republics ulaws
are silent in the midst of arms" — since all the functions of
popular sovereignty went on with uninterrupted precision — I
repeat : with care for all these subjects, Mr. CHANDLER found
time and occasion to guard as well against any acts encroach
ing upon our rights and just relations with nations abroad, as
to watch and advance the supremacy of the political party
charged with the defense and welfare of the nation at home.
He offered and advocated a resolution for reclamation upon
Great Britain for the destruction of our shipping by the
Anglo-Confederate privateers at sea; discussed non-inter-
course with England ; spoke with indignant fervor upon the
raids from Canada ; and urged a termination of the reciprocity
treaty with that Dominion. He as freely denounced European
despotism on this continent and raised his voice against its
usurpations. He submitted a resolution of inquiry into the
alleged acts of the Mexican imperial government toward the
officers and men of the Juarez party, who were reported to
have suffered death by order of Maximilian. His speech on
this resolution was the bold denunciation of a soul burning
with indignation at the intrigues and cruelties by which a
hated throne had been set up on republican soil, uttered, too,
at a time when our word was thought in Europe to have lost
its prestige and power. He said of this imperial intruder :
If this man, under similar circumstances, had been captured in Austria he
would have been whipped to death ; France would have put him in a cave
and smothered him with smoke ; England would have blown him to pieces
at the muzzle of her guns. I think Mexico made a mistake. He had for
feited the right to die a soldier's death.
No one, I believe, ever doubted CHANDLER'S courage to be
equal to any emergency, public or personal. I can recall but
one occasion in my long acquaintance with him when he
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAII CHANDLER. 21
seemed disheartened and borne down by the force of public
events. It was when President Johnson, attempting the re
moval of the great War Secretary, Stanton; quarreling with
the then famous hero of the war, General Grant, and defying
the Congress of the United States, escaped impeachment so
narrowly. CHANDLER felt that republican government was
then at stake and impeachment a necessity. Never was there
a time when he came so nigh despairing of the Eepublic as at
that event. He, however, as others, happily learned that a
republic that could survive the tragic loss of its beloved martyr
President, and live under the misrule of an ignoring accession,
has beneath its destiny a Divine grasp which gives assurance
of its survival of all human device or human ill.
Men die, but the Republic lives. This Senate, as well as the
country, will, however, miss Senator CHANDLER. Upon many
and varied topics he shared in debate; direct, forceful, and
accurate, he spoke with effect. lie at times was matched with
the foremost of his associates and seldom had to retract or
surrender his propositions. His discussions with the classical
and accomplished Sumner are striking examples of his accu
racy and force in all matters of substantial fact and interest.
In the session of 1874-'75 he was putting forth his ripest
powers in support of measures which he thought would tend
to the general prosperity, relieve commercial depression, and
bring back better times.
When his senatorial term expired his expectation was that
the State he had honored and served would mark its approval
by his return to the Senate for another term. Changes, how
ever, of a partisan character had occasioned the alienation of
many supporters of the republican party in several of the
States of the Union. The democratic party had thus gained
the ascendency in enough of those States to place the House
22 ADDRESS OF MR. FERRY ON THE
of Representatives in their hands. Michigan was more or less
affected, and some of its old friends had turned away from the
republican party in that State, as well. The republican ma
jority in the Legislature was in a measure reduced. Though
he received the nomination of his party friends, yet in the
elective contest he was defeated, through the fusion of a few
members with his political opponents. Never did he carry
himself through any struggle with a loftier crest. He scorned
to stoop for so glittering a prize.
This defeat did in no wise abate his zeal for the party which
had failed to return him to his seat in the Senate. Chosen
chairman of the republican national committee, although then
filling the place of Secretary of the Interior, he promptly ac
cepted its burden and actively entered upon the presidential
campaign of '76. It is needless here to mention the causes
which had depressed the ardor of the people and had alienated
many from the support of the party in power. CHANDLER,
with a trained hand, organized the campaign, and, through all
the summer of fear and doubt, his unquailing spirit directed
its movements. When the hearts of others began to fail, he
rose in the might of his energy and infused new courage to all
around him. At length, when the decisive day had come and
gone, and many waited in painful suspense weary days for the
tidings of the result, he, with the first consciousness of the
truth, sent forth from the city of New York that ever-memora
ble dispatch : " Hayes has 185 votes and is elected." And so
it proved. Through all the tempest of the electoral count, the
clamor, outcry, threats, defiance, fierceness, and bitterness of
contending partisans, rank and file, that prophet-sentence
brooded in the air ; and when the 4th of March arrived the
nation joined in the fact, and Rutherford B. Hayes was inaugu
rated President of the United States, and you, Mr. President,
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIAR1AII CHANDLER. 23
duly installed Vice-Fresident and President of this august
body, over which you preside with impartial ability.
Placed also at the head of the republican State central com
mittee of Michigan for the fall campaign of '78, the happy
result showed that his interest in his own State in no wise
flagged. The State did not forget his national and State work.
When, by the resignation of Senator Christiancy, a vacancy
occurred here, CHANDLER was chosen by the Legislature with
substantial unanimity to fill the place, with manifest gratifica
tion on his part, and expressed satisfaction on the part of many
of his former associates.
The closing days of the late extraordinary session record
another chapter in his remarkable history. The debate on the
bill to pension the soldiers of the Mexican war brought Jeffer
son Davis conspicuously before the Senate. Fervid encomiums
were pronounced upon him, till from the gallery floated down
and passed among Senators this waif, " There seems to be no
one here that dares call treason by its right name." When
CHANDLER read it he quietly remarked, " There will be some
one before the debate is closed." At three o'clock in the morn
ing he rose and delivered that philippic which will never cease
to be famous in the annals of our national polemics. Nor will
any of us ever forget the last time he addressed the Senate.
Senators know well, and the country minds well, the purport
of his thoughts as in closing he said, " As a Senator of the
United States and a citizen of the United States I appeal to
the people. It is for those citizens to say who is right and who
is wrong."
Congress dispersed, and in a few days he went back, as he
declared he would, to the people. In several of the States
there were approaching elections. Political excitement surged
over the whole country. Many prominent men took part in the
24
ADDRESS OF MR. FERRY ON THE
canvass of States and did efficient work everywhere, but no one
was held in greater request than he. It is not now invidious to
say it. For the first time a Detroit merchant was summoned
to New England to recount the political situation. It was my
pleasure to witness his gratification on reading the telegraphic
invitation from the scholarly courtesy of the Senator from
Massachusetts nearest me. He traveled thousands of miles;
spoke during the season at various places in Maine, Massachu
setts, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Wending his way homeward, he spoke at Chicago the even
ing of the night of his death to what the Senator from Illinois
near me, who nobly stood by him, has said, was the finest audi
ence ever assembled in that great city of the West on any po
litical occasion, and delivered what history will write, the
greatest forensic achievement of his life. He spoke as one
already chosen for the shaft of death. His counsel seemed the
utterance of a dying father. Never was he more inspired,
direct, powerful, and convincing. Of his party he there said :
The republican party is the only party that ever existed, so far as I have
been able to ascertain, which has not one single solitary unfaithful pledge
left — not one. The republican party was created with one idea, and that
was to preserve our vast territories from the blighting curse of slavery, and
we saved them. But we did more than that. We pledged ourselves to
save your national life ; we saved it. We pledged ourselves to save your
national honor, and we saved it. We pledged ourselves to give you a home
stead law ; we gave it. We pledged ourselves to improve your rivers and
harbors, and we did it. We pledged ourselves to build you a Pacific rail
road ; we built it. And not to weary you, the last pledge we gave was that
the very moment we were able we would redeem the obligations of this
great Government in the coin of the world ; and on the 1st day of January,
1879, we fulfilled the last pledge ever given. Notwithstanding all this they
say your mission is ended and that you ought to die.
The multitudinous huzzas that greeted this closing effort of
an eventful career made it the proudest moment of his life,
when he was never so appreciated, and never so dear to the
loyal heart of the American people.
LIFE AND CHARACTEE OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 25
A fitting fiuale to the sad disclosure of the morning dawn.
"CHANDLER dead," as the lightning bore it on the mournful
Saturday morning, stirred the soul of this people with the sad
dest tidings since the assassination of Lincoln. Alone in his
chamber, where he had retired for the night, he cast his har
ness off, and the morning of November 1, 1879, discovered to
the nation a loss which sent a thrill and shock as if some
monarch of the forest had fallen. The people mourned as for
a prince departed.
To have given in any manner a faithful touch of the public
career of this earnest man without recalling great landmarks
in the progress of the nation, with which he was identified,
would be the play of Hamlet with Hamlet's part left out.
Simply to characterize him has been my purpose, and to show
'mid what shoals he steered with safety. Words would fail to
analyze such a spirit. Acts were the methods of his life, and
national struggles must be retold to do even partial justice to
one who, with their rise and fall, fought to win. Action was
the eloquence of his life. He who is ever disturbed by the
recital of the rugged pathway of the Republic, fails to learn
that with nations, as with men, mistakes are the steps to suc
cess. Those who made them need not spurn the mention of
them, for they have occasioned the grandeur of our national
growth ; those who won by them need but joy over them, for
without them slavery with its woe, in the place of liberty with
its glory, would to-day be the inheritance of the nation.
What more shall I say of him? He was emphatically a self-
made man, shaped on a giant mold; of intense conviction and
resistless will ; a rough rudely-cut diamond, unpolished by
culture of the schools. In strength massive, in sense surpass
ing, in mental force subduing, in fidelity steadfast, and in
straightforward honesty as transparent as the crystal which
4 0
26 ADDRESS OF MR. FERRY ON THE
from every angle reflects the liquid light. Little did he care
for theories. This, all his speeches show. We have learned
how he toiled in the early years of his life, and how, when the
time came, he wove his own personality into the web of the
national fabric. His arguments were living things. His sen
tences were catapults. He went right to the core of every mat
ter. He dealt with marrow, while bone and flesh were left to
their own decay. He was as disinterested in the public service
as man well can be.
It cost him time and money to serve his country. He asked
nothing in return but a place for service. His aspirations for
office were laudable ; position he used as a means to an end,
and that his country's good. A man of deep feeling, but his
impulses always took a practical turn. It was not rose-colored
sentiment, but vigorous thought and rugged act that filled the
measure of his life.
With all his public labors he never lost his fondness for home.
In wife and daughter and grandchildren was garnered una-
bating devotion. By the frankness of his nature, the ease with
which he was approached, and by his broad and ready sym
pathy, his hold upon his friends and attachment of the masses,
gave him hosts of zealous followers.
Floral tokens of admiration and affection were various and
plentiful at his funeral rites. Crowning his casket was a char
acteristic tribute from the custodian of his business interests.
It was a tablet of white azaleas, across which, with beautiful
violets, was traced u Faithful to the end." The procession to
his last resting place was a remarkable scene of devotion. A
violent snow-storm prevailed, and yet, from home to grave, the
avenues were literally thronged with men and women, defying
storm, to pay their mournful tribute to their distinguished
dead.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZAOHARIAlt CHANDLER. 27
CHANDLER'S memory rests not alone in the measures which
have become a part of the policy of the Government, or in the
many phases of his active life, but dwells largely in the hearts
of his countrymen. Time will best award him his rightful
meed. To that just arbiter, as an attached friend and cola-
borer, I submit his varied career, from which I make no appeal.
In closing my humble tribute to his fame, I cannot forget to
note that he never left a doubt upon the minds of others, wher
ever he moved, that, however he may have faltered at times
and ways himself, he held with reverence and faith that belief
which reckons life but the vestibule of immortality. All forms
of infidelity he despised. If he did not always practice, he
often recognized his highest obligations. A touching instance
of this was the sad occasion of his burying a brother in a land
of strangers, at dead of night, in the dreariness of rain.
As the body of that brother was let into the grave without
Christian word of parting, with none to voice a single senti
ment of faith or hope, he himself bowed his knees to the earth,
and there, in the pitiless storm, offered prayer to Almighty
God. He did not forget, but generously befriended the Chris
tian church. Into the secrets of his heart, on that solemn
morning, when alone he met his God, we dare not, and, indeed,
we cannot penetrate. Immortal now, he rests with One, who
gives supreme value to all that is good in life, and, what is infi
nitely more, " He doeth all things well."
We have seen the nation mourn as the heroic figures that
held sway in trying periods of our history passed to the dust
of death — Lincoln and Stanton, Chase, Seward, Sunnier, Wade,
and Morton, and the thronging procession of valiant captains
and men who wrought out the salvation of the Union. Added
now to the roll is CHANDLER. All these are borne upon the
hearts of a grateful people who delight to honor, buc who are
28 ADDRESS OF ME. ANTHONY ON THE
powerless to recall. With no murmuring, but rather with
hopeful spirit, do we trust steadfastly in that Providence by
whose mysterious courses kingdoms and republics rise and
fall; and do we reverently speak of that Being whose designs
embrace countless myriads of men, by whose almighty will all
nations live, and in whose omniscience the vast future of our
beloved land is at this moment folded up.
Address of Mr. ANTHONY, of Rhode Island.
Mr. PRESIDENT : This scene and this occasion renew to me
the shock which I experienced when the sorrowing wires un
laded their burden of grief and told me that CHANDLER was
dead. It is difficult to associate ZACHARIAH CHANDLER with
the idea of death. His exurberant vitality, his overflowing
spirit, his commanding air and presence, all forbid it. I
almost look to see his manly and vigorous figure — fit tene
ment of his manly heart and his vigorous intellect— rise from
his accustomed seat, towering above his peers in this Cham
ber ; I almost listen for that voice whose stentorian tones these
walls have so often sent back to our ears.
Born and educated in New England, passing the maturity
of his years in the West, he united, in an uncommon degree,
the qualities and characteristics of each: the shrewdness, the
steadiness, the keen observation, the inflexible purpose of the
one; the freshness, the eager earnestness, the sturdy robust
ness of the other ; the fidelity, the truthfulness, the manliness
of both. His sincerity was beyond question ; his honest belief
in the principles which he professed was never disputed; he
meant what he said, and he said all that he meant. He had no
halting opinions ; he had a judgment, and a decided judgment,
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHAUIAH CHANDLER. 29
on every question that was presented to him; and although at
times he seemed to be hasty of speech, it was the haste of the
occasion, not the haste of sudden conviction or of uncontrol
lable impulse. Those who knew him intimately knew how
closely he had studied, how deeply he had thought upon the
questions that he had discussed with apparent suddenness,
and that his impulsiveness of manner followed long and care
ful examination of the subject under consideration. It was not
the rushing of the stream swollen by violent rains, but the let
ting loose of the imprisoned waters of the lake, which, long
collected and confined, waited but the opportunity of outlet to
pour forth with more than the impetuosity of the mountain
torrent. He was a forcible but not a frequent speaker. The
strength of his convictions found expression in the boldness of
his utterance. Disdaining the lighter graces of rhetoric, his
speeches did not sparkle with wit nor glow with sentiment,
but they bristled with facts; if he did not captivate by his
style, he compelled assent by his reasoning ; and when he had
arranged his facts and constructed his argument, his conclu
sion followed with almost irresistible force.
Devoting himself to commerce and to politics, he attained
eminent success in each and secured the highest rewards of
both. To enumerate the positions which he filled and the
honors that he received would be but to repeat, in feebler
phrase, what has been so well said by the Senator who was his
colleague. I think I shall do violence to the feelings of no
man, and to the friends of no man who survives him in
that State, so eminent for its distinguished sons, when I
say that he was, by common acceptance, the first citizen of
Michigan. The respect and affection in which he was held
at home were manifested on the day of his burial. It was
a fitting day for that sad office. Detroit was in mourning.
30 ADDRESS OF MR. ANTHONY ON THE
From every public building floated the emblems of sorrow,
and the doors and windows of numerous private houses
were draped in sable. The streets were whitened by the
early snow of winter, which fell with blinding fury upon
the city. The sidewalks were thronged with thousands upon
thousands of men and women, who, unable to get near the
house, stood exposed, for hours, to the inclement weather,
waiting to see the long and melancholy procession.
To dwell at length upon his qualities as a partisan might
offend the proprieties of the occasion, and I forbear. But even
the slightest sketch of him would be imperfect without some
reference to his partisan character. He was a party man. He
held that the division of the people into parties was essential
to the balance of elective institutions. He early selected for
his support the party that was, in his judgment, most conform
able to the spirit of the Constitution, to the rights and liber
ties of the people, and to the prosperity of the country ; and
having deliberately made his choice, he adhered to it with all
the tenacity of his nature. He believed in strong measures,
and had no confidence in half-way methods and expedients.
Whatever was right and proper he held was to be promoted by
all legal and proper means.
He died as he would have preferred to die — suddenly, pain
lessly, and with his harness on. He fell as the warrior falls,
on the eve of battle, with his sword in his hand and his shield
upon his arm. Death was kinder to him than it often is to the
race of man, to all of whom " it is appointed once to die." No
lingering disease wasted that stalwart form -, no protracted suf
fering enfeebled that masculine intellect. The Pale Messenger,
unheralded and unexpected, summoned him in the vigor of
health and of active usefulness; touched him with his wand, and
he sank to eternal sleep — no, we believe he rose to eternal life.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 31 j
Address of Mr. BAYARD, of Delaware.
Mr. PRESIDENT : The relations I have held with the deceased
Senator CHANDLER have arisen only as a consequence of ray
service as a member of this body, and it has so happened that
by the organization of political parties we usually found our
selves in decided opposition to each other.
Of his political opinions, actions, and methods I will not
therefore speak, for I could not do so approvingly, nor would
it be worthy of myself or of him to attempt qualification or
reconciliation of our decided opinions on policies or principles
of government — in regard to which few men differed so widely
as he and I.
It may be adopted as a wise rule in arriving at an estimate
of men and their careers, to precede a formation of judgment
of an antagonist by the inquiry, " How would we have re
garded the action of our adversary had his energies been
exerted in favor of the party and policies with which we our
selves have been allied ?"
May it not well be, that seen thus through a medium of sym
pathetic ends, the means of attainment would have appeared
somewhat less objectionable?
In the maze of action and passion of daily political life we
are not apt to judge men justly, and may easily fail equally
to appreciate the faults of an ally and the virtues of an
opponent.
But there were traits and qualities in Mr. CHANDLER that
all men may dwell upon with admiration and respect, and
which I have now a melancholy satisfaction in attesting.
He was manly, impulsive, outspoken, sincere, and generous ;
an open but not implacable foe, and a steady and courageous
friend.
32
ADDRESS OF MR. BAYARD ON THE
His hand was open, for he was " a cheerful giver." He
possessed a mind of superior force and sagacity, and his facul
ties for the administration of affairs were eminently practical
and effective.
In one important respect he supplied an example valuable
in any government, and especially in one so popular in its for
ward nature as our own. I refer to the fact that on no occa
sion was Mr. CHANDLER known to use his official position for
his own pecuniary gain — directly or indirectly.
His death has ended a long career of public service in
executive and legislative capacities, and throughout his
hands were ever clean of unjust or illegitimate gain, nor
did his bitterest political foe (and no man evoked a stronger
personal criticism) ever charge, or even suspect him, with
making personal profit out of his political station and oppor
tunities.
He was a man of vigorous, frank nature, and his virtues and
his faults were the natural outgrowth. Free-handed and open-
hearted, he kept his word, despised a coward, and loathed a
hypocrite.
Standing now as it were above his newly made grave, I bear
willing testimony to these personal virtues, and can recall
many instances of his accommodating kindness and personal
courtesy, which rendered the transaction of business with him
so easy and agreeable.
For the rest, I feel that we are too near the years of his act
ive political career to express positive judgment.
To justly measure so aggressive, vigorous, and influential
a character as his, it must be viewed at a little distance, as
sculptors often ask for the consideration of their strongest and
most rugged works.
Time will mellow, and reflection will soften the asperities
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAH CHANDLER. 33
and animosities caused by recent and heated conflict and
which may obscure somewhat present judgment.
Mr. President, the messenger of death came to our departed
associate suddenly, and in the very midst of his most ardent
and strenuous pursuits.
Here in this hall of public deliberation, once more are we
confronted and startled by the foot-prints of the Pale Archer,
whose shafts intended surely for each one of us remain as
yet in the quiver unselected. Busied as we all are with the
thoughts and cares of daily life, should we not pause to-day,
and thinking of the strong man who has been so suddenly
called from our side, and from the home and wide circle of
friends, to whom his warm heart and manly qualities so en
deared him : — glance down the inevitable pathway he has been
called upon to tread, and so order our living that each may
not fear to follow in his turn!
Address of Mr. HAMLIN, of Maine.
The friendships formed in this body in long association are
no inconsiderable compensation for the labors and annoyance
incident to senatorial life. While patience and forbearance
are sometimes exhausted in earnest, extended, and at times
angry debate, and many things are said and done in zeal which
the calmer judgment will not approve, yet the ties here formed
and cemented will never be severed in life. As a rule these
friendships, differing in degree, are far more general than is
supposed. The cases are rare and exceptional where associa
tion here does not produce a cordial and sincere greeting as
we mingle and meet along the pathway of life. And the ac
quaintance formed here with the deceased distinguished Sena-
5 c
34 ADDRESS OF ME. 11AMLIN ON THE
tor, which ripened into permanent and undisturbed friendship,
justifies if it does not require that I should add a few words of
personal tribute to his worth and memory in the same spirit
with which the friendly hand would place a garland of flowers
upon his new-made grave. Some have spoken and others
will speak more elaborately of his public life and valuable
services.
I first knew of Mr. CHANDLER as a distinguished merchant
in the city of Detroit, where he had become eminent for his
high commercial and financial integrity, and had established a
business reputation which extended far beyond the limits of
his own State. In one of those financial tornadoes which at
times disturbed the business and industries of our country,
when older and apparently more firmly established houses
were wrecked by the blast, so well established was his reputa
tion for unquestioned mercantile capacity and integrity that,
when himself in doubt as to his ability to withstand the crisis,
on consultation with those with whom he had business rela
tions, and acting under their united advice and assurances of
support, he went forward triumphantly and successfully out
riding the storm. An honorable merchant of known and un
questioned integrity, he was at all times entitled to receive
and did receive the highest consideration. It is indeed a
priceless legacy which he has left to his family, and he fur
nishes an example which should be imitated by all who care
to be honest. His sterling character in that regard is the
brighter in times like these, when the crime of repudiation
stalks at noonday and finds unblushing advocates among
States and corporations as well as among individuals. It is a
truth that cannot be too often or earnestly expressed, that
an honest man is God's noblest work.
I knew of the Senator also as a distinguished leader in the
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACllAllIAU CHANDLER. 35
whig party in the days of its strength and its triumph. He
was once its honored leader in a gubernatorial contest in his
State. I also knew of him well as one of the prominent and
leading men in the State of Michigan by whose counsels and
under whose guidance the republican party was formed, and
those who thought alike were induced to act together; a party
in which he was at all times prominent, and to which he ad
hered with unwavering fidelity to the close of his life ; and by
which he won that national confidence and respect to which
he was so eminently entitled.
But I became personally acquainted with Senator CHAN
DLER on that day when we were sworn in as members of this
body, and at the time when he first took his seat in the Senate
of the United States.
In my judgment, the most prominent and distinguishing
traits in the character of Senator CHANDLER were his sincere
convictions of what he believed to be right, and his indomitable
courage in expressing and maintaining those convictions re
gardless of consequences. He who possesses those character
istics may always have enemies, but he will never be without
friends. I have myself but little respect for that man who has
not enough of character to make an enemy, for he cannot be
worthy to claim others as his friends. The frankness with
which Senator CHANDLER expressed his opinions upon all oc
casions was not acceptable to many, and if he did not thereby
incur their hostility he certainly failed to attach them to him
as friends. But none were left in doubt as to the position he
would occupy upon any question in regard to which his opin
ions were known. He was a man of convictions and courage;
never a man of policy and compromise ; nor did he believe in
that timidity which in effect was treason to right and justice.
That in his life for which he was perhaps held in the highest
36 ADDRESS OF MR. HAMLIN ON THE
esteem by the loyal people of this country was the zeal and
courage he displayed and the labor he performed in maintain
ing the supremacy of the Government. Many there were who
talked more ; few, if any, who labored as much and as effect
ively. With him it was always actions rather than words.
He had then, as at all times, the boldness to characterize
things and events by their right names, however distasteful it
might be to others. I would award all honor to the brave men
who by their heroic acts and undaunted courage have been so
instrumental in advancing the best interests of our common
country in the field or on the ocean. I would pluck no leaf
from the wreaths that so justly adorn their brows. I yield to
none in the respect I would pay to them. But courage, cool,
deliberate, unmistakable courage, is as requisite and is as
certainly displayed in the deliberative councils of the nation
as on the field of battle. The highest courage is that which
always dares to do the right and fears only to do the wrong.
The victories of peace are more important than those of war,
and to those who win them the highest homage is due.
Not to the ensanguined field of death alone
Is valor limited : she sits serene
In the deliberative council, sagely scans
The sources of action, weighs, prevents, provides,
And scorns to count her glories, from the feats
Of brutal force alone.
Those of us who were so long associated with the late Sen
ator in this body will miss him exceedingly. In the wisdom of
an inscrutable Providence, his seat here has been made vacant.
All that was mortal of him now reposes in the soil of his
adopted State, which he had honored as the State had hon
ored him. Those who knew him best will mourn him most,
while the nation pays homage to his memory for public serv
ices so grandly performed.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 37
Address of Mr. BLAINE, of Maine.
Mr. CHANDLER sprang from a strong race of men, reared
in a State wbich has shed luster on other Commonwealths by
the gift of her native-born and her native-bred. She gave
Webster to Massachusetts, Chief-Justice Chase to Ohio, Gen
eral Dix to New York, and Horace Greeley to the head of
American journalism. Mr. CHANDLER left New Hampshire
before he -attained his majority, and with limited pecuniary
resources sought a home in the inviting territory of the North
west. He had great physical strength, with remarkable pow
ers of endurance, possessed energy that could not be over
taxed, was gifted with courage of a high order, was imbued
with principles which throughout his life were inflexible, was
intelligent and well instructed, and in all respects equipped
for a career in the great and splendid region where he lived
and grew and strengthened and prospered and died.
For a long period following the second war with Great Brit
ain the Territory of Michigan was governed by one of the
most persuasive and successful of American statesmen, whose
pure and honorable life, whose grace and kindness of manner,
and whose almost unlimited power in what was then a remote
frontier Territory, had enabled him to mould the vast major
ity of the early settlers to his own political views. When Mr.
CHANDLER reached Detroit General Cass had left the scene
of his long reign — for reign it might well be called — to assume
control of the War Department under one of the strongest
administrations that ever governed the country. The great
majority of young men at twenty years of age naturally
drifted with a current that was so strong; but Mr. CHANDLER
had inherited certain political principles which were strength
ened by his own convictions as he grew to manhood, and he
38 ADDRESS OF MR. ELAINE ON THE
took his stand at once and firmly with the minority. He was
from the outset a strong power in the political field ; though
not until his maturer years, with fortune attained and the
harder struggles of life crowned with victory, would he con
sent to hold any public position. But he was in all the fierce
conflicts which raged for twenty years in Michigan, and which
ended in changing the political mastery of the State. It is
not matter of wonder that personal estrangements occurred in
such prolonged and bitter controversy, without indeed the loss
of mutual respect, and in one of the most exciting periods of
the struggle General Cass spoke publicly of not enjoying the
honor of Mr. CHANDLER'S acquaintance. It was just three
years afterward, as Mr. CHANDLER delighted to tell with good-
natured and pardonable boasting, that he carried to General
Cass a letter of introduction from the governor of Michigan
which so impressed the General that he caused it to be pub
licly read in this Chamber and placed on the permanent files
of the Senate. It is to the honor of both these great men that
complete cordiality of friendship was restored, and that in the
hour of supreme peril to the nation which came soon after,
General Cass and Mr. CHANDLER stood side by side in main
taining the Union of the States by the exercise of the war
power of the government. They sleep their last sleep in the
same beautiful cemetery near the city which was so long their
home, under the soil of the State which each did so much to
honor, and on the shores of the lakes whose commercial devel
opment, spanned by their lives, has been so greatly promoted
by their efforts.
The anti-slavery agitation which broke forth with such
strength in 1854, following the repeal of the Missouri com
promise, met with partial reaction soon after, and in 1856 Mr.
Buchanan was chosen to the Presidency. Mr. CHANDLER
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARTAH CHANDLER. 39
took his seat for the first time ill this body on the day of Mr.
Buchanan's inauguration. It was the first public station he
had ever held except the mayoralty of Detroit for a single
term, and the first for which he had ever been a candidate,
except when in 1852 ho consented to lead the forlorn hope of
the wliigs in the contest for governor of Michigan. When he
entered the Senate the democratic party bore undisputed sway
in this Chamber, having more than two-thirds of the entire
body. The party was led by resolute, aggressive, able, uncom
promising men, who played for a high stake and who played
the bold game of those who were willing to cast all upon the
hazard of the die. The party in opposition, to which Mr.
CHANDLER belonged, was weak in numbers but strong in
character, intellect, and influence. Seward, with his philoso
phy of optimism, his deep study into the working of political
forces, and his affluence of rhetoric, was its accepted leader.
He was upheld and sustained by Sumner, with his wealth of
learning and his burning zeal for the right; by Fessenden,
less philosophic than Seward, less learned than Sumner, but
more logical and skilled o' fence than either ; by Wade, who
in mettle and make-up was a Cromwellian, who, had he lived
in the days of the Commonwealth, would have fearlessly fol
lowed the Protector in the expulsion of an illegal Parliament,
or drawn the sword of the Lord and Gideon to smite hip and
thigh the Amalekites who appeared anew in the persons of
the cavaliers; by Collamer, wise and learned, pure and digni
fied, a conscript father in look and in fact; by John P. Hale,
who never faltered in his devotion to the anti-slavery cause,
and who had earlier than any of his associates broken his alli
ance with the old parties and given his eloquent voice to the
cause of the despised Nazarenes; by Trumbull, acute, able,
untiring, the first republican Senator from that great State
40 ADDRESS OF MR. ELAINE ON THE
which has since added so much to the grandeur and glory of
our history ; by Hamlin, with long training, with devoted fidel
ity, with undaunted courage, who came anew to the conflict of
ideas with a State behind him, with its faith and its force, and
who alone of all the illustrious Senate of 1857 is with us to
day; by Cameron, with wide and varied experience in affairs,
with consummate tact in the government of parties, whose
active political life began in the days of Monroe, and who,
after a prolonged and stormy career, still survives by reason of
strength at fourscore, with the strong attachment of his friends,
the respect of his opponents, the hearty good wishes of all.
Into association with these men Mr. CHANDLER entered
when in his forty-fourth year. His influence was felt, and felt
powerfully, from the first day. A writer at the time said that
the effect of CHANDLER'S coming was like the addition of a
fresh division of troops to an army engaged in a hand-to-hand
conflict with an outnumbering foe. He encouraged, upheld, in
spired, coerced others to do things which he could not do him
self, but which others could not have done without him. His
first four years in the Senate were passed in a hopeless minor
ity, where a sense of common danger had banished rivalry,
checked jealousy, toned down ambition, and produced that
effective harmony and splendid discipline which won the most
signal and far-reaching of all our political victories in the elec
tion of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. Changed by this
triumph and the startling events which followed into a major
ity party in the Senate, the republicans found many of their
oldest and ablest leaders trained only to the duties of the
minority, and not fitted to assume with grace and efficiency
the task of administrative leadership. They had been so long-
studying the science of attack that they were awkward when
they felt the need and assumed the responsibility of defense.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 41
They were like* some of the British regiments in the campaign
of Namur, of whom William of Orange said there was no for
tress of the French that could resist them, and none that was
safe in their hands.
It was from this period that Mr. CHANDLER became more
widely known to the whole country — achieving almost at a
single bound what we term a national reputation. His defiant
attitude in the presence of the impending and overwhelming
danger of war; his superb courage under all the doubts and
reverses of that terrible struggle between brethren of the same
blood; his readiness to do all things, to dare all things, to
endure all things for the sake of victory to the Union; his
ardent support of Mr. Lincoln's administration in every war
measure which was proposed ; his quickness to take issue with
the administration when he thought a great campaign was
about to be ruined by what was termed the Fabian policy ; his
inspiring presence, his burning zeal, his sleepless vigilance, his
broad sympathies, his prompt decision, his eager patriotism,
his crowning faith in the final result, all combined to give to
Mr. CHANDLEK a front rank among those honorable and de
voted men who in our war history are entitled to stand next to
those who led the mighty conflict on the field of battle.
To portray Mr. CHANDLER'S career for the ten consecutive
years after the war closed would involve too close a reference
to exciting questions still in some sense at issue. But in that
long period of service, and in the shorter one that immediately
preceded his death, those who knew him well could observe a
constant intellectual growth. He was fuller and stronger and
abler in conference and in debate the last year of his life than
ever before. He entered the Senate originally without any
practice in parliamentary discussion. He left it one of the
most forcible and most fearless antagonists that could be en-
G c
42 ADDRESS OF MB. ELAINE ON THE
countered in this Chamber. His methods were" learned here.
He was plain and yet eloquent; aggressive and yet careful;
fearless without showing bravado. What he knew, he knew
with precision; the powers he possessed were always at his
command, and he never declined a challenge to the lists.
"Here and now" was his motto, and his entire senatorial
career and his life indeed outside seemed guided by that spirit
of bravery which the greatest of American Senators exhibited,
in the only boast he ever made, when he quoted to Mr. Calhoun
the classic defiance :
Concurritur ; horse
Momento cita mors venit, aut victoria Iseta.
Mr. CHANDLER'S fame was enlarged by his successful ad
ministration of an important Cabinet position. Called by
President Grant to the head of the Interior Department by
telegraphic summons, he accepted without reluctance and
without distrust. His eighteen years of positive and uncom
promising course in the Senate had borne the inevitable fruit
of many enmities as well as the rich reward of countless
friends. The appointment was severely criticised and unspar
ingly condemned by many who, a year later, were sufficiently
just and magnanimous to withdraw their harsh words and
bear generous testimony to his executive ability, his pains
taking industry, and his inflexible integrity ; to his admirable
talent for thorough organization, and to his prompt and grace
ful dispatch of public business. What his friends had before
known of his character and his capacity the chance of a few
brief months in an administrative position had revealed to the
entire country and had placed in history.
It would not be just even in the generous indulgence con
ceded to eulogy to speak of Mr. CHANDLER as a man without
faults. But assuredly no enemy, if there be one above his life-
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 43
less form, will ever say that he bad mean faults. They were
all on the generous and larger side of his nature. In amassing
his princely fortune he never exacted the pound of ilesh ; he
never ground the faces of the poor ; he was never even harsh
to an honest debtor unable to pay. His wealth came to him
through his own great ability, devoted with unremitting in
dustry for a third of a century to honorable trade in that
enlarging, ever-expanding region, whose capacities and re
sources he was among the earliest to foresee and to appreciate.
To his friends Mr. CHANDLER was devotedly true. Like
Colonel Benton, he did not use the word "friend" lightly and
without meaning. Nor did he ever pretend to be friendly to a
man whom he did not like. He never dissembled. To describe
him in the plain and vigorous Saxon which he spoke himself —
he was a true friend, a hard hitter, an honest hater.
In that inner circle of home life, sacred almost from refer
ence, Mr. CHANDLER was chivalric in devotion, inexhaustible
in affection, and exceptionally happy in all his relations. What
ever of sternness there was in his character, whatever of rough
ness in his demeanor, whatever of irritability in his temper,
were one and all laid aside when he sat at his own hearthstone,
or dispensed graceful and generous hospitality to unnumbered
guests. There he was seen at his best, and there his friends
best love to recall him. As Burke said of Lord Keppel, he
was a wild stock of pride on which the tenderest of hearts had
grafted the milder virtues.
A sage whose words have comforted many generations of
men tells us that when death comes every one can see its de
plorable and grievous side— only the wise can see causes for
reconcilement. Let us be wise to day and celebrate the mem
ory of a man who stood on the confines of age without once
feeling its weakness or realizing its decay; who passed sixty-
44 ADDRESS OF MR. LOGAN ON THE
six years iu this world without losing a single day of mental
activity or physical strength; who had a business career of
great length and unbroken prosperity ; who had attained in
public life a fourth election to the Senate of the United States,
an honor enjoyed by fewer men in the Republic than even its
Chief Rulership, and who strengthening with his years stood
higher in the regard of his countrymen, stronger with his con
stituency, nearer to his friends, and dearer to his kindred, at
the close of his career than on any preceding day of his event
ful life.
Address of Mr. LOGAN, of Illinois.
Mr. PRESIDENT: Illinois by the side of her sister State
(Michigan) mourns with her the loss of her honored son. No
language of mine will be sufficiently eloquent to portray in
fitting terms the loss we all feel in the death of so noble and
patriotic a man as was our brother Senator.
Twenty years ago, sir, in this city I made his acquaintance.
We then differed in our political theories, but, sir, there was
an indescribable something that attracted me and caused me
to like the man. During the great rebellion against this Gov
ernment we became better acquainted and better friends, and
from that time up to his death nothing had ever marred our
kindly relations. I learned to admire him more and more as I
knew him better. No man could know him well without hav
ing great respect and admiration for him.
To describe him merely as an ordinary man would be to do
his record and memory great injustice. To say that he was a
very great man, in the sense in which that term is generally
understood, might be considered fulsome praise; but, sir, if
greatness consists in the accomplishment of honest purpose, he
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER •!.">
was truly great. The sixty-six years that have passed over
his head were to him replete with honor ami prosperity. On
whatever line he moved he achieved a triumph. Physically,
he was a model of stalwart mold; his mental structure was
strong and vigorous ; in energy he was not a laggard in any
thing in which he engaged. He was a thinker, however crude
he may have been in speech. He was bold in his expressions
and manly in his utterances ; his powers of organization and
combination were unsurpassed. Those who may have found
themselves in opposition to him on any line, political or other
wise, can well attest this fact.
He was not only a man of thought, but of action ; he was
generous, kind, true, and faithful ; his bosom welled up and
overflowed with the milk of human kindness ; his heart was
large enough to embrace within its sympathies all classes ; his
watchword ever was liberty and protection to all. He was a
patriot in the broadest sense in which that term is understood.
During his country's severest trials his services in her behalf
in giving aid and encouragement to the people of his own State
and in the councils of the nation by his bold and fearless
course were great. When the storm of secession was fiercest
he was boldest ; as trials came he rose with the emergency ; in
the darkest night he was one of the most steadfast stars. Sir,
he was by nature a leader and controller of men, possessing all
the necessary qualities that would have fitted him for a great
field-marshal, the energy, the boldness, the judgment, the de
cision, the courage, with the capacity for action and council.
He was the builder of his own fortunes, and the molder of his
own sentiments, a man, sir, true and steadfast to his friends,
and one who never asked or begged quarter from an enemy.
Yet, he was just at all times to friend and foe. His frankness
and freedom of expression at times gave offense, when by a
46 ADDRESS OF MR. LOGAN ON THE
different course lie might have made his pathway smoother,
but he chose to be candid and honest. ^ By this manly course
(as is frequently the case) he became the subject of much crit
icism and vituperation from a class of people that constantly
revel in calumny. But, sir, he moved on in his upright course,
as became a man of worth, so that before his death he had
passed through the mist and clouds of detraction, and stood
out from among and above them in the full brightness of a
glorious vindication.
The evil that men do, lives after them ;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
But, sir, in the case of the deceased Senator his good deeds
were so vividly marked that they will live after him in imper
ishable glory, while the mistakes he may have made (those con
strued into evil) were of such insignificance that they will soon
be lost in the great ocean of forgetfulness.
But, sir, in paying this tribute to his memory, I do not choose
to speak of his different official acts. I prefer to leave that
duty to others, and to let the history of his country speak of
these, along with the ages as they pass. His official record, as
a whole, is a grand one, and requires no barren eulogy at my
hands.
Mr. President, on the last day of his life, in company with
one other gentleman, I came with him from Janesville, Wis
consin, to Chicago. He was apparently in excellent health.
On the way once he complained of slight indigestion. At
about twelve o'clock I left him at the Grand Pacific Hotel.
About five o'clock that afternoon I called at his room, and
found him then in exceedingly good spirits and looking in fine
condition. At 7.30 he went to McCormick's Hall. There I sat
by his side on the stage. At about eight o'clock he was intro
duced by the president of the Young Men's Auxiliary Club
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 47
[Mr. Collier] to u grand audience composed of ladies and gen-
tlemeii.
He commenced slowly, but warmed up with his subject until
he became so eloquent and forcible in his language and illus
trations that the audience, in the midst of his speech, arose
with one accord and gave three cheers. No orator during an
address in the city of Chicago ever received more marked
attention or greater applause. He created an enthusiasm that
carried all along with it like the rushing force of a mighty
storm. This, sir, was the grandest triumph of his life, and he
felt it to be so.
He stood forth before that grand audience like a giant, and
with full-volumed voice spoke like a Webster or a Douglas.
His words were well chosen ; his sentences terse and complete,
abounding in wit, humor, and happy local hits ; his logic came
like hot shot in the din of battle, crashing through the oaks of
the forest. One of his last sentences still rings in my ears,
"Shut up your stores, shut up your manufactories, and go to
work for your country." The effect of this last speech of Sen
ator CHANDLER was electrical ; its influence is still felt among
the business men of Chicago. The meeting adjourned with
great demonstrations in favor of the speaker. He left the hall
and went directly to his room and soon retired to rest.
The next morning I was sitting with my family at breakfast,
in the Palmer House; a gentleman came into the dining-room
in great haste and spoke to me, saying, " LOGAN, your friend
is dead — found in his room, dead."
Sir, I arose and bowed my head ; my heart was tilled with
grief and sorrow. I repaired at once to the room occupied by
the Senator in the Grand Pacific Hotel, and there, sir, he lay,
in the cold and icy embrace of death.
Yes, sir, dead ! He is gone from us. We will hear him no
48 ADDRESS OF MR. LOGAN ON THE
more ; his voice is hushed in silence forever. In his room, no
one being present with him, in the lonely and solemn gloom of
the night, he had passed from life unto death, and in such a
peaceful manner that the angel of death must have whispered
the message so softly and gently that he knew not his coming.
But, sir, what a shock it was to the living. As the fall of the
stalwart oak causes a trembling in the surrounding forest, so
did the fall of Senator CHANDLER cause the tender chords of
the hearts of this people to vibrate with the tender touch of
sympathy everywhere.
Sir, the day after his death we took his remains from this
lonely chamber to his home in Detroit, and there, in the midst
of his grief-stricken family, gently laid them down. A deep,
mournful silence hung heavily over the old family mansion.
One unbroken gloom seemed to rest on the clustered trees,
where the feathered songsters in spring-time had cheered the
happy family with notes of sweetest music. The wintry chill
from the snow-blasts without was but a faint type of the deep
sadness which hung like a pall over every heart. Even the
sighing wind that swept around in its saddened wail seemed
to chant a requiem for the departed Senator. Well might his
friends weep at their own as well as their country's loss. In
deed, he was a man of whom all may speak in praise, and upon
whose bier all may drop the tear of sorrow. When earth re
ceived him she took to her bosom one of her manly sons, and
when Paradise bade his spirit come a noble one entered there.
Mr. President, time brings lessons that teach us that hope
does not perish when the stars of life refuse longer to give
light.
The death of our brother Senator and those still closely
following him should constantly warn us of the fact that we
are traveling to "the undiscovered country, from whose bourn
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAII CHANDLER. 49
no traveler returns." 'Tis true the grave in its silence gives
forth no voice, nor whispers of the morrow, but there is a
voice borne upon the lips of the morning zephyrs that lets
fall a whisper, quickening the heart with a knowledge that
there is an abode beyond the tomb. Sir, our lamps are burn
ing now, some more brightly than others; some shed their
light from the mountain's top, others from the lowly vales;
but let us so trim them that they may all burn with equal
brilliancy when relighted in our mansions beyond the myste
rious river.
I fondly hope, sir, that there we will again meet our departed
, friend.
Address of Mr. MORRILL, of Vermont.
Mr. PRESIDENT: The manly features which stood forth in
the character of our deceased associate, like those of his com
manding person, were so rounded and full, so distinctly pro
nounced, that they could not fail to give the same impression
to all observers, and hence our tributes to-day may wear the
aspect of photographs of the same figure, with merely varia
tions of posture. After the eloquent full-length representa
tions already supplied, I shall only briefly point out what I
have learned to consider as among the distinctive character
istics of that life and form which lately gave such robust
assurance of length of days, but which, to our sorrow, has
been swiftly summoned, as we all soon must be, to that world
of light and hope where the weary are at rest.
The late Senator CHANDLER, as all may know, was born in
the southeastern border of New Hampshire, a region which
has been wondrously fruitful of distinguished statesmen whose
fortune it was to be sent here and long retained as Senators
7 c
50 ADDRESS OF MR. MORRILL ON THE
from other and more populous States. Among these eminent
men were Webster and Wilson from Massachusetts, Dix from
New York, Chase from Ohio, Grimes from Iowa, and Cass from
Michigan, who was superseded by him whose decease we now
lament. These men, going where they would, were sure to
leave their "foot-prints on the sands of time," and were never
less than the peers of the foremost men in this body, of which
Mr. CHANDLER was so recently a conspicuous member, dear to
us and to his own people.
As one of the pioneers of Michigan, his ambition was,
through sterling integrity and unflinching resolution, to grasp
business on a comprehensive scale, and he, with others, made,
Detroit, from a small town, a commercial metropolis thoroughly
equipped to meet the wants of trade in a great and rapidly-
growing State. From the start he never underrated the mag
nificence of western prairies or western forests, nor their pres
ent or prospective power, and there he found a congenial
home.
Upon his first entrance into this Chamber he brought with
him the same invincible energy that had crowned a successful
mercantile career. Having led a busy life, with daily oppor
tunities, through extensive observation, to acquire knowledge,
he was already a man of affairs, whose ripened judgment com
manded respect; and among measures he was not slow to fix
upon the possible best rather than the doubtful, or, among
men, to select the competent rather than the incompetent.
When he would lead, he boldly marched in front, nor sought
to elude the fire of adversaries. Wasting no time in the con
sideration of the rubbish born of ill-starred experiments, magic-
lantern illusions, or incomprehensible theories, he aimed with
fearless self-reliance at once to reach surefooted, solid-sense
conclusions, shirking neither work nor danger, and bringing
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAII CHANDLER. 51
both the strength and courage which he so often found to tri
umph over all difficulties.
For many years in the Senate he was chairman of the Com
mittee on Commerce — no other so long — and conducted its
business with unflagging fidelity and praiseworthy economy.
An instance of the latter occurred when a bill, reported by
him for river and harbor improvements, had been overloaded
here with many prodigal additions, and, rather than to bear
the responsibility of an overgrown expenditure, he helped to
kill the original offspring of his own committee, by a vote to
table the bill. That year no appropriation was made for such
objects, and, if there was any log-rolling greed, it received a
check.
Mr. CHANDLER was intensely loyal to the Republic — not to
a sham, nor to such "stuff as dreams are made of" — but to
a sovereignty under organic law, able and ready to give back
to its citizens something in return for all services demanded.
He would have been ashamed of a w^ak, spineless, and rickety
republic, or one on any Spanish-American pattern, having no
iron in its blood, and ready to break down at the first hostile
prommciamento; but he was proud of that which stands forth
great both in peace and war, and by its regard for law and
order, by its devotion to human rights, by its adherence to
every pledge of public faith, by its matchless march of free
dom and its progressive spirit, has also shown itself worthy to
rule and protect, with an imperishable vitality, the American
continent.
The attitude of foreign nations during the late rebellion
could not fail to be watched by our people, as it was by Sen
ator CHANDLER, with constant solicitude, not — whatever that
attitude might have been — as throwing any doubt upon the
final triumph of the Union arms, but as a contingency which
52 ADDRESS OF MR. MORRILL ON THE
at times threatened to prolong a bloody contest and to multi
ply its griefs. Our Bepublic, it is not to be concealed, had a
few hearty friends among the monarchs and oligarchs of Eu
rope, but we now know that the Queen of Great Britain, in
spite of the sinister advice of Napoleon the Villain, was wiser
and less unfriendly than any of her colonies, or than some of
her ministers, who vainly hoped to gain untold advantages
by breaking up the American Government into smaller and
possibly less formidable proportions. Senator CHANDLER,
however, never lacking audacity to defend the national life at
all hazards, was one of those who did not believe the United
States were any too large, and he had an abiding faith that
its power would always be growing larger. His home con
fronted the western gateway to a large, but not invulnerable,
British province, and he was wont to be impatient — genial as
was his natural temperament — that the government of a great
and kindred people, bound to us also by paramount com
mercial interests, should ^u such a crisis take a hostile or even
a doubtful position, which he thought would have been most
carefully if not fraternally avoided, provided our forces by
land and sea had not been supposed to be fully employed
against those to whom "belligerent rights" had been wrong
fully conceded. Senator CHANDLER'S repeated denunciations
of the primarily responsible party to the piratical raids of the
Alabama and Shenandoah were loud and unstinted, and he
insisted that, for these and other national wrongs, we held a
valid lien upon the Canadas to be enforced at our will and
pleasure. He gave utterance in the white heat of the strife
to some rather angry philippics, but the gentle sway of the
Queen saved our people from any attempt to show, as no
doubt many were eager to show, that there was method in the
Senator's madness. As chairman of the Committee on Com-
LIFE AND CHARACTEE OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 53
merce, be could not look with composure upon the capture
of American ships nor upon their forced transfer to escape
capture, and he resented the foul blow by which the ancient
mistress of the ocean appeared to profit.
If, then, he showed some bitterness to foreigners whose
sympathies were openly against us during the war, we may
not wonder at, and should pardon, his profounder indignation
that any one of his own countrymen, without provocation,
should have been so dead to patriotism as to be willing that
the nation should perish, or to forget that
This is my own, my native land.
For a violent and bloody rebellion, against a government
wholly free and popular, any tolerance seemed to him too
much and any chastisement too little. But it was the rectifica
tion of national authority he sought — not personal vengeance.
In 1875, soon after a protracted service of eighteen years in
the United States Senate, covering great epochs and crises in
our history, he was appointed, by President Grant, Secretary
of the Department of the Interior — a Department of the Gov
ernment which, perhaps, through its multifarious branches, is
more than any other directly seen and felt by the people. The
Patent, Pension, Land, and Indian Bureaus — to say nothing
of the educational and census dependencies — each and all re
quire the perpetual and vigilant supervision of the Secretary,
and it may be said that no other Department is more exposed
to public criticism or to private suspicion; but when Mr.
CHANDLER entered this new and untried field of duties, he at
the outset exhibited his mastery by organizing every branch
of the service upon " business principles," and thus its vast,
machinery, reaching to our remotest boundaries, moved with
out noise and without friction. The confidence of the people
in the integrity and efficiency of the Department of the Inte-
54 ADDRESS OF MR. MORRILL ON THE
rior became complete, and when tbe Secretary left the office
he had, as an executive officer, largely advanced a reputation
already national.
At our last session he reappeared here, returned for the
fourth time, in his senatorial character, but alas ! only to re
main long enough to show to him the unending attachment
of his people — to us the brittleness of human life.
Along with a stalwart frame, he carried a stalwart will, and
was blessed with that outspoken decision of character which
leans not to the right nor left to obtain support. Physically
and mentally he was muscular, and, if he could have been vain
of anything, as he was not, it might have been as an athlete.
He never complained of overwork, whether that work was offi
cial, or on the stump, on the " conduct of the war," or on the
conduct of his model farm, which for some years had mostly
engaged his affections and fully justified his pride. Not un
mindful of the rank won and worn as a merchant, nor of the
honor he kept bright as a Senator, he yet at heart and at home
preferred to be known as a great farmer, and as such, with all
the rest added, he will be known and long remembered by the
people of the State he loved so well.
Senator CHANDLER was a partisan, never neutral, but a
republican of the straitest sect. By no free-trade tariff
would he build up foreign trade on a degraded people, nor
build up a gambling home trade on money intrinsically un
sound. He was a stanch friend of internal improvements,
and on such questions as the equality of man before the law,
land for the landless, schools for the illiterate, he might almost
be styled a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He believed in republi
can men and measures, and so believed because to him they
were nothing less than the custodians and sure promises of the
honor and prosperity of the country. His opinions, based
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 55
upon full and life-long convictions, were stoutly held, and did
not ebb and flow with every change of the moon. He was not
a frequent speaker in the Senate, and his wit never got blunted
by having too fine a point, but when he did speak, having some
thing to say, his words were so hearty and straightforward
that neither friend nor foe could deny their ringing force or
misinterpret their meaning.
Never claiming the glittering refinements or eloquence of
schools, nor trying to escape oblivion by rhetoric, yet his aid
as a campaign speaker was widely sought, and the remarkable
speech delivered by him on the evening destined to be his last
upon earth, may be cited as an example of his vigor, pungency,
and effectiveness as a political orator.
And thus we bid adieu to a strong man, to a true and loyal
spirit, to him whose impassioned devotion to his whole country
was only comparable to the tender love he bore in all his rela
tions as a sou, husband, and father.
Address of Mr. BLAIR, of New Hampshire.
Mr. PRESEDENT : The man whose obsequies are now being
celebrated in the august halls of the Capitol was one of the
extraordinary characters of American history.
His career from the hearthstone to the tomb was one of
singular individuality and power. It was one constant and
successful struggle between great native forces marshaled by
an heroic and aggressive soul, and every form of opposition to
his personal advancement and to the purposes of a patriotic
public life; yet he never encountered an obstacle which he did
not destroy. He wa« over all mortal combatants conqueror,
until on the very summit of victory, at the close of a stern and
incessant warfare prolonged for nearly seventy years, with his
56 ADDRESS OF MR. BLAIR ON THE
eye still burning like the eagle's, aud his arm still raised in
mighty action, Death killed him as with a feather, and the
commanding form was forever still ; the strong intellect, the
storm-compelling will, and imperial soul vanished from sub
lunary affairs. There was not even a premonitory suggestion,
the tinkling of a servant's bell ; not one lifted finger of friend
ship, not one parting tear of love.
When shall the promise of inspiration be fulfilled ? When
shall Death, the last enemy, be himself destroyed ? In this
presence God alone is great.
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER was a son of New Hampshire, and
the State which even in these latter days has given to the
country some of the greatest men of modern or of any times —
among them Cass, and Hale, and Wilson, and Chase, and the
colossal genius of Webster — is proud to add his name to the
long list of her heroes, philanthropists, and statesmen. Born
and nurtured among the grand and beautiful scenes of mount
ain, valley, lake, and stream which have given to New Hamp
shire the name of the Switzerland of America, Mr. CHANDLER
felt from childhood that his future lay in the vast possibilities
of the West ; that there alone was room for the energy and
enterprise of his unfolding powers, and that he must conse
crate his strong arm and his sagacious, indomitable, and free
dom-loving soul to the development of the great central region
of the Republic. At the age of nineteen years he departed from
Bedford, near Manchester, the home of his youth, where still
abound affectionate memories of his marked qualities indic
ative of the coming man, and planted himself on the shores of
the great lake which constitues the focus of our inland com
merce, and which has given its name to one of the happiest
and most powerful of American Commonwealths. There dur
ing forty-six years, comprising the most remarkable period of
NJ '/ / 'V
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER//; &1
f j I
our domestic development and, I think, of our national his
tory, ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, more than any other of her citi
zens, was the State of Michigan ; and during the last twenty-
five years, with but few exceptions, as much as any other one
man, he has shaped the destinies of the United States.
While for one-fourth of a century he was a conspicuous
figure in public affairs, I do not deny that others may have
filled a larger space in the gazettes, and a few — a very few-
may have been more important factors in the course of events.
Yet I know not of ten men in his generation who, in my belief,
have furnished so much of courage and fidelity ; of will-power
and aggressiveness, tempered by discretion and common sense ;
of stanch and granitic consecration to conviction; of deep,
unvarying purpose, which defied calamity and laughed at
vicissitude; of staying and recuperating power in adversity as
well as of tremendous energy in the hour of decisive action,
as the man to whose memory this brief hour is given.
Mr. CHANDLER was sometimes considered harsh in his feel
ings toward political opponents, and notably toward a section
of our common country whose people were specially identified
with political principles which he rejected, and an institution
which it was one of the great purposes of his life to destroy.
But never beat gentler heart in the breast of woman. His
blood coursed in molten tides of hate toward every appear
ance of wrong, and of love for every portion of his country
and for all mankind. His giant form and rugged outlines
were the home of one of the most magnanimous natures I ever
knew. His eyes were full of tears for every form of distress ;
his hand was full of relief. His life is a record of unobtrusive
and unselfish good deeds.
He was a radical, but a radical is the only true conservative./'
He had plowed deep, and he knew the fundamental principles
8 c
58
ADDRESS OF MR. BLAIR ON THE
of things. He knew that principles never temporize, no mat
ter what those may do who profess them ; that they are exact
ing and inexorable, and utterly regardless of the state of the
vote or the count, whether fair or false ; that they cannot be
waived or violated or suppressed or conciliated. He knew,
and what he knew he felt, that principles will -always have
their day in court, and that against us or our children God will
give them judgment and execution and satisfaction thereof
to the uttermost farthing for their every violation. He had
seen death and destruction, the fell officers of eternal justice,
abroad in the land levying upon the very life of our own gen
eration the tremendous damages which three centuries of out
raged humanity had recovered against this nation, and he
knew that, unless the present and future should conform abso
lutely to the eternal principles of right and do impartial just
ice to the feeblest human being within our borders, tears and
woe and death will pay for it to the last fraction of our treas
ure and the last drop of our blood. Therefore was he stalwart ;
therefore did he grieve over the vanities of conciliation when
he thought that principles elementary and sacred were sacri
ficed in the vain hope that peace would come from their viola
tion ; that God would be mocked out of his intelligence and
purposes, and permit the tiniest child to be robbed of the
smallest right with impunity. He felt that the nation and the
statesman who temporize and tamper with principles are play
ing with the hottest fire of Heaven's wrath, and that there is
no true conservatism which does not consist in the most radi
cal application of immutable justice to every race and individ
ual among men.
/ Mr. CHANDLER was only radical against what he understood
to be wrong. He distinguished between the wrong and the
wrong-doer. While he hated the former he would rescue the
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHAUIAH CHANDLER. 59
latter, who is as often a victim as an aggressor. His war
was upon systems and policies, not upon individuals and
communities.
He was as anxious for the prosperity and happiness and as
jealous of the renown of the South as of the Xorth. He was
great and broad, and would have been beloved by Washing
ton and Madison and Jefferson and by the whole family of
patriots who worshiped the principles of the great Declara
tion which they promulgated, and who " trembled for their
country when they remembered that God was just."
It may be said of him that he was a strong partisan. This
is only to praise him. The man who is not a partisan is with
out convictions, or if he has convictions he is false to them.
That he was a bigot I deny. He was simply and sublimely \/
true. He knew not how to prevaricate or apostatize or " keep
the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope." In
disaster and exigency, amid defection and demoralization, he
became the front because he was always in the advance, and,
wherever others might go, he never fell back. Xobody and
nothing dismayed him. He was like a living rock on the eter
nal battle line between right and wrong. There he stood
" fixed like a tower" for support in onset, for shelter and for
rally in repulse and despair.
He was not more ultra than others, but he was more stead
fast and courageously true to his cause. He only went with
them to the full length of their common belief and profes
sions — but there he staid. His action was not that of mercury
in long-tubed thermometers, rising and falling with the weather
of expediency, but he found the line where he belonged and he
fought it out there — not only if it took all summer, but all win
ter and all time.
And so it was that he expired in the hour of his greatest
GO
ADDRESS OF MR. CAMERON ON THE
usefulness, while he was once more rallying the host, and the
most vital political truths, as he understood them, and as the
fathers of the Eepublic understood them, were echoing from
his lips on the midnight air of the Queen City by the lakes.
And still
Their echoes roll from soul to soul
And grow forever and forever.
His career is a rare illustration of the excellence of our insti
tutions. It is full of hope to every struggling, brave-hearted
youth who feels conscious of noble purpose and inherent power.
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER was a patriot, a statesman, and an
honest man. He was of God's noblest work. In such case
'Tis not so difficult to die.
Address of Mr. CAMERON, of Pennsylvania.
Mr. PRESIDENT : I desire to add my tribute to one who for a
much longer time than the majority of Senators was a member
of this body. ZACHARIAH CHANDLER was four times chosen
by his adopted State to represent her in the Senate. Few have
been honored so frequently. This alone would be sufficient to
say of him in pronouncing his eulogy, for no man need desire
higher praise than to have said of him that he spent one- third
of his entire life in faithful public service. That such service
was rendered by Mr. CHANDLER we all know. That he was
appreciated by his people, none can deny who witnessed the
evidences of sadness that were portrayed upon the counte
nances of thousands of his constituents as the last sad rites
were being paid to his memory. In all that has been said here
of his patriotism, nothing has been uttered that ought not to
have been, for nothing more can be said of him than he de-
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. (II
served. Michigan has lost a brave, faithful, honest representa
tive, and her people may well mourn.
I did not expect to do so, nor can I add one word to that
which has been spoken that would be worthy of him. I merely
desired to place my words, crude and simple as they are, along
side of those more worthy and appropriate addresses which
have been placed upon the records of the Senate, in memory
of one with whom I served both in the Cabinet and in the Sen
ate, and who, in all the relations of life, both public and pri
vate, was my friend.
Address of Mr. BALDWIN, of Michigan.
Mr. PRESIDENT: It is with feelings of painful sensibility
that I add my tribute to what has already been uttered, and
these are deeply intensified when I recall the unbroken friend
ship which for more than forty years existed between the late
Senator CHANDLER and myself.
Born and reared amid the hills of a New England State that
has given to the country many distinguished statesmen, his
character largely partook of the spot of his nativity.
His educational advantages were confined to the studies of
the common school and the country academy of those days.
The wise and efficient use he made of them is abundantly
demonstrated in the honorable record of his life.
While yet a youth, stimulated by a laudable ambition, he
sought a wider, a more promising sphere than the circumscribed
boundaries of his home afforded. The expanding West, with
its great possibilities, beckoned him to its inviting fields. Bid
ding adieu to the home of his childhood, he removed to Detroit,
then but little more than a military post on the frontier of civ
ilized life. Before attaining his majority he established a mer-
62
ADDRESS OF MR. BALDWIN ON THE
cantile business, carrying into daily life those habits of industry
and frugality which he had been taught and which were illus
trated in all his subsequent career.
He had started in life with the unwavering determination to
make no compromise of principle. In this he was as firm as
the granite hills of his native State. Success was his motto ;
but it must be attained through industry and integrity alone.
From this purpose he never swerved, and during a business
life of many years, marked by the vicissitudes which are insep
arable from commercial pursuits, his reputation was spotless.
Under the principles which Mr. CHANDLER brought to his
daily avocations he reaped his reward, not alone in abundant
wealth, but in the well-earned confidence which the people of
Michigan placed in his high capability and character.
Coupled with an earnest devotion to the demands of a busi
ness steadily enlarging, he took a deep interest in the political
and other questions of the day. From his boyhood he had dis
played that quickness of comprehension and sterling common
sense, that intuitive knowledge of men and things, which were
of so great service to him in those after years when, called from
the pursuits of a mercantile life, he was invested with duties
and responsibilities grave and national in their character.
At an early day, and at a time .when the political party with
which he was identified was in a minority, he had been chosen
mayor of Detroit. In this his first official position he dis
played executive abilities and those qualifications needful in
the exalted stations he afterward so ably filled.
Nominated in 1852 as the candidate of the whig party for
governor, he made his first appearance as a political speaker in
a vigorous canvass of the State, but failed of an election.
An anti-slavery whig from principle, opposed to oppression
in every form, he took a prominent and efficient part in the
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 63
organization of the republican party in 1854, devoting the best
energies of his after life in promoting its success.
In 1857 he was chosen by the Legislature to represent Mich
igan in this body. His immediate predecessor was that distin
guished Senator, Cabinet minister, diplomat, and scholar, Gen
eral Lewis Cass. Called as Mr. CHANDLER was from an active
commercial life without previous training, to take the place of
this eminent man, whose long life had been spent in the public
service, there were those Vho doubted his success, but those
doubts were speedily dispelled. In the Senate Chamber, as
in every station he was called upon to fill, he never failed
to prove himself equal to the duties which devolved upon
him.
It is not needful for me to speak particularly of his career in
the Senate, of the conspicuous position he occupied, and the
inlluence he exerted in this body. That has already been done
by his associates who so well knew and appreciated the excel
lence of his judgment and the earnestness with which his duties
were discharged. But I may say that the eighteen years of
his continuous service was the most eventful period in the his
tory of the country. The stability of the Constitution and the
very existence of the Government were put to their severest
test. An irrepressible conflict existed in the national Legisla
ture and throughout the land ; the sovereignty of the Union
was threatened. During the dark years of civil war which fol
lowed, the unceasing earnestness with which all his powers
were devoted to sustain the administration in its efforts for the
preservation of the Eepublic are too well known, too deeplj
engraved in the hearts of the people, to need more than a pass
ing notice. In all these hours of gloom and sorrow, in all the
vicissitudes of victory and defeat, in all the demands that were
made on the blood, the treasure, and the patriotism of the peo-
64 ADDEESS OF MR. BALDWIN ON THE
pie, he never faltered in his convictions of duty, or of the tri
umph of the flag, and the full restoration of the power and
unity of the Government.
There is one thing in the senatorial career of Mr. CHANDLER
to which I may refer. While he was identified with all the
leading measures of Congress, he was untiring in his devotion
to the interests of Michigan and the great Northwest. His
promptness in aiding the citizens of his State without distinc
tion of creed or party was proverbial. His zeal and fidelity in
this particular were as broad as the Commonwealth that had
so gladly honored him. It was this which added so largely to
his popularity at home ; and his warmest friends were found
alike in all parties.
Called by President Grant to the Secretaryship of the Inte
rior, he assumed the duties of this perplexing bureau, display
ing a tact, an energy, and an executive ability that surprised
even those who knew him best. With clear head and stout
heart, prevailing evils were stamped out with unfaltering cour
age. With an unswerving purpose he brought order out of
confusion, infusing new life into the various branches of the
Department, and clearly demonstrated that the public service
can be successfully accomplished by bringing to its aid unflinch
ing integrity and vigorous common sense.
At the close of the administration of President Grant, Mr.
CHANDLER returned to his home and to private life. Popular
fallacies upon the subject of the currency had been widely dis
seminated; Michigan was not exempt from the contagion.
These were to be met with argument and the delusions dis
pelled. It was then that he relinquished his plans for recrea
tion and an anticipated foreign trip, and again buckling on his
armor with his accustomed energy, he led the van in a decisive
and victorious battle for honest money.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIAH1A1I CHANDLER. 05
There are but few leaders of men; Mr. CHANDLER was
clearly one of the few. For more than a quarter of a century
he had been a faithful servant of the people. In 1878 he was
again returned to the Senate, and he brought with him the
same unceasing devotion to hid State and his country that had
ever characterized his public life. His voice again heard in
the Senate Chamber had no uncertain sound, and was echoed
to the ends of the laud.
During the autumnal months of the year which has just
closed, Mr. CHANDLER was almost constantly occupied in ad
dressing large assemblies of the people, in various sections of
the country, on the political topics of the day. In arousing
4
and retaining the interest of an audience, few men possess his
magnetic power. Jn these his later efforts he seemed to dis
play new energy and power, achieving a remarkable reputation
as a most effective public speaker, llis fame and his popu
v
larity were at their zenith. Had his life been spared, it is more
than probable that the representatives from the State he had
so long and so faithfully served would, with one voice, have
presented his name as their first choice for the most exalted
position in the gift of the people.
On the evening of the last day of October he addressed the
people of Chicago. And never had he spoken more acceptably.
Making his arrangements to return to his home the next day,
he retired to his room, and, after pleasant converse with friends,
at the midnight hour he lay down to rest. It was that peace
ful rest which shall remain unbroken until the archangel's
trump shall be heard at the great day.
I need not speak particularly of Mr. CHANDLER'S domestic
life, or of his warm attachment to those who made up his home
circle. We have to speak of him as a friend, a citizen, a public
man. Strong in his convictions, stalwart in his opinions, and
9 c
66 ADDRESS OF MB. BALDWIN.
fearless in their avowal, there was no bitterness in his nature :
all his tendencies were to the genial side of life.
Friend of my youth, companion of my manhood and of my
maturer years, farewell ! Strong in the defense of right, true
in friendship, and uu sullied in integrity, may we who yet lin
ger be imitators of those traits which ennobled your life and
have engraved your name upon the imperishable pages of your
country's history.
Mr. President, I move the adoption of the pending reso
lutions.
The VIOE-PEESIDENT. The question is on agreeing to
the resolutions.
The resolutions were agreed to unanimously ; and (at two
o'clock and forty-six minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned.
ADDRESSES
ON THB
DEATH OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER,
A SENATOR FROM MICHIGAN.
DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, I860.
A message from the Senate, by Mr. BuRon, its Secretary,
communicated the resolutions of that body upon the announce
ment of the death of Hon. ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, late a Sen
ator of the United States from the State of Michigan ; which
were read, as follows :
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,
January 28, 1880.
Resolved, That the Senate received with profound sorrow the announce
ment of the death of ZACIIARIAH CHANDLER, late a Senator of the United
States from the State of Michigan, and for nearly nineteen years a member
of this body.
Resolved, That, to express some estimate held of his eminent services in a
long public career, rendered conspicuous by fearless, patriotic devotion, the
business of the Senate be now suspended, that the associates of the departed
Senator may pay fitting tribute to his public and private virtues.
Resolved, That the loss of the country, sustained in the death of Mr. CHAN
DLER, was manifest by expressions of public sorrow through the land.
Rtsolfcd, That, as a mark of respect for the memory of the dead Senator,
the members of the Senate will wear crape upon the left arm for thirty days.
67
68 ADDEESS OF MR. NEWBERRY ON THE
Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate communicate these resolutions
to the House of Representatives.
Resolved, That, as an additional mark of respect for the memory of the
deceased, the Senate do now adjourn.
Mr. CONGER. I offer the resolutions which I send to the
desk.
The Clerk read as follows :
Resolved, That the House of Representatives has received with profound
sorrow the announcement of the death of Hon. ZACIIARIAH CHANDLER,
late a United States Senator from the State of Michigan.
Resolved, That business be now suspended to allow fitting tributes to be
paid to his public and private virtues ; and that, as a further mark of re- •
spect to the memory of the deceased, the House at the close of such remarks
shall adjourn.
Address of Mr. NEWBERRY, of Michigan.
Mr. SPEAKER : For over twenty years the name of ZACH-
ARIAH CHANDLER has been a household word in the State of
Michigan. His business, social, private, public, and political
life belongs solely to and is a part of the history of that State.
He was born December 10, 1813, in New Hampshire, in sight
of the granite hills of New England and came to Michigan in
1833, before he became of age. Soon after his arrival in Mich
igan he engaged in mercantile business, and laid the founda
tion of his great fortune, showing the same careful, untiring
energy, foresight and straightforward integrity and honesty
that followed him through life. While thus engaged in active
business, with quiet, persistent and unflagging assiduity, he
acquired that knowledge of men and books that became in his
after life a surprise even to his best friends. Constantly em
ployed by day in the busy marts of trade and commerce, clear
headed and keen, he attended to his constantly increasing
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAII CHANDLER. GO
business. Busy hours over, the book and the library gave
him their richest treasures.
Blessed with a home and fireside where one of the best and
noblest of women was ever ready to welcome him and brighten
his life, whose domestic charm of manner was only surpassed
by the winning grace always shown in receiving the welcome
friends of her husband, his life in early manhood was passed
without a thought, as I believe, of a public career.
My own first and earliest recollections of him were when, as
a boy, I was placed in his class in the Sabbath school of the
First Presbyterian church of the city of Detroit. He was then
one of the active young men of that church, earnestly engaged
in all church-work.
He took no active part in political life until 1851, when he
was elected mayor of Detroit. In 1857 he was elected Senator
in place of General Lewis Cass, re-elected in 1863, and again
in 1869. He was Senator continuously from 1857 to 1875,
eighteen years. He was appointed Secretary of the Interior
in October, 1875, and again elected to the Senate in 1879.
During his senatorial terms occurred some of the most memo
rable events in the history of this nation.
Looking back now, it is easy to see how, step by step, the
United States was gradually drawing nearer and nearer to the
most tremendous struggle of ancient or modern times, to that
crime of crimes, a civil war. In all the events that go to
make up the history of those years, Mr. CHANDLER was one
of the living, energetic actors.
The gradual extension of slave territory in the United States
was arousing the attention, the crimes perpetrated under the
code of slavery were raising to the pitch of horror the religious
and moral sentiment, not only of the people of the United
States, but of the world. The Kansas civil war was swelling
70
ADDRESS OF MR. NEWBERRY ON THE
and raising its portentous head on the western frontier. Old
John Brown and his hardy sharpshooters in Kansas were
educating themselves and the nation to a hatred of slavery
and the extension of slave territory. Free speech, free terri
tory, and free men was being raised as the war-cry of a great
political uprising. After events showed that Mr. CHANDLER
had given these matters close attention.
There was filibustering in Cuba and in Nicaragua by the
South in hopes of making slave States to offset the rapid
growth of the free States of the Northwest. Threats of resist
ance and secession were openly made by the South. The
crack of the slave- whip was heard even in Congress over the
heads of independent men from the North. The doctrine that
any citizen with his slaves had a right to enter upon any ter
ritory of the United States and retain his slaves, called squat
ter sovereignty, was convulsing the land. The atrocious
Lecompton act was passed. The fugitive-slave law, with all
its attendant horrors, was being enforced, and Northern States
passed acts to protect the liberty of their colored citizens.
Like a flash of lightning from a clear sky came the attack of
John Brown and his army of ten or fifteen men on Harper's
Ferry, in Virginia ; and the whole South was thrown into a
paroxysm of terror through fear of a servile war.
Upon all these subjects Mr. CHANDLER had given his views
to the nation in the Senate.
The democratic convention at Charleston followed in May,
1860. The war of factions — the South against the North— was
the fatal wedge that then and there disrupted the old demo
cratic party. Substantially the opening gun of the rebellion
was fired by that convention, and its echoes have never ceased
to reverberate to this day in the democratic party. From that
fatal day in Charleston events rapidly hastened to war, actual
LIFE AND CHARACTER OP ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 71
war. Abraham Lincoln was elected President, and traitorous
hands were busy, traitorous hearts were plotting, to betray,
break down, and destroy this Government.
A Secretary of the Treasury utterly uprooted the credit of
the Government and substantially made it a bankrupt. A Sec
retary of War sold its cannon and guns and shipped them to
southern arsenals, and sent its effective Army to out-of-the-
way places on the distant frontier. A Secretary of the Navy
sold our ships and naval stores and ammunition, sent loyal
officers to sea in rotten, unseaworthy hulks, and scattered the
serviceable ships and vessels to our most distant stations. An
Attorney-General advised the President that he could not use
force against a State. A Chief Justice refused to issue war
rants to arrest traitors. Every Department was demoralized
or in traitorous hands.
Lincoln was inaugurated, and then came the first gun of
actual war at Sumter.
Through all these stormy scenes CHANDLER was ever and
always watchful, ready, alert, brave, and outspoken.
In the debates and stormy scenes of the Senate he took his
full share both of responsibility and debate. Long before his
"blood-letting letter" he had warned the southern Senators
that their actions meant, for them, revolution or a halter. He
denounced the Lecompton act, the fugitive-slave bill, and the
prosecutions under it. His painting of the Kansas horrors,
burnings, whippings, and tortures of men and women who
dared advocate free speech and free Territories for freemen,
will stand with the tremendous philippics of the old Greek
and Roman orators and statesmen. But time will fail me to
enumerate all his labors.
During the civil war and the years of reconstruction follow
ing, his great business experience, his grand executive ability,
72 ADDRESS OF MB. NEWBERRY ON THE
his almost prophetic foresight, his extraordinary sagacity and
wisdom in the conduct of affairs brought him to the front.
His judgment in regard to one of the noted generals in com
mand of the Army of the Potomac showed his wonderful
sagacity and decision of character, and the strong reliance he
had upon the great under-curreuts of popular opinion and
wisdom to justify his action. He denounced this general, and
in the most positive manner charged him with failure as a mili
tary commander and as utterly incompetent to conduct suc
cessfully a great campaign. This charge, made and substan
tially proved in the Senate and before the country, resulted in
a change of commanders of the Union Army, and, as a further
result, final victory. It was sought subsequently to reverse
this decision by an appeal to the people of the country in a
presidential campaign, but the result showed that CHANDLER
was right, and his action, as proper and patriotic, was triumph
antly vindicated by the nation, and the removed general be
came the defeated presidential candidate.
With the close of the war came another class of legislation,
and here, as everywhere else, CHANDLER'S clear-headed busi
ness experience and ready facility of grasping details and
/ grouping principles and reaching successfully the end came
into play. There were reconstruction acts and financial acts
of stupendous magnitude to be considered, revenues in un
heard-of amounts to be collected, taxation to be adjusted, and
amounts to be raised that staggered the most sanguine;
a nation of freed men to be raised to the standard of citi
zens, a race of slaves to be educated to understand the
rights and duties and obligations of freemen; banking and
loan acts, legal-tender and currency acts; treaties to be re
newed ; new relations with foreign nations to be entered into,
old relations to be strengthened ; international and constitu-
, r
,/ /:'.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAII CHANDLER. tfV
^ j
tional questions, new and old, arising out of a war unheard'' oft .
'/
in its magnitude and astounding as to its results, to be settled; '
wounded soldiers to be eared for; an army to be disbanded;
the Southern States to be rehabilitated; amendments of the
Constitution to be adjusted to the changed condition of the
people ; in a word, the autonomy of the nation was to be re
established. All these and a thousand other subjects had to
be and were considered by him apparently with equal ease,
and the proceedings of the Senate will show his participation
from day to day in them all.
The great men whose names are linked with the history of
the civil war and the rehabilitation of the nation are fast pass
ing away. Lincoln, Seward, Chase, Stanton, Greeley, Wilson,
Simmer, Morton, and now ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, have van
ished from the scenes, and in all the records of history and
the memories of those still remaining must rest their glorious
fame.
From Senator CHANDLER'S first entrance into public life
he was always the vigorous, rapid, sledge-hammer dealer of
telling blows — no fears or quaking as to results. When the
blow was delivered it was straight from the shoulder, vigorous
•
and effective, delivered because he believed it necessary, and
without thinking of the tremendous effect of the stroke.
To the looker-on often the effect was not immediately ap
parent ; it did not seem much of a blow ; but the next day,
the next week, the next month the effect would be manifest.
Men would be talking of his power ; and a little speech of ten
minutes would be printed in every newspaper, talked of on
every corner, read at every fireside, in the city, in the country,
on the mountain, in the valley, on the plain, in the palace,
down among the miners, up among the woodmen, in the draw
ing-room of the swift-rolling express train, in the forecastle of
10 c
74 ADDRESS OF MR. NEWBERRY ON THE
the fast-speeding ocean steamer, in the pulpit, in the pew, on
the rostrum, on the stage, rousing the laggard, encouraging
the timid, emboldening the brave, nerving the patriotic, strik
ing terror to the traitor.
One element of his power was in his use of clear Anglo-
Saxon words, meaning exactly what he said and saying exactly
what he meant, and doing it so clearly that each hearer knew
he was but crystallizing into thought and expression the ex
act floating idea in his own mind in the words that ought to
be used.
He had a masterly way of using plain words for plain peo
ple, with plain meaning. He used no tricks of rhetoric, no
flowers of speech, no studied expression, no graceful gesture.
They would have been utterly out of place with him. But his
facts would be true and telling — his speech rough-hewed but
strong, his gestures ungainly but powerful. He was listened
to by his friends because of their love ; listened to by his ene
mies because his power compelled their attention. Warm,
positive, and magnetic to his friends, he was stern, unyielding,
aggressive in the presence of his enemies ; always, however,
battling for the right as he believed it. Firm and steadfast
in his convictions, with him the contest must go on until he
was victorious.
As he was always ready to give blows, so he could receive
them.
The story is told of him, that amid the exciting scenes pre
ceding the withdrawal of senatorial traitors in 1861, when some
of them, goaded to madness by his merciless accusation of
traitors, turned, and with fiery southern eloquence hurled sting
ing epithets and bloody threats and words of frenzied fury at
him, he sat with a smile of scorn and derision, looking them
steadily in the face, as though he heard them not but pitied
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 75
their agonized emotions. Afterward, on being asked why he
did not reply, he said, "Let ine tell you a story." Holding his
hands in front of him with his two thumbs together, he said,
"Do you see, one of my thumbs is shorter than the other,
twisted and broken. Well, once driving a yoke of oxen in my
younger days, I got very mad at one of them, and raved and
tore around considerably, and finally as the ox did not seem
to care much about it, in my rage I struck him as hard as pos
sible with my fist, thinking to break a rib at least. The sturdy
old ox shifted his cud from one side to the other, looked around
at me very quietly, whisked his tail gently, as though a fly was
tickling him — while I was just howling with a broken thumb.
So," the Senator concluded, " it often happens that the man
who supposes he is giving some one else a stunning blow finds
he has only broken his own thumb."
When Mr. CHANDLER first appeared in the national poli
tical arena in 1856 he announced himself as a candidate for
Senator. General Cass, whose term was about to expire,
looked at the audacious young man with undisguised disdain,
and was not slow to express his contempt for the " young man
who," he said, " might know how to measure calico and tape,
sell needles and thread, buj was not fit to take his place in the
council of the nation," and added, "we will remit him to his
counter." One can imagine the expression of countenance
with which, in language more strong than polite, young CHAN
DLER replied, "General Cass will find that he spelled his own
name without a C when he made that remark." From that
moment there was, on the part of the coming Senator, con
stant, steady, hard work to one end, and when the Legisla
ture assembled Mr. CHANDLER was elected and General Cass
relegated to private life.
In character and in person Mr. CHANDLER was like a granite
76 ADDRESS OF MR. NEWBERRY ON THE
block struck from the rugged mountains of his native State ;
rough-hewn, with jagged corners here and there, but solid,
strong. His power of resistance to wrong or injustice, when
ever or whence it might come, his capability of sus'aining any
load, his power to carry and readiness to assume any responsi
bility made necessary by his position, was that of the granite
rock always. His public life contains no instance of failure.
Friends and patriots could unhesitatingly rely upon his help,
assistance, and counsels to sustain the nation and its defend
ers. Enemies and traitors to his last day could rest assured
that he was watchful and ready to interfere between them and
injury or insult to the nation or the soldiers of the Union. To
him traitors were a concrete, ever-present reality, not an ab
stract, far-away entity. The definition of treason in the Con
stitution of his country had a personal, pointed application to
individuals. Its clear-cut definition, "Treason against the
United States shall consist only in levying war against them
or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort,"
his mind instantly applied personally, and a citizen of the
United States who made war against his own country was a
traitor, not an "erring brother," or one who had only been en
gaged in " some unpleasantness." An unrepentant rebel was
a traitor ever and always.
Yet, no one was more ready than he to receive heartily any
one desirous of returning to his allegiance to his flag and his
country.
The great leader of the rebellion, who, with the oath of alle
giance almost warm upon his lips, went out from the Senate of
the United States, where he had given his pledge of loyalty
to the Government, ay, his own Government, freely and volun
tarily, with hand upraised to heaven, and calling God to wit
ness his truth, to levy war against the United States, which
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAII CHANDLER. 77
act the Constitution had declared treason, was to him a trai
tor, whose name should never be enrolled on the roll of
honor — the pension- roll of the patriotic, loyal, maimed, and
wounded soldiers of the Union Army. CHANDLER'S last
speech in the Senate went to the hearts of his countrymen,
and will live with those of the distinguished orators and patriots
of the early days of the Republic.
That there was one man, at least, in the Senate of the United
States who dared to lift an indignant voice for patriots and
patriotism, and against traitors and treason, gladdened the
hearts and strengthened the hands of millions of citizens. The
distinction between right and wrong, between loyal citizens
and rebels, between patriots and traitors, seemed to be fast
dying out, till a few burning words, in a midnight session,
forced out of his inmost heart by insulting wrong, went like a
zigzag stroke of lightning through the wordy sophisms, and
revealed to an indignant people the insult that was being at
tempted to laud, country, flag, and all the patriotic impulses
of the nation.
It is said that the eagle, when the storm arises, the light
nings flash, and thunders roll, and heavy winds and black por
tentous clouds are rushing through the heavens, spreads his
broad wings and soars above the storm. Thus it was with our
dead friend. When peril threatened the country, when disas
ter spread ruin and desolation, when men's hearts failed from
fear, CHANDLER rose above the storm, scanned the ruin, the
disaster, the peril and dismay, grasped the situation, mastered
it in all its details, and calmly and quietly led the way to safety.
lie was a born commander and leader of men — a power that
would and could and did overcome all obstacles. In the calm
or in the storm, in the whirlwind or in the tempest, always and
ever self-poised, cool, daring, positive, ready for action. lie
78 ADDRESS OP MR. NEWBERRY ON THE
was not the light-house to show others the way ; he was the dar
ing navigator who, when the light went out and rocks on either
hand, could seize the helm and convey the ship safely into port.
Earely has this country been so thoroughly shocked as it
was on the morning of November 1, 1879, when the lightning
flashed through the land —
Senator CHANDLER was found dead in his bed this morning.
The air had been full of his utterances; the papers loaded
with the closing speeches of this honest-hearted, earnest-
minded old man in the campaign then ending. His last
speech but one was made, and the flash, " he is dead," came
with the stunning effect of a blow.
Never so well known, never so earnest, never so admired
and loved and appreciated by his friends ; never so powerful
against, hated, and feared by his enemies ; but with harness on,
his steady, manly voice ringing in the ears of his countrymen,
he went down as the warrior in the shock of battle; ay, and at
the very moment of anticipated victory, although the shout of
actual victory he was never again to hear in this world.
Farewell to thee ! illustrious statesman, with a lion's heart !
Farewell to thee! uncompromising patriot, with a true soul!
Farewell to thee ! indefatigable worker, with an iron frame J
Farewell to thee ! undaunted friend, with a faithful breast !
Farewell to" thee ! loyal citizen, with patriotic impulses !
Farewell to thee ! stalwart politician, intrepid counselor,
Fearless adviser, genial companion !
We mourn for thee! A Senator without reproach;
A man without stain ;
A soul above suspicion.
" The air is thick with death. His flying shafts
Strike down to-day the bravest in the land ;
And here and there, how suddenly he wafts
His fatal arrows ! Nor can long withstand
The mailed warrior, or the statesman manned,
Against him. But why should he hasten on
* * * * to strike one down
Just in the zenith of his strength and glory of renown T
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAH CHANDLER.
79
" CHANDLER! above thy grave wo bow in tears!
The generous friend, the unrelenting foe,
In halls of state who stood for many years,
Like fableil knight, thy visage all aglow!
Receiving, giving sternly, blow for blow !
*••••••
" Champion of right! But from eternity's far shore
Thy spirit will return to join the strife no more.
Rest, statesman, rest! Thy troubled life is o'er."
Address of Mr. WILLIAMS, of Wisconsin.
Mr. SPEAKER : The largest tree in the forest sometimes
breaks the stillness of the day by the suddenness of its fall :
so ZACHARIAH CHANDLER startled a continent when he went
down to death ! Thirty-six hours before he died he was the
guest of my own city. He spoke there, both in the afternoon
and evening, each time to a large concourse of people. He
retired at twelve o'clock, and rested well through the night.
Many of our citizens bade him good-bye at the early train for
Chicago ; and little did they think as the cars rolled out into
the light of that beautiful morning that it was the last he was
ever to behold on earth ! Yet so it was, for within twenty-
one hours thereafter he was dead.
I think only those who saw him during these last hours of
his life could realize the suddenness of his death. Though the
grim messenger walked beside him, no shadow fell upon his
pathway. His thoughts were all of life; he could scarcely
have been thinking of the possibilities of death ; his every act
and energy was devoted to the work before him ; he talked of
nothing else, and apparently he thought of nothing else.
He was the avant courier of republicanism. His voice had
rung out from Maine to Wisconsin. He had moved the people
by the potency of his presence and the earnestness of his ap-
80 ADDRESS OF MR. WILLIAMS ON THE
peals. He believed that national destiny itself trembled in
the balance, and he imparted this belief to the masses where-
ever he went, for they knew that his heart was in his work
and his convictions were in his words.
Amid scenes like these it could hardly have been possible
that he had a thought of what was to come. He could scarcely
have dreamed that while yet the plaudits of thousands were
ringing in his ears he was to meet, in the heart of that great
city, in the dead hour of the night, in the silent loneliness of
his room, that dread messenger, who gave no warning and
accepted no delay ; yet so it was, for he awoke only from the
sleep of life to sink back again in the sleep of death.
No, Mr. Speaker, none but those who remember the earnest
manner and pathetic voice with which he besought the chair
man of each successive meeting to telegraph him at Detroit on
the night of the election the result of the contest can realize
the overmastering interest which had taken possession of him.
The news he so longed to hear did indeed flash along the wires,
but whether it died out in the darkness of that shoreless sea,
or whether it penetrated the mystic regions of the great be
yond, no word ever comes back to tell us.
We who speak of ZACHARIAH CHANDLER here to-day must
speak of him as he was, for he never feared to speak for him
self. And his words will be cherished and remembered when
ours are lost and forgotten. No flowers of rhetoric, no high-
wrought historic parallels, no half-drawn apologies for what he
was or what he did, will do for him.
He was a plain, blunt man. He was combative, he was aggress
ive, and in what he believed to be right he was relentless. He
was a man of the people, he was a friend of the poor, he loved
liberty, he hated oppression, he abhorred treason, and he detested
hypocrisy. He was a partisan, he was a patriot, he was a hero !
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAII CHANDLER. 81
Like tbe oak he resembled, he was reared iii storms and
rocked in tempests. Strong and massive in body, he was
stronger in will ; firm in principles, he was formidable in argu
ment ; quick to see the salient points of a question, he brought
his broad common sense to bear upon it, and not infrequently
by a single sally ho broke through and demolished a whole
battle-line of sophistry. Who can ever forget the expression
of that face, or the instantaneous effect produced upon thou
sands, when from the rostrum he put that one question :
If this is not a government, what did the rebels surrender to at Appo-
mattoxT I tell you, my friends, they surrendered to the Government of the
United States of America!
Or when, on that memorable night, in the Senate of the
United States he made that terrific onslaught which startled
both sides of the Chamber and roused the whole country,
what member even of the opposition who did not feel the
force of what he said? In the language of Mr. Webster, it
was one of those outbursts of passion and power which, if
they come at all, come "like the outbreaking of a fountain
from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with
spontaneous, original, native force ! "
This was the secret of Mr. CHANDLER'S power. His methods
were clear and practical, his reasoning synthetic, and his at
tacks spontaneous and irresistible. While others were exam
ining the bricks and mortar in the structure, and carefully
calculating the resistance to be overcome, he selected his
point of attack, and with a crowbar and sledge breached the
walls, and carried the citadel by storm.
Savants and philosophers may style these methods crude
and Western, but while the names of Douglas, Morton, and
CHANDLER live the people will believe them to possess an innate
force which all the learning of the schools cannot give.
11 o
82 ADDRESS OF ME. WILLIAMS ON THE
The opinion is often expressed that certain very good and
competent men are holding back a political millennium by
their persistent refusal to accept office and enter upon public
life. Somebody has ungraciously said of such, that they were
made up of two parts of selfishness and two of timidity. I
know not how the fact may be, but if it be true, ZACHARIAH
CHANDLER did not belong to this class. He never took
counsel either of his selfishness or his fears. He was not
possessed of that happy temperament which enabled him
to stand quietly by while aggressive wrong was crushing
out defenseless right.
By the very nature of his make-up, he was forced to enter
the arena. And thus he met all the malignity, denunciation,
and abuse which ever come to the earnest, the faithful, and
the true. Yet nothing could dissuade him. The critical might
carp, the mediocre patronize, and the malign scoff and deride,
but all the pigmies of earth and sky could not stay the daunt
less old hero in the work he had marked out for himself. To
such a man the holding of civil office was the merest incident
in the world ; for whether in public or private life he was
the natural defender of the people.
That Mr. CHANDLER was intense and bitter, that he some
times wrongly suspicioned the motives and acts of others, is
only to say that he belonged to the class of positive men ; but
that under it all there was a broad and generous sincerity and
a heart as tender as a child's none who knew him need to be
told. He was, indeed, in earnest; but if any supposed his
earnestness took on only the cold malignity of hate, they
studied his character to but little purpose. I could only
claim to know him as we all knew him here, yet I do not care
to be told that he was moved by other than the loftiest and
purest motives.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 83
Only the night but one before he died, in my own house, in
common with others, I saw that firm lip quiver and those stern
eyes moisten as he recounted the measureless wrongs which
had been visited upon the poor freedmen of the South ; and I
believe mortal man was never actuated by higher or holier mo
tives than he when he swore by the God that made him that
he would never bate one jot nor tittle of effort until these mon
strous wrongs should be righted.
I allude to these things here in no partisan spirit, for that
should be banished from these halls to-day; but I speak of
them only to bo just to him in his grave, as he was just and
fearless before all the world. And I feel sure that could he
have left any injunction behind, it would have been : " If you
speak of me at all, in the language of sacred song, speak of
me—
Just as I am."
Burke I think it was who said that true sentiment was the
logic of common sense. Such, I think, was the sentiment of
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. It was plain, practical, and direct.
No more touching provisions can be found in the wills
of public men than in those of Thaddeus Stevens and Mr.
CHANDLER. While the former made no provision for the
care of his own grave, he set aside a sum of money and di
rected that the " sexton keep his mother's grave in good order,
and plant roses and other cheerful flowers at its four corners
every spring."
So Mr. CHANDLER, with just words enough to express his
meaning, said, in effect, to his wife and daughter, " You are
my only heirs ; as you have loved and trusted me, so I love
and confide in you. I lay my fortune at your feet, and that
you may be unfettered in its enjoyment and use, I relieve it
from any word coming back from the grave."
84 ADDRESS OF MR. HUBBELL ON THE
Could affection be more tender? Could confidence be more
complete? Where shall the well-springs of the human heart
be better studied than in the wills of these two remarkable
men?
Impartial history will assign Mr. CHANDLER his proper
place in the ranks of America's public men. We cannot do
that here to-day. It may, however, be safely said that if Sew-
ard, Chase, and Sumner might draft the plans for the fabric
of freedom, Wade, Stevens, and CHANDLER might lay its foun
dations and lift its walls to completion. Noble trio! How
fiercely they wrought; how well they triumphed.
The last of them now sleeps on the banks of the river he
loved so fondly. And to-day Wisconsin comes with her fos
ter-mother, Michigan, to lay a garland upon his grave. He
loved to tell us that the boundaries of his own county of
Wayne once embraced both our States. Eepresentatives of
Michigan, your loss is our loss ; and over our common calamity
a nation grieves to-day. We come to mingle our tears with
yours, and to utter the fervent prayer that he who sleeps
so near your metropolis may rest in peace so long as that city
shall stand — yea, so long as the waters that roll by it flow out
ward to the sea.
Address of Mr. HUBBELL, of Michigan.
Mr. SPEAKER : It is said that "death loves a shining mark,
a signal blow." Than in ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, whose death
to-day we mourn in common with the whole patriotic people
of the nation, the "fell sergeant" has had few more brilliant
marks, has struck few nobler lives, and the Eepublic has had
to mourn no more useful citizen, no more upright or purer
patriot.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 85
Mr. CHANDLER was a native of New England. He was
born at Bedford, in the State of New Hampshire, December
10, 1813; in the State which gave birth to and molded the
character of Daniel Webster; in the land of strong convic
tions, of sterling integrity, of uncompromising patriotism, and
inflexible devotion to freedom. Here in his native State,
building up a vigorous frame and robust health among its
granite hills — here amid its noble associations and grand in
stitutions of learning ; amid a people rejoicing in their revo
lutionary history — in its perils and privations and its glories
and triumphs — loving freedom and hating oppression, ZACH-
ARIAH CHANDLER imbibed those rigid principles of justice,
that invincible love of freedom and of country, that incor
ruptible integrity which he transplanted in his new home in
the then "far West," and which distinguished every act of
his public life, and in support of which he died literally in
harness.
In his home in Michigan, the State of his adoption, these
sterling qualities were combined with and regulated by an
intelligence and sagacity so rarely at fault as to enable him
to amass an ample fortune, place him at the head of the busi
ness men of the State, and soon point him out as a man of
mark, as a man of rare and genuine merit, of great force of
character, of intrepid courage and sterling worth, and won
for him the respect, confidence, and enduring love of its people.
No man was ever trusted in public or private life as was
ZACHARIAH CHANDLER by the people of Michigan, and no
man ever ended a public career against whose integrity less
could be said.
No position in their gift, however high or responsible, no
honor, however great, was too high for his merits or too great
for their love. Thus in 1851 he was mayor of Detroit; in
86 ADDRESS OP ME. HUBBELL ON THE
1852 the whig candidate for governor ; in 1857, a Senator of
the United States; in 1863, re-elected as Senator; in 1869,
again re-elected; and again in 1879. In 1875 he was given
by President Grant the portfolio of the Interior. In every
trust he acquitted .himself honorably, fearlessly, ably, and re
turned it impressed with the marks of his genius.
In nothing, indeed, was Mr. CHANDLER an ordinary man.
As a husband and a father and a friend, ever faithful, trust
ing, and true, his great, manly heart delighted in exhibitions
of the tenderest devotion. He never abandoned a friend, and
was ever truest and most devoted to him in the hour of his
misfortune or trials. He was not a place-seeker nor a time-
server ; but he was a lover of his country and a hater of its
enemies, and always filled to the measure the place he occu
pied; and being a man of strong convictions and dauntless
courage the enemies of his country always felt his presence,
and were never spared his bitterest invectives.
Mr. Speaker, I knew Mr. CHANDLER intimately. He was
to me a "friend, philosopher, and guide," and I should be
unjust to his memory did I not speak of him as he was — a man
who always acted his honest convictions without regard to or
fear of the consequences.
As a Cabinet minister, with the portfolio of the most com
plicated and troublesome Department of the Government,
noted for its intrigues and scandals, the Interior, with its im
portant divisions and the intricate and delicate character of
many of their important duties very difficult to comprehend
and to intelligently manage, and rendered doubly so by out
side combinations for the promotion of private advantage and
fraud — in that responsible and difficult trust, his masterly
executive ability, his great common sense, his disciplined busi
ness habits, his integrity, his wonderful industry, his intuitive
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAII CHANDLKR. 87
knowledge of men and their motives, and his great courage
and nerve rendered his administration such a marked success
that his able and accomplished successor publicly admitted
that his ambition was to leave the Department in as good
shape as he received it. He never parleyed with men whom
he believed to be dishonest. To illustrate his blunt and direct
methods, pardon an anecdote : Soon after he took charge of
the Interior Department, I met him here in Washington and
the usual salutations had hardly passed between us when he
said: "I have been reforming in the Interior Department to
day." And in reply to my query as to what he had done he
replied: " I have emptied one large room and left it in charge
of a colored porter, who has the key, who cannot read or write,
and who is instructed to allow no one to enter it without my
orders, and I am under the impression that the public inter
ests are safe so far as that room and its business are concerned
until I can find some honest men to put into it." A further
conversation developed the fact that by plain business meth
ods he had collected his proofs, and thus armed he could only
deal a deadly blow. Thus early he mastered all the intricate
and difficult details of the service; early he clearly compre
hended its needs and vigorously and laboriously applied him
self to their practical accomplishment. In short, he estab
lished order where chaos previously ruled, reorganized details,
secured efficiency, and effected a due responsibility in all the
branches of the service.
Honest himself, he tolerated no doubtful practices, no im
proper relations in the Department. Fraud vanished at his
touch. Incoinpetency and imbecility met their reward, and
he transmitted the portfolio to his successor with the Depart
ment purged of many injurious scandals, and the service, in
all its details, greatly simplified and improved.
88
ADDRESS OF MR. HU33BELL ON THE
As a Senator, Borne, in the days of her highest virtue and
greatest strength, had none nobler, purer, or more fearless.
Entering the Senate during the stormy debates and violent
struggles of the sections on the question of slavery, Mr. CHAN
DLER stepped at once to the front as a recognized and trusted
leader on the side of freedom. The times were full of peril,
and terribly tested all the metal in men's souls. But during
that struggle, in debate, from 1857 until 1860, carried on on
the one side by patriotic, liberty-loving men, who hated slav
ery and antagonized it because they dreaded its extension,
and on the other by men who worshiped slavery, were bound
to extend and perpetuate it or destroy the common govern
ment inherited from the fathers, who recognized the code, and
under its bloody rules tried to intimidate the representatives
of the people from the Northern States in the discharge of
their duties, no man ever did or will say that ZACHARIAH
CHANDLER ever faltered in the discharge of his duty as he
saw it. He abhorred the code, condemned alike by the laws
of man and of God, yet while in the discharge of his public
trusts it had no terrors for him, and never caused him for a
moment to falter in the full and complete performance of his
duties.
It is not my purpose here to enter into that memorable de
bate upon the question of slavery and the rights of the States
which preceded and culminated in the war of the rebellion,
more than to say that Mr. CHANDLER'S sagacity readily pen
etrated the designs of the southern leaders, readily saw that
slavery was only a means to the consummation of their pur
pose — the disruption of the Union. Indignantly and vehe
mently he raised his voice in exposure of this traitorous plot.
He was " no orator as Brutus " was. He apparently despised
all mere ornaments of speech, but in his vigorous, terse En-
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAH CHANDLER. 89
glish he left no doubt as to his meaning and purpose. And
thus he fearlessly labored everywhere and on all occasions to
arouse the country to a sense of the impending danger, and to
prepare it for a conflict of arms in support of the Union. He
had no faith in compromise, but felt that the inevitable and
deadly conflict must come, and tried to prepare his countrymen
for it. The events which rapidly followed demonstrated the
wisdom as they did the justice of his conclusions and his
course. The rebellion came upon us with its appalling sacri
fices and sufferings and uwfully vindicated his sagacity and
the justice of his charges against the southern leaders.
Great names and great men, so called, unless distinguished
by worth and patriotic motives and corresponding actions,
received from him no homage. His country to him was all in
all. Every patriotic man he claimed as a friend, and to every
patriot, to all patriots, of every grade or character, if their
sincerity were demonstrated by works, he yielded his whole
support, all his weight and influence.
But the man who laid himself down in the pathway of his
country's honor and glory, the man who, whether from imbe
cility or design, obstructed or impeded his country's triumph
ant march to victory, to perfect and permanent peace, to that
man ZACHARIAH CHANDLER was an inflexible foe, and to him
he fearlessly proclaimed his hostility.
As a member of the Committee on the Conduct of the War
he was active, terribly in earnest, and untiring in industry,
and rendered to the nation the most important services. No
name, however high, baffled his inquiries or escaped his judg
ment.
Notwithstanding he had regarded McClellan's appointment
as wise and judicious, yet, for reasons already made a part of
our country's history, he boldly arraigned him in the face of
12 c
90 ADDRESS OF MR. HUBBELL ON THE
the country, in the teeth of his great popularity and the great
power he wielded in command of the armies, as utterly incom
petent for the weighty duties of his high position, and de
manded his removal, as justified by the highest reasons of ex
pediency and the loftiest motives of patriotism.
Believing that Pope, at second Bull Bun, was sacrificed by
Fitz-John Porter, and that our loss of life and disaster at that
battle was caused by Porter's insubordination, he boldly de
nounced him as a traitor to his country and demanded his trial
and punishment.
Against all men whom he believed to be untrue to his
country in her hour of peril, his great patriotic heart instinct
ively rebelled, and they were made the victims of his terrible
denunciations.
The war of the rebellion ended, Mr. CHANDLER took a
prominent part in that legislation which reconstructed the
States in rebellion and gave them representation in the halls
of Congress, and here as elsewhere his career was marked by
the same distinguishing traits of character.
Coming into the Senate again in 1878, he immediately
stepped to the front and the country knew that plain, honest
old ZACH. CHANDLER, as they loved to call him, was again in
his seat, and the democratic party, which he never loved, was
made painfully aware of his presence. Stripping the guise of
flimsy pretexts from off the reasons actuating the men who
forced the extra session, he sounded the key-note of alarm —
the bugle-call of the campaign of 1879, in which he labored
day and night, closing his great work in one of the ablest
and grandest speeches of his life in the Garden City of
America, where, ere the dawn of day succeeded his great
effort, he died. The life of a great, earnest, honest, and broad-
souled man went silently out with the watches of the night,
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. ^ , 91
%
and in his death the Republic mourns an upright and useful
citizen, a noble Senator, a peerless patriot, and humanity an
abiding friend. Apparently in robust health, in the vigorous
exercise of all his great faculties, peacefully and serenely,
without a struggle and free from pain, his noble spirit sank
into the "blind cave of eternal night," passed triumphantly
from the active scenes and duties of worldly life to the judg
ment-seat of his God.
Thus yields the cedar to the ax's edge,
Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle ;
Under whose shade the ramping liou slept;
Whoso top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree,
And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind.
But, though dead, he is not forgotten. In every patriot's
home, in the home of every friend of humanity, of every
friend of freedom and free institutions, his name will long be
cherished with endearing pride, and history in recording his
actions, in reviewing his services to his country and to man
kind, and in its judgment of hie character, will as surely rank
him high among the good and great men of his times.
Peace to his ashes.
Address of Mr. CRAPO, of Massachusetts.
Mr. SPEAEER: The life of ZACHARIAH CHANDLER is a
marked illustration of that character which is developed by
our American institutions and which is distinctly American.
In no other country and under no other system of society and
laws do we look for the manifestation of such individual
growth and power. Starting from the humble surroundings
of a New England farm, with the limited advantages of a
plain and simple country home, with the training of the un-
92 ADDRESS OF MR. CRAPO ON THE
pretending fireside and village school, he emerges into self-
reliant manhood. Then follow the struggles of life amid the
activities and hardships of a western settlement; the compe
titions of business, bringing substantial rewards; the contests
for higher position, while holding securely the advances made;
the reaching out for wider influence and greater mastery over
the thoughts and acts of men; and, finally, the control and
power which made him a recognized leader and a mighty force
in the land. With no external advantages to aid him, he
overcame obstacles and conquered opposition and secured for
himself commanding position and influence. He was con
scious of his own inherent strength ; he knew that he lived in
a country full of opportunities to the earnest and faithful man ;
and he realized that in this free land men have equal right to
place and wealth and power if they have will and strength to*
win them. He asked no odds and he accepted no gifts. What
he was and what he possessed came as the result and reward
of his own personal efforts. He did not drift into high posi
tions, but earned them by sheer exertion and force of char
acter. His history is the record of a successful man, and we
can find few more impressive examples, even in this country
which is so full of personal achievements.
In private life Mr. CHANDLER was bluff", hearty, and sincere.
He was outspoken with the candor of positive truth. He did
not conceal his admiration of one whom he liked, and he was
equally open in the expression of disapprobation of one he dis
liked. He was frank and generous in his approval, and he
was equally free and severe in his condemnation. There was
an integrity in his friendship and an earnestness in his recog
nition of friends which endeared him to those who knew him
intimately.
The personal qualities which marked his private intercourse
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 93
were still more conspicuous in bis public life. There was
always the same positiveness of manner and speech. His
large frame, his vigorous health, and commanding presence
were not more remarkable than the robustness of his mind,
his stout heart, his stalwart courage, and resistless energy.
His political opinions were formed during the controversies
of the Missouri compromise and the attempt to establish
slavery in Kansas. He entered public life just as the strug
gle for national supremacy was culminating into war. He re
garded it as a question of liberty or slavery, of national unity
or its dismemberment. He saw with clear vision the terrible
magnitude of the issue, and this made him a partisan. It was
impossible for him with his consciousness and convictions to
be otherwise than a partisan. He was intensely in earnest.
He feared southern aggression, and unceasingly fought it; he
detested disloyalty, and was bold in his discoveries of it; he
abhorred the rebellion with intolerant hatred, and labored for
its destruction. He would grant no concession where he be
lieved the principle was vital, and, however hot or bitter, or
uncertain the fight, he neither gave nor asked for quarter.
During the dark days of war his heart never faltered and his
voice never trembled. He exacted the utmost fidelity and dili
gence from those who supported the Union cause, and had little
respect or charity for those who brought failure to its arms. His
watchfulness and aggressiveness did not cease with the war.
When conciliation seemed to have failed, and the old strife, which
it was supposed had been buried on the battle-field, was revived
in Congress, Mr. CHANDLER naturally came to the front, and
with the same defiant courage of opinion which gave him master
influence during the war, he proclaimed in the Senate, and before
the people, the dangers which threatened the peace and good or
der of the nation, in language which could not be misunderstood.
94 ADDRESS OF MR. CRAPO ON THE
Perhaps in a less turbulent period of our history Mr.
CHANDLER would not have occupied so prominent a place.
He was not a great statesman, but he was needed in an
exigency, and most nobly did he meet the requirement. No
man better understood the patriotic impulses of the people,
and no man had greater power in expressing and arousing
popular sentiment. He was in sympathy with the masses;
he had an intense sense of justice between man and man; he
estimated men according to their true worth; he never stood
upon his dignity, nor by word or manner indicated any per
sonal superiority. The coarse dress and rough manner did
not repel him, but every man, however plain or humble, was
at ease in his presence. He stood nearer to the people and
had a stronger hold upon them than any other Senator.
The secret of his success and his control of the popular
mind may be found in his sincerity, his intensity, his con
stancy, and his directness. There was no deceit in his nature.
You were never left in doubt about his views, and, what is
more, he was never in doubt himself. You always knew where
v to find him. He used vigorous Saxon. His utterances were
plain and terse. His illustrations, although sometimes extrav
agant, were full of rugged meaning, and what they lacked in
elegance was made up in force. Whatever he said he meant
should be understood just as he said it.
There was nothing negative about him. His policy was
never timid nor vacillating. However great the responsi
bility, he never hesitated to assume it, but he always went to
the front. It was this positive, aggressive, uncompromising
spirit which gave him leadership and enabled him to infuse
courage into men of less boldness. He was impatient of oppo
sition, and as ready to condemn his own party associates as
his opponents when their policy was at variance with his own.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 95
Mr. CHANDLER was not free from faults, and he never at
tempted their concealment. Every one knew what manner of
man he was. He made no claim to greatness, nor to any
special merit. The men who denounced him as a bitter par
tisan, and who threw stones of hate and ridicule against him,
even now, before the period of passionate strife in which he
was an actor has entirely passed away, have acknowledged
his virtues.
His personal integrity, his resistless energy, his burning
patriotism, his rugged frankness, and his fearless devotion to
duty, made him conspicuous in the legislation of the country
and in the councils of his party.
He died with the harness on, in the mid day of his fame and
usefulness, actively participating with all the fervor of his
nature in the struggle which he believed of vital consequence
to his countrymen.
We cannot but admire the character of a man who "was the
architect of his own fortune," and who, under a beneficent and
free governim nt, which gives equal advantages to all, relying
upon his own brave heart and strong arm and indomitable
will, won a name and wielded a power which will continue far
beyond the generation iii which he lived.
Address of Mr. BREWER, of Michigan.
Mr. SPEAKER : On the 1st day of November last the sad an
nouncement was made that Senator CHANDLER was dead;
that his lifeless remains were found hi bed at the Pacific
Hotel, in the city of Chicago. The report was doubted at first
by the friends of the deceased Senator, but all doubt was soon
removed, and the city and State of his adoption arrayed them
selves in the habiliments of mourning. Senator CHANDLER
96 ADDRESS OF MB. BREWER ON THE
was known to more of the people of Michigan than any other
of her citizens. The name of ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, or " Old
Zach," as he was more commonly called, was familiar in every
household, and was spoken with the utmost freedom by old
and young alike; but to-day, to them, his voice is stilled in
death; to-day his name is spoken with sadness and sorrow
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, at least in every Northern
State. Mr. CHANDLER'S life in many respects was an eventful
one. Born in the town of Bedford, amid the rugged hills of a
New Hampshire home, he soon began to exhibit those traits
of character which in after life made him so prominent. In
1833, when but twenty years of age, he became satisfied that
his native State was no field in which to develop his busi
ness powers, and he sought a home in the then undevel
oped great Northwest, and found it in the city of Detroit.
What a broad field was then opened to the view of the ener
getic young New Englander! Nearly all our country west
of Buffalo at that time was but an uninhabited wilderness;
Michigan was but a Territory, with a few thousand inhabit
ants, and contained within its territorial government what is
now known as the State of Wisconsin. The city of Detroit
was but a small town, its inhabitants being largely engaged
in trade with the natives of the forest. But the city of De
troit to-day is one of the great cities of the Northwest, while
Michigan has a population of a million and a half of people,
and Wisconsin nearly an equal number, and both of these
great States are teeming with all the enterprise and industry
of the age. Such result was obtained during the years of Mr.
CHANDLER'S residence in Michigan, and was largely due to
his fostering care while in official life. Wonder not, then, that
the city of Detroit and the State of Michigan mourn the loss of
her honored dead, for he was always a watchful guardian of
LIFE AND ('HARACTER OF ZACIIARIAII CHANDLER. 97
their interests. The plain result of his watchful care for his
State and his desire to advance her prosperity while in public
life is visible along all the great chain of lakes and rivers which
encompass her borders. No one has done more to advance
and build up the interests of the Northwest than the late Sen
ator.
When Mr. CHANDLER arrived in Detroit, like thousands of
other young men who then sought a home in the West, his
greatest wealth was his robust constitution, and his chief capi
tal to start with in the great battle of life was his habits of
industry, his self-will, pluck, and integrity. Soon after his
arrival he entered into a business partnership in the drj^-goods
trade with one Franklin Moore, a brother-in-law. This part
nership continued but for a few years, when Mr. Moore retired
from the firm, Mr. CHANDLER continuing in the business until
he accumulated a fortune and became the most prosperous
merchant in the State. Mr. CHANDLER'S political life com
menced in 1851, when he was nominated by the whigs of De
troit and elected mayor of said city. His extensive business
had made him acquaintances and friends all over the State,
and in the fall of 1852 he was nominated as the whig candi
date for governor, but, while running largely ahead of his
ticket, he was defeated by Hon. Robert McClelland, his demo
cratic opponent. He made his first political speeches in his
canvass for the governorship, and soon became- the recognized
leader of the whigs of his State. He took an active part in
the formation of the republican party at Jackson in 1854, and
a leading part in the campaigns of 1854 and 1856, speaking in
every part of the State, and his plain logic, clear and forcible
language gained him friends wherever he went. When the
republicans obtained control of the Legislature in 1856 the
party and people with great unanimity demanded the election
98 ADDRESS OF ME. BREWER ON THE
of Mr. CHANDLER to succeed General Lewis Cass in the Sen
ate of the United States. He took his seat in the Senate on
the 4th of March, 1857, and was twice re-elected, and served
continuously for eighteen years. The venerable HANNIBAL
HAMLIN is the only one of his first associates in the Senate
who is serving in a like capacity to-day, and, I believe, the
only one now in public life. Nearly all others sleep the last
sleep. At the time Mr. CHANDLER entered the Senate excite
ment ran high over the repeal of the once famous Missouri
compromise, and the great contest relating to slavery in the
Territories was soon fought out between the friends of free
dom and oppression.
In this conflict Mr. CHANDLER stood boldly up for the fun
damental rights of man, and was a fit representative of his
great liberty-loving constituency. The continuous eighteen
years of Mr. CHANDLER'S senatorial career were years fraught
with momentous events, and were the most eventful years in
American history. It was during these years that the bond
men were made free, that the nation was saved, the Union re
stored, and liberty preserved to the American people. It was
during these years that the rights of man were more firmly
guaranteed by amendments to the fundamental law of the
land. It was during the later years of Mr. CHANDLER'S life
that the financial credit and the integrity and honor of the
nation were at stake ; when demagogues sought to build up a
political organization upon their country's shame. In the set
tlement of all these great questions, the vote and voice of the
late Senator truly represented the patriotic sentiment of the
people of his State. In October, 1875, Mr. CHANDLER was
chosen by President Grant as one of his constitutional ad
visers, and placed at the head of the Interior Department,
where he remained until March 4, 1877. His appointment, at
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 99
first, did riot meet with the commendation of the self assumed
high-toned theoretical politicians of his party; but when he
passed over the Interior Department to his successor, the peo
ple and press of all parties vied with each other in commending
the manner in which he had conducted the duties of his office.
He demonstrated by practical experience that he was the best
reformer of the civil service who chose his assistants and em
ploye's because of their practical knowledge of the duties they
were selected to perform, rather than he who selected them
because they succeeded in answering questions relating to mat
ters which in no manner pertained to their official duties. As
Secretary of the Interior he purified that Department of the
Government, and showed an executive talent surpassed by no
one who had filled the position.
Upon the resignation of Senator Christiancy in the spring of
1879, Mr. CHANDLER, as is well known, was chosen by the
Legislature of Michigan to fill the vacancy caused by such
resignation. In his long official life his great executive and
business ability, his industry and strict integrity, have met
the highest commendation of the press and people of all par
ties. No one has ever been bold enough to charge ZACHA
RIAH CHANDLER with corruption or peculation in office. Sen
ator CHANDLER was in many respects truly a great man. He
was not great in his style of oratory ; he was not great in his
classical learning or in his knowledge of the sciences, but he
was great, powerfully great, in his knowledge of men. He
was one who could mold public opinion and assimilate the
judgment of men, and such a man is truly great. He was
a leader of men ; he drew about him in his political councils
not only the aged, but the young, the vigorous, and active; he
was a man of the people and from the people, and herein lay
his strength. In his notions he was practical. His language
V
100 ADDRESS OF MR. BREWER ON THE
was plain, and his ideas were clear and always forcibly ex
pressed. There never could be any misapprehension as to
which side of a business or political question he was on. Mr.
CHANDLER was a partisan, but he was first of all a patriot.
While he held his country above party, yet he firmly believed
that the stability of the nation and the political equality and
welfare of our people depended upon the success of the party
he so faithfully labored for and loved so well. He was bold,
fearless, and aggressive in his language and demeanor; he
was uncompromising in his utterances, and never shrank from
characterizing offenses in their true light. Had he been less
fearless he might at times have excused his language by utter
ing words spoken by another:
Judge me not ungentle,
Of manners rude, and violent of speech,
If when the public safety is in question
My zeal flows warm and eager from my tongue.
But he made no apologies. He preferred to leave his coun
trymen to judge his words and motives from his patriotic acts.
Mr. CHANDLER was a positive man. He threw the whole
power of his intellect against that which he believed to be
wrong, and he never wavered in his struggle to promote right
and advance truth and justice. He was possessed of great
energy and great mental and physical powers, and he never
doubted his ability to accomplish that which he set out to per
form. He adopted the motto of another: "Attempt the end
and never stand to doubt." If we look back over the pages
of the world's history we will find that the men of the mold
of Mr. CHANDLER, men that were positive, aggressive, bold
and fearless in the right, were the men who came to the front
in advancing the great principles of political and religious
liberty. Mr. CHANDLER above all was an honest man, in ofli-
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 101
cial as well as private life. He was plain in his dress and sim
ple in his habits. He was generous with his means and the
friend of the needy and unfortunate, and thousands of such
in his adopted city dropped a tear over his bier as they viewed
his manly form in death. He was a firm believer in the integ
rity of the American people, and during the political cam
paign of 1878 he took the strongest ground in favor of main
taining our national credit. He asserted that after mature
reflection the American people would no more think of repu
diating the nation's obligations than they would think of sub
mitting to a dissolution of the Union itself, and he gave this
fact as an illustration of the integrity of our people. He said,
during the late war, while he was in Washington, that he
loaned to our soldiers several thousands of dollars, in small
sums of from two to ten dollars to each, but that the whole
amount was repaid to him with the exception of about $10,
and he was satisfied that the poor men who owed him that
small amount had given their lives for their country:
Mr. Speaker, during the three short years that I have had
the honor of a seat in this body, very many of our desks have
been draped in mourning. Our legislative associates have
fallen all around us. Not only the small in stature and the
physically weak, but those who seemed to stand like mighty
oaks in the forest, have been stricken down by the icy hand of
death. Surely " God moves in a mysterious way."
When we separated and went to our homes last summer no
one seemed more likely to return in the vigor of health and
strength than he for whom we mourn to-day; but as a great
political contest in which he had taken an active part was
about to close, he slept. His popularity was never so great as
on the day of his death. He had become a recognized leader
of his party, and his words gave strength and wisdom to an
102 ADDRESS OF MR. ROBESON ON THE
aggressive host. It will be hard to fill his place in the councils
of the nation or in the leadership of his party.
Mr. Speaker, I first became acquainted with Mr. CHANDLER
in 1856, and he was then known by the familiar name of " Old
Zach," yet he was under forty-three years of age. For the last
twelve years of his life I knew him intimately, personally, and
politically, and our relations were very friendly.
Sir, I feel that the nation has lost a patriotic statesman, his
State its most illustrious citizen, and he who speaks to you a
noble friend. But ZAOHARIAH CHANDLER is gone. In the
beautiful "Elmwood," on the banks of a mighty river, his
friends laid him to rest, where his ashes will mingle with the
dust of other illustrious dead.
In common with the people of the State he served so well,
and which honored him so greatly, and of the Nation whose
rights, honor, and power he was such an uncompromising de
fender, and of the thousands of personal friends who loved
him, we cast upon his bier the faithful tribute of affection and
high regard, and so bid him a last farewell.
Address of Mr. ROBESON, of New Jersey.
From rock-bound coast and rugged mountain-side, from
quiet farms and busy villages, and from her thronging cen
ters of culture and of trade, New England pours her eager sons
along the path of every progress. From the elevating influ
ence of her noble social system, from her clustering churches,
from her teeming school-houses, from her free town-meetings,
they carry the impress of their New England origin, education,
and character into every field which human ambition dares to in
vade or human energy avails to conquer. What manner of men
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHAR1AII CHANDLER. 103
they are, who, borii of Puritan stock and inheriting the energies
and capactiies of Puritan character, develop them in the free
air and under the boundless horizon of the prairies, and amid
the activity and vitality of pioneer and frontier life, we know
and the world is beginning to realize. Carrying with them
everywhere the mental and moral qualities of their New Eng
land origin, they develop them in scenes of more intense vitality
and amid the struggles of larger elements of natural force.
Thus is produced a race uniting in themselves almost every
condition of physical, intellectual, and political development ;
a race which makes a new and mighty element of power, chal
lenging the attention and commanding the respect of the
world.
These reflections are suggested by a picture as remarkable
as any in the history of our country, and which would not be
possible in any other land or under different conditions of gov
ernment and political progress. Amid the crowd of emigrants
who in the earlier years of the present century turned their
backs upon home and birthplace in New England to seek their
fortunes in the growing West were two young men, born in the
little State of New Hampshire, who both finally settled in the
beautiful city of Detroit, which, sitting like a queen on the
banks of its great highway, has for so many years commanded
the trade and traffic of the Northwest. Their stern New Eng
land mother had thrown off each hi turn as the northern eagle
soaring from her eyrie shakes in mid-air her frightened fledg
lings from her back to try for themselves their new-grown pin
ions in the upward flight and dare alone the splendor and the
danger of the sky. The elder of the two was among the ear
lier settlers of the northern region, a soldier in its defense, and
a pioneer in its development. Reaching at an early period con
spicuous oflQcial position, his strong character and great abili-
104
ADDRESS OF MB. ROBESON ON THE
ties swayed to his own views the principles and the actions of
the people among whom he lived. Bepresenting in the Senate
of the United States the great State of Michigan, he was for
many years the political champion and leader of opinion in the
Northwest.
The other, whose recent death is the occasion of these cere
monies, leaving at a later period the scenes of his youth, car
ried with him to his adopted State the same inborn qualities of
energy and strength of character, enriched by the same intense
love of his country, but molded in a different school of political
faith, developing into different ideas of political policy, govern
ment, and progress. The one was the veteran champion and
representative of the older democracy; the other soon became
a leader of the new republicanism. In the struggle of parties
which often convulsed the State they were ever representative
antagonists, and as one of the early fruits of the great political
revolution which swept the Northwest, the younger was elected
to the seat of the elder in the Senate of the United Slates, a
position which he held until a very recent period, keeping in
the hands of these two sons of New Hampshire, almost unbro
ken from the time of its organization, the senatorial power
and influence of the great State of Michigan.
For many years antagonists in political strife, rivals for po
litical office, and representatives of different political policy,
the great peril which threatened their common country brought
them at last together, and, uniting them in a common endeavor
for its rescue and safety, engendered a personal friendship
which was broken only by the death of the elder; and to-day
Lewis Cass and ZACHARIAH CHANDLER sleep almost side by
side beneath the soil of the great Commonwealth which they
both loved so well, which was the scene of their political
rivalry, and which honored each in his turn with its confidence
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 105
and highest trust. Their graves, like those in the old ceme
tery at Portland, where lie face to face the commanders of the
Enterprise and the Boxer, cover indeed the remains of rival
champions, but represent now quiet after strife, equality after
rivalry, and the utter subjection of all human power to His
will " whose mercy endureth forever."
The Senate of which Mr. CHANDLER became a member was
as remarkable as any which has been known in the history of
our country. The principles involved in its contests were those
upon which depended the future character and direction of our
Government and its influence for all time ; and the men to
whom, in the providence of God, their illustration was com
mitted were worthy of their high trust.
The political party to which he belonged was at that time
greatly in the minority in the Senate, and many of its members
had, like himself, been chosen for the qualities which mark the
courage of high convictions rather than for official or govern
mental experience, but like him they brought to the contest
energy, activity, and constancy, noble impulses of duty, the
courage of lofty purposes, clear conception of the ends to be
finally reached, and a fixed determination to dare, to do, and
to suffer all that might be necessary for their accomplishment.
It would not become the occasion to recount the many strug
gles, trials, and triumphs of that great contest ; it is sufficient
now to say that Mr. CHANDLER brought to the side of his
party the most valuable and decisive qualities of mind and
heart. Vigorous and energetic, yet thoughtful and astute;
of large views, yet with clear conceptions ; of liberal ideas,
yet with fixed principles; of high aspirations, yet with con
centrated purposes — these were qualities born on New Eng
land soil indeed, but developed on broader fields and amid the
struggle of more elemental forces. A heart open as day to
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106 ADDRESS OF MB. ROBESON ON THE
every manly sympathy; a steadfastness which did not yield,
and a faith which never faltered ; a simplicity which told of
honor, and a courage which was born of freedom — these were
qualities of heart which belonged to the man himself, which
enshrined him in the love of friends, and took hold on the
affections of the people.
During the whole period of our acquaintance, my own asso
ciation with Mr. CHANDLER was intimate, close, and confiden
tial. Of his senatorial career I need not speak further; his
record is written on the pages of his country's history. But of
the closer and more confidential relations of Cabinet life and
duty in which we were associated together I may bear special
testimony. There, as everywhere, he exhibited the highest
qualities of character and of heart ; he was at once liberal to
every person, just to every interest, and constant to every
duty ; his every action was honor and all his endeavors were
for the right ; and each day he grew more and more in the love
and in the respect of his chief and of his associates.
In the fullness of his strength, in the plenitude of his influ
ence, in the richest development of his faculties, clad with the
regalia of a nation's confidence, and covered with love as with
a garment, he has fallen in the night, and the scenes which
once knew him so well will know him no more forever. The
successes to which he contributed will endure for others,
but the mind enriched and developed, the enlightened heart,
and the elevated spirit which achieved them are lost to his
country and his friends just as, equipped and trained for
severer struggles, the veteran turned to new conquests. Here
we must pause ; we can go no further. This is the " be-all and
the end-all here"; beyond is "the undiscovered country, from
whose bourn no traveler returns"; but here is the moral and
a lesson : Life is far too short to realize to man more than the
LIFE AND CHARACTER OP ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 107
merest possibilities of his nature. The heart is full of aspira
tions, and the iniiid of possibilities which are not, which can
not be, realized in this world. At each step which we take for
ward we see nearer and clearer the far-off goals, toward which
the spirit aspires, but which human ambition may never reach,
but, like the stars which shine down the long avenues of
heaven, their endless line of ''lights on lights beyond" tells
like prophecy the immortal destiny of man.
Address of Mr. BURROWS, of Michigan.
Mr. SPEAKER : Conscious as I am of the exalted place Sen
ator CHANDLER held in the hearts of the people whom I have
the honor in part to represent, I should feel that I had disre
garded the wishes of my immedate constituents should I per
mit this occasion to pass without attempting to give expression
to their high appreciation of his character and their profound
sense of irreparable loss.
I am not apprehensive, sir, that I shall expose myself to the
imputation of fulsome eulogy of the dead, or unjust detraction
from the merits of the living, by declaring that no citizen of
Michigan stood higher in the public regard, or could by his
death have so disturbed the public repose, as the distinguished
Senator whose sudden demise has given occasion for this solemn
observance. That he occupied a foremost place in the State's
esteem is evidenced by the prolonged and illustrious service to
which her partiality repeatedly called him ; that he is sincerely
lamented is attested by the manifestations of public and pri
vate grief attending his imposing obsequies.
The qualities of head and heart which thus endeared him to
the people of Michigan were so conspicuous that they readily
108 ADDRESS OF MR. BURROWS ON THE
suggest themselves to every one familiar with his public
career, for the prominent and distinguished features of his
character were so pronounced that they could be neither dis
guised nor misunderstood.
Chiefest among these was his unchallenged honesty. Hold
ing, for a quarter of a century, some of the most responsible
positions in the gift of his State and the nation, whether par
ticipating in the legislation of the country or in the adminis
tration of its laws, his course was ever marked by the same
unswerving integrity. Provoking, as he did, by his pro
nounced partisanship the fiercest assaults of his political an
tagonists, yet no adversary was ever bold enough to attack
his official integrity or impugn his personal honor.
Nor would he brook dishonesty in others. It is said that,
when Secretary of the Interior, becoming satisfied that a cer
tain bureau in that department needed thorough renovation,
he sent for the head of the division and directed the immedi
ate dismissal of twelve of bis most prominent subordinates.
The chief of the bureau expostulated with the Secretary and
finally declared that it would be impossible to transact the
business of his department without their assistance. " Very
well, sir," replied the Secretary, "then the business of your
department will be suspended j for unless you make these
removals by four o'clock this afternoon, that branch of the
public service will be closed." It is needless to add that
the orders of the Secretary were immediately executed and
the subordinates discharged.
If it be true that " an honest man is the noblest work of
God," then ZACHARIAH CHANDLER was one of nature's mas
ter-pieces.
" He never sold the right to serve the hour,"
Or paltered with eternal truth for power.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHAR1AII CIIANDLKU. 10!)
Then, again, he was a man of matchless courage. Positive
in his convictions, he was bold in their advocacy. His course
of action once determined upon, supported by an approving
conscience, no fear of popular disfavor or personal discomfiture
could swerve him from his fixed purpose. No matter what the
emergency, he was always equal to it. Where others doubted,
he was confident ; where others faltered, he was immovable ;
where others queried, he affirmed. Whether engaged in pre
serving the nation's life or sustaining the national credit,
whether in the Senate or in the Cabinet, he was the same fear
less, intrepid leader. There was no error, however popular, he
would not assail — no truth, however despised, he would not
champion. As illustrative of his indomitable courage in great
emergencies, it is related of him that immediately after the
battle of Bull Run, when the Republic seemed tottering to its
downfall, he called upon the President to advise with him in
relation to the exigencies of the hour. Mr. Lincoln was in
despair, and met Mr. CHANDLER with the exclamation : " The
country is lost! what shall we do?" "Do!" responded the
stalwart Senator, " call immediately for three hundred thou
sand volunteers." " But will the people respond F questioned
the Executive. " Yes, sir, if you were to make it a million."
And it is said that he never quit the executive chamber until
he bore the order from Mr. Lincoln to Secretary Stanton direct
ing the summons. He was one of the few public men who, in
the consideration of great questions, not only had positive con
victions, but the moral courage to avow them, regardless alike
of public opinion or personal consequences. It mattered not
how popular a measure might be, or how much its advocacy
might enhance the chances of party success, Senator CHANDLER
never yielded his convictions for a momentary advantage. It
mattered not how exalted any man might be in the public re-
110
ADDEESS OF MR. HAWLEY ON THE
gard, if Senator CHANDLER believed him unworthy of the ad
vancement he would not hesitate to assail him. And he never
resorted to temporary expedients to achieve temporary suc
cess or allay popular clamor.
Unpracticed he to fawn or seek for power
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour.
And, finally, he was faithful to every public duty and true
to his friends. Treachery found.no place in his character. He
never betrayed a public trust or a personal friend.
Fortunate will we be if it can be said of us when we are
gone, as it can be truthfully declared of him : He was an hon
est public servant, a fearless champion of the right, and a
faithful friend.
Address of Mr. HAWLEY, of Connecticut.
I gladly take a few moments to manifest my sorrow for
the death of Mr. CHANDLEE, and my high respect for the
many pronounced and praiseworthy elements of his charac
ter. It was a frank, brave, manly, strong nature. Whatever
he loved he loved indeed} when he hated at all he blazed.
When he enlisted for a cause he gave it his soul and mind and
body. He furnishes an eminent example among a multitude
of men stalwart in all things — physical, mental, and moral —
who have swarmed westward for a century and built up an
empire. He carried with him the traditions of his New En
gland home. His force and good judgment bore him upward
in business ; his honesty secured him abundant trust and con
fidence ; his public spirit compelled him to enter public life.
He rejoiced in the inspirations of conflict, and had a righteous
contempt for neutrals. ll Some say there is a God ; some say
there is no God." Mr. CHANDLER would never have said,
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHAHIAH CHANDLER. Ill
"the truth lies between the two extremes." A mail once
prominent in American letters and politics, who failed to
secure the success in public life to which his intellectual abili
ties apparently entitled him, described, as lessening his avail
ability for political leadership, his irresistible tendency to see
in the strongest light the arguments and sentiments of his op
ponents, and to permit his vigor of action to be modified ac
cordingly. Mr. CHANDLER never suffered through any such
weakness. He was never in danger of being turned into a
pillar of salt.
Willing enough to concede that his opponents might be sin
cere, he would rejoice in that sincerity as giving promise of a
finer battle. It would never have occurred to him that it
ought to save them from defeat.
His roughness and readiness provoked criticism. Men more
scholarly, judicial, deliberate, and many-sided, and by reason
thereof often less valuable in times of stormy action, were apt
to undervalue Mr. CHANDLER. But his advice and judgment
were sound in the startling crisis of war, and, while it was not
a surprise to those who really knew him, it was a great satis
faction to see him become in time of peace a Secretary of the
Interior, pointed to as a model of integrity and vigor.
His opponents made a common mistake in deeming the
sledge-hammer combatant lacking in the graces of friendship.
He hated many things; I do not think he hated any man.
He had lived through enough of rude conflict in private and
public to know that we may judge opinions and principles
by the light we have, but should estimate men by the light
they have.
All the time he lived he was indeed a live man. And
though he be dead, the magnetism of his nature is here to
day, and will be felt for generations.
112 ADDRESS OF ME. DUNNELL ON THE
Address of Mr. DUNNELL, of Minnesota.
Mr. SPEAKER : The late Senator CHANDLER attained polit
ical eminence and secured the admiration of the American
people because he had and exhibited in action some of the best
traits of an attractive human character. He had integrity,
honesty, patriotism, boldness, and moral bravery. These qual
ities were the pillars upon which; in a large degree, rested Ms
national fame. They gave him success in each great theater
of his life.
When his remains awaited burial in the city of Detroit, his
fellow-citizens, in large numbers and irrespective of party, in
their unanimously adopted resolutions, made conspicuous these
shining characteristics. His honesty, his uprightness, his un-
corruptedness in the transactions of life were in daily play, and
came to be the universally conceded qualities of the man.
This animating and controlling principle greatly augmented,
without doubt, the force of those other traits to which refer
ence has been, made. He did not yield to the temptations
which come to men willing to acquire gain and place by the
use of deceptive and otherwise unworthy methods. As he
hated fraud, he demanded a clean record, a full exposure of
all the motives which shaped and impelled the actions of men.
His denunciations of men who in action were not what their
professions would make them, were signally severe. For such
men, he had no excuses. If he was intolerant, his honesty
made him so. There was no sham in this great distinguishing
element in his character. It was firmly rooted and unceas
ingly operative. It did not leave him when he passed from
private into public life. During his eighteen years of service
in the Senate of the United States, much of it opening paths
to personal profit, which touched and hurt other men, he made
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAII CHANDLER. 113
such a record for honesty, in its largest signification, that it
left in the background and to be forgotten forever whatever of
faults, if any, may have touched his personal character.
After a short retirement from the Senate, he became the Sec
retary of the Interior. He was exempt from assaults at no
period in his political career. They were renewed when he
returned to Washington to assume the duties of an executive
officer and take his place in the Cabinet of President Grant.
These attacks, however, never reached his integrity. If they
had been made with that view, he could have used the words
of Shakespeare and said :
There is no terror in your threats :
For I am arm'cl so strong in honesty,
That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not.
If the history of the lamented Senator be written, no pages in
it will be brighter or more illustrative of the man than those
which shall set forth the thorough and needed reforms which
he wrought in the Department of the Government over which
he presided. Civil service with him had an honest meaning.
It must have its illustration in the full labor of men loyal to
the Government and competent to do the work assigned them.
He hated civil service rules, because in their practical opera
tion they were too often a cheat. Not long had he served in
this new capacity before there came from every quarter the
free and hearty acknowledgment that he possessed executive
and administrative abilities of a high order.
The congressional legislation of 1854 brought the subject of
our eulogies from his comparative obscurity and led the way to
his long and eventful public career. The republican party
was born of that legislation. In the formation of the party he
took an early and conspicuous part. In after years, and indeed
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114 ADDRESS OF MR. DUNNELL ON THE
till his death, he was in it a wise and sagacious adviser and
supporter. His consummate ability in party organization kept
him for many years at the head of the national republican
committee.
The repeal of the Missouri compromise he regarded as a
blow aimed at the life of the nation. This act aroused into
the intensest activity his sublime love of the Union. From
this hour his voice was heard. The directness and severity
with which he spoke of measures which he deemed hostile to
the public good may be charged to his ardent love of country.
He was an extreme partisan because he sincerely believed his
party alone could save and best serve the Eepublic. He did
not think it possible to save it by any other political organiza
tion or agency. His uncompromising devotion to the Union
would not suffer him to consider for an hour any terms of
compromise or conciliation. The sincerity and honesty of his
motives were never questioned by those who knew him. His
vast labors for the Government during the war, and the sol
diers who were standing against its enemies, were inspired
by a deep and generous patriotism. No man will do him jus
tice who does not credit to it all he did and sacrificed for it
when its life was in peril. His words were indeed barbed, but
his nature would not suffer the coinage of any other.
I have said, Mr. Speaker, that one of the marked traits in
the Senator's character was his boldness. His honesty made
it impossible for him to evade or conceal. He did not hesitate
at any time or in any place to utter his convictions or use
right names. He spoke as he felt. Words with him were put
to their legitimate use. Frankness marked the man and was
the offspring of his honesty. He said what he thought the
occasion required. It would not have been possible for him
to do less and be himself. He was rugged in conviction and
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAII CHANDLER. 115
in utterance. His speeches in the Senate during the extra
session of last year were charged with the severest denuncia
tions, for they came of the views which he had entertained
concerning the war and its chief actors. He could not have
made them otherwise.
It may be said that the Senator, though sincere, was ex
treme and daring, yet such a man is safer in the councils of a
nation than a timid man, for the latter is quite certain to sur
render his whole cause WHEN some crisis is reached and ichen
the highest order of courage is the stern necessity of the hour.
The brave man will never deceive either friend or foe.
The last speeches of Senator CHANDLER in the Senate
brought him invitations to address the people in many States
of the Union. He spoke many times in Ohio, Maine, Massa
chusetts New York, Wisconsin, and Illinois during the months
of August, September, and October. Vast crowds greeted
him wherever he spoke. The masses loved his directness of
speech. They honored him for what he was and what he said.
Faneuil Hall resounded with the loud and long applause
which followed his words. His reception in every place was
an ovation.
Turning his face homeward, he reached the city of Chicago
on the 31st of October. Here, when the echoes of his last
eloquent appeal to the thousands who here so enthusiastic
ally heard him, had scarcely died away, the spirit of the bold
Senator, the incorruptible statesman and the earnest patriot,
took its flight. Here ended a life grandly useful and heroic.
This generation cannot forget its greatness, and coming gen
erations will admire its singular devotion to the Republic.
116 ADDRESS OF MR. STONE ON THE
Address of Mr. STONE, of Michigan.
Mr. SPEAKER: In the death of ZACHARIAH CHANDLER a
great political party has lost one of its recognized leaders,
and the nation one of her most distinguished sons. His life
and acts have been interwoven with the history and progress
of the State of Michigan and of this nation during the last
twenty-five years.
The life of Senator CHANDLER adds another name to that
long list of men in this country who, by dint of persevering
application and energy, have raised themselves from the
lower ranks of industry to eminent positions of usefulness
and influence in the nation. The presidential chair and the
Halls of Congress have contained many such self-raised
men — fitting representatives of the industrial character of
the American people — and it is to the credit of our institu
tions that such men have received due recognition and honor
at the hands of the people.
Mr. CHANDLER'S education was limited to that of the com
mon schools and an academy of his native State, New Hamp
shire.
In 1833, at the age of twenty years, he removed to the city
of Detroit, and soon after engaged in the mercantile business,
in which he was very successful.
His public life began by his election to the oflice of mayor
of his adopted city in the year 1851. He was in 1852 brought
prominently before the people of Michigan as the whig candi
date for governor. Although the contest was a hopeless one
he made a spirited and energetic canvass, and established a
prestige in the State which he ever afterward enjoyed. From
this time to the day of his death Mr. CHANDLER took an
active interest in the politics of his adopted State and the
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACIIARIAH CHANDLER. 117
nation. In the winter of 1856-'57 he was elected to the
United States Senate, to succeed Lewis Cass, being the first
republican Senator from Michigan.
In the Senate he took hold of his work with the same
energy and directness that had characterized him as a suc
cessful merchant and business man. He saw the coming
greatness of the Northwest and devoted himself chiefly to
the commerce and industries of the lake region, becoming so
thoroughly acquainted with the subject that he was soon con
sidered an authority on all questions touching the interests or
development of that part of the country.
He especially demanded for the Northwest a place on the
Committee on Commerce in the Senate, a committee of which
he was afterward chairman for so many years. It is said that
the first bill he ever presented was one to improve the Saint
Clair Flats by deepening the channel over them. This bill,
and his next to deepen Saint Mary's Kiver, he pushed with
that untiring energy which marked his course afterward in
such matters. During the debate in the Senate on the Saint
Clair bill Mr. CHANDLER said, " I want to see who is friendly
to the great Northwest and who is not, for we are about
making our last prayer here. The time is not far distant
when, instead of coming here and begging for our rights, we
shall extend our hands and take the blessing. After 1860 we
shall not be here as beggars."
Time will not permit us on this occasion to follow him
minutely in his successful career in the Senate. Long iden
tified with the interests and prosperity of Michigan, no man
has accomplished more for her material interests than Mr.
CHANDLER. Outside of political and party lines he has been
of great service to the State, and his death is there considered
a great calamity. He will fill an honorable page in the history
118 ADDRESS OF MR. STONE ON THE
of his country's struggles and triumph over human slavery.
He hated oppression wherever he found it, and counted no
consequence in denouncing the oppressor.
Senator CHANDLER was a man of decided convictions and
utterances. His boldness and frankness of speech often led
to a misconception of his character, and made the impression
that he was tyrannical and vindictive. His nature was emi
nently genial, tender, and sympathetic. He felt keenly the
wrongs of others, and was never more outspoken than when
defending the cause of the weak and oppressed.
Pending the rebellion, he was loyal, hopeful, helpful, and a
military division in himself, to help Lincoln, Grant, and Stan-
ton. He was devoted to the Union in its hour of peril. His
earnest, persevering labors amid the darkest days of its trial
and difficulty, his courage and steadfastness in the pursuit of
his noble aims and purposes in the interest of the nation, were
no less heroic of their kind than the bravery and devotion of
the soldier whose duty and whose pride it was heroically to
defend it upon the battle-field. No human being can accu
rately say how much of our final victory during war and re
construction was vitally and indisputably ministered by ZACH-
ARIAH CHANDLER. He was absolutely invincible and fearless.
I wish to pay a brief tribute to the fearless independence of his
character, to h.is integrity, his honest adherence to the principles
which he believed to be right, to the rugged force of his talents,
all of which made him an important element in the affairs of
the nation during the last quarter of a century. Few men in
this country ever wielded a stronger political influence than
Senator CHANDLER. He was a man of firm convictions, and,
though an ardent partisan, was just. His character was unim
peachable. Throughout his course of public life not even his
bitterest opponents ever had aught to say against his honesty.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 119
Few men have taken such a firm, deep hold on the confi
dence and regard of the country. His sturdy patriotism and
his uncompromising loyalty carried and captivated the popu
lar heart. He had something in his composition that com
pelled respect and confidence from the people. One of Napo
leon's favorite maxims was, "The truest wisdom is a resolute
determination.77 If it is a blessing to be possessed of a stout
heart, then Senator CHANDLER was eminently blessed. The
people of Michigan, and all who knew him, had unbounded
confidence in the will-power and energy of " Old Zach," as he
was familiarly called at home. I believe it is true that it is
not the men of genius who move the world, and take the lead
in it, but men of steadfastness and invincible determination.
Mr. CHANDLER was strong with the people because he was
conspicuously one of the people, moved by their honest im
pulses, filled with their strong sense, and sharing their earnest
convictions. There was no pretense or false show about him.
He was brave, true, manly, square, and direct, and was never
afraid to call things by their right names. He made no claim
to polish or the art of rhetoric. He was a strong man, rather
than a scholarly one; a man of great common sense; a prac
tical rather than a brilliant statesman. His practical sagac
ity, his resolute will, and great courage made him a greater
force than many of finer polish and larger acquirements. He
was a natural leader, and no man in our history as a State
ever had a more faithful following. He leaves a gap which it
will be difficult to fill. Upon the nation which honored him,
and the State which loved him, the news of his death fell with
great suddenness and the force of an awful shock. But he
could not have chosen a better time to die had he been given
the power of choice, for he went in the zenith of his fame and
usefulness — in the midst of activity and labor, and with the
120 ADDRESS OF MR. KEIFER ON THE
harness on. His last public utterances were for an honest
government and an undivided nation.
A widespread and public sorrow on the announcement of
his death attested the profound sense of the loss which the
State of Michigan and the whole country sustained. Former
political animosities were forgotten, and all, without distinc
tion of politics, creed, or nativity, seemed to feel that the State
and nation had lost a strong pillar.
Let us imitate his virtues and cherish his memory.
Address of Mr. KEIFER, of Ohio.
Mr. SPTCATTRR: If we were to call the roll of the dead who
have fallen from the ranks of those who have mustered in this
our country's Capitol, we should hear the names of many
historic souls familiar to the ears of the people of all lands,
and not among the least of those would be found the name
of him on whose account we meet here to-day to pay a last
tribute of respect.
My personal relations with the late Senator ZACHARIAH
CHANDLER were limited to occasional and incidental meetings
during the last two years of his life. To those who knew him
well and intimately during the many years of his long, event
ful, and useful life it must be left to speak of him in his social
and family relations. But his public life and acts belong to
the whole country; and in so far as he was the instrument
of good to mankind ; in so far as his life was exemplary and
worthy of imitation ; in so far as he was a type of American
manhood and an honor to his country and race, he belongs to
history.
While his life and public services may not have been sin-
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAII CHANDLER. 121
gularly grand, they were transcendeutly great. It has often
been said, with a view of detracting from individual greatness,
that men only become great because they have lived and been
called on to grapple with great events. It is not to be denied
that great occasions develop great intellects and great men.
It is also true that men who have high and responsible public
duties cast on them, as a rule meet and discharge them, often
to the surprise of their friends, with singular faithfulness and
ability. But in the long and eventful period in our country's
history through which the lamented Senator lived many strong
men faltered, hesitated, and fell.
The differences in men are rarely to be measured by their
difference in natural and purely intellectual endowments;
they consist more commonly in the differences in zeal, energy
— physical energy— perseverance, devotion to duty, to friends
and country, pride of success, love of honor, self-respect, high
resolve, dauntless spirit, and, above all, a desire to do good.
Senator CHANDLER possessed most if not all of these endow
ments, and more largely than most of the great and good men
of the world.
If I were compelled to name the one leading characteristic
which he was endowed with in a higher degree than another,
and which ruled him in private and public affairs throughout
his useful life, I should say it was heroism. Though not a
warrior in the period of war, his whole life was a heroic one.
Heroes are not found alone in the fiery furnace of war ; they
are common to the paths of peace. He possessed true heroism,
"the self-devotion of genius manifesting itself in action." His
was not only of that kind of heroism denoting fearlessness of
danger, passive courage, ability to bear up under trials amid
dangers and sufferings ; nor was it only that fortitude, brav
ery, and valor which is essential to those who go forth to con-
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122 ADDRESS OF MR. KEIFER ON THE
flicts with living opponents in personal mortal combat as
duelists or in battle ; it was made up of that intrepidity and
courage which shrinks not in the presence of appalling dan
gers. Senator CHANDLER was unpretentious, and as a hus
band, father, and friend was kind, patronizing, and gentle ;
but when stormy times came his brow seemed to darken, and
that great body of his, which appeared to the beholder to be
one of the motive forces of creation, strode fearlessly to the
front, and there by common consent held sway until all danger
was passed.
Many courageous men, not truly heroic, falter and fail to
enter the lists when a conflict is imminent. Not so the de
ceased Senator. He was a leader when the times or occasions
demanded true valor. It is in the lead where men fall or are
sacrificed. The leaders in charging a foe are the most con
spicuous marks, and they are the first to receive the manly
fire of bold enemies and often the cowardly arrows of hiding
foes in the rear, not uofrequently springing from the bow of
envy or jealousy.
He escaped in a singular degree, and died in old age with
his armor on. In a successful civil as in a successful military
life — and in the eyes of an often undiscriminating public suc
cess in either is the only test of true greatness — it is easier to
be led to scenes where honor and glory are won than to be one
of the few who lead there.
In the bloody conflicts of war the percentage of those who
cannot, if well commanded, meet the actual conflict of battle
with a good show of courage is very small indeed, yet the
large mass of men are physical cowards. Mr. CHANDLER had
no element of cowardice in him. He was always a natural
leader.
As a business man he sought out a comparatively new State
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 123
and attained success by foresight, energy, and enterprise.
He left a large fortune. This same foresight, energy, and
enterprise he carried with him throughout his public life. He
was devoted to his friends and magnanimous to his foes, but
not to the latter until he was sure they were conquered.
As a political leader he was known to be a violent partisan.
This came from his having no half-way convictions of duty
and right. When he had work to do he struck heavy blows.
He did not lightly tap a nail on the head to start it on its
course, but drove it home at a single blow. He was said to
be uncompromising in his character. This was unjust to him,
save in all matters where his country or principle was involved.
He was honest, and integrity in private and public affairs was
a pole-star for his guidance. He may have erred, and doubt
less did, in many things. It is only human to err. His impet
uous and fiery nature may have sometimes caused him to go
astray, but he was willing to make amends for any wrong
he had done to another when in his power.
Like all positive men who come prominently upon the stage
of life, he had not friends alone, but violent enemies. But
like a giant oak that withstands the tornadoes as well as the
gentler winds for a century, and grows stronger and firmer in
its fiber, Senator CHANDLER grew in mental and moral stature
by reason of the violence of his foes. He, like the oak, could
not have flourished alone in the sunshine of life. He needed,
if he did not deserve, its stormy days to prepare him for his
high destiny. It has been said by another who had to bear
more than seemed to be his share of violent opposition, " that
he could as little afford to spare his enemies as his friends."
They fitted and qualified him for better and nobler duties.
Mr. CHANDLER'S body and mind were alike of the rugged, not
to say rough, cast.
124 ADDRESS OF MR. KEIFER ON THE
His light, though not such as would be called in high lit
erary circles brilliant, yet it burned fiercely, reaching on occa
sions a white heat, in the presence of which his opponents
withered. In debate he was fearlessly outspoken. He could
take as well as give herculean blows. Better men may have
lived than plain old ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, but none ex
celled him in love of country or of his fellow-men. For sub
terfuge and dodging he had a brave man's scorn. He always
spoke his mind and acted boldly up to his convictions. He
was for war when peace no longer seemed possible. As early
as 1860 he gave it as his opinion that " a little blood-letting
would be good for the body politic." He was then for war,
and in the national halls of legislation he gave his voice and
votes for its rigorous prosecution.
He believed in the fiat of the emancipation which made
plain Abe Lincoln's name immortal. It has been said that he
was indiscreet, boisterous, and headstrong. So far as this
may have been true it was because he had in great affairs
absolutely no nonsense about him. As a political enemy of
his has said, " He went straight for the thing in sight, and
generally came off with it."
His warm and generous nature would not allow him to be
tray a friend or thrust an enemy in the back. If throughout
his whole career his life was not one in all respects to be imi
tated by the young men of the country, it cannot be said that
he corrupted them.
It was my fortune to meet him for a day near the close of
his life. He was then on duty for a cause in which his heart
and soul were enlisted, and in that cause he died. He had
then entered upon his last campaign. It was bounded by no
State lines. He addressed the people in Ohio on the political
issues which he deemed vital to them ; he flew from place to
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 125
place rapidly, and was gone, and the " talking lightning " told
us he was in the distant State of Massachusetts, and thunder
ing his plain but convincing speech in Faneuil Hall to the
learned men of Boston. We heard of him elsewhere in that
State and in the State of New York; then came the news that
he was in the far Northwest — the State of Wisconsin — pouring
livid, convincing arguments out to our people. The morning
papers announced that he was to address the assembled multi
tudes in that magic, wondrous city of Chicago on the night of
October 31, 1879.
The early papers on the next day gave us his speech, but
with it came the startling announcement — ZACH. CHANDLER
is dead ! Strong men and women mourned. His friends and
foes stood dazed in the presence of the sad tidings. They did
not know how to contemplate him from the stand-point of
death. He died as a hero might wish to die — like a plumed
knight " booted and spurred." It is fitting that here in these
halls that knew him so long we should pay him a last tribute
and shed copious tears to his memory. As we contemplate
him dead — in his final chamber of repose — in the poet's lan
guage we may truthfully say :
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grow no damned grudges ; here are no storms,
No noise ; but silence and eternal sleep.
Address of Mr. CONGER, of Michigan.
Mr. SPEAKER: The name and fame of ZACHARIAH CHAN
DLER, of Michigan, needs no heralding in this House, in this
Congress, in this nation. None is more familiar to the Ameri
can people ; none ever more honored by the citizens of his own
State.
126 ADDRESS DF MR. CONGER ON THE
Those of us who speak of him to-day bring our loving
though mournful tribute to his memory as we pay the last
official honors to one who served so long and so well in the
Congress of the nation.
I may not here recall the long years of my personal friend
ship and regard, nor shall I venture to give expression to the
emotions which crowd upon me as I remember the obligations
of friendship, of kindness and encouragement which have as
sisted my public labors and been so pleasant in my private
life.
Nor do I design to give even a sketch of the private or
public life of the distinguished statesman and patriot whose
untimely death we deplore.
Others, here and elsewhere, will better perform that sacred
duty, and gather together the abundant material furnished by
three-score years of an eventful life to instruct, enlighten, and
gratify the people whom he served so long and so well.
If I am permitted to refer to some scenes and events of his
life, not so likely to be mentioned by others — to allude to some
remembrances of circumstances which he himself in private
conversation has spoken of as influencing his life and forming
his character, I shall perhaps furnish some little aid to those
who desire to know the peculiarities of his life and analyze
the motives of his action.
CHANDLER was born December 10, 1813, in the time of our
second national struggle, and the earliest impression of his
childhood and the first lessons around the New England fire
side were colored by the intense patriotism which frontier life
and border warfare had imparted to those who had been alike
ready to fight the other States in behalf of the Hampshire
grants, and the rest of the world in behalf of the rights of the
nation.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 127
At the age of twenty he left the granite hills and the beau
tiful valleys of his native State to find a field of labor and the
chances of fortune in the then far West. He brought little
with him but energy, resolution, and that Puritan integrity
natural to his race and unsullied through his life.
In the first flush of youth, hopeful, ambitious, undisciplined,
he left the land of steady habits, settled customs, and a homo
geneous people, to dwell in a region and among a people as
unlike his own as could be found on the continent.
Michigan from 1612 to 1760 had been a part of New France,
ruled, under French laws, by French governors, and in all re
spects a French people; from 1760 till 1787 under English
governors and English laws ; and till 1835 under various ter
ritorial governments.
In 1833 the whole population, French, English, and Ameri
can, was about sixty thousand, and Detroit, the chief city and
capital, less than ten thousand. To such a territory and city
in 1833, at the age of twenty years, came ZACHARIAH CHAN
DLER to dwell among that mixed people thenceforward while
he should live on earth.
I should love to linger over this transition period of his life,
among the scenes and incidents and personages and events
that molded and fashioned that tall, awkward, wondering, res
olute White Mountain boy — then and before and afterward and
always called Zach — into the merchant prince, the rich capi
talist, the shrewd politician, the successful statesman, the un
swerving patriot, and, better and nobler than all, the fearless
advocate and bold defender of all the free institutions of his
native land and of the rights and liberties of all the dwellers
therein.
I would be gratified if I might embody in this grateful trib
ute to the memory of a friend with whom I have been familiar
128 ADDRESS OF MR. CONGER ON THE
for more than a third of a century some record of his hopes
and ambitions, his thoughts and reflections, his plans and
struggles, from the hour when he stood a stranger in the old-
fashioned City of the Straits till that evening when, amid the
shouts and applause of many thousand citizens of a wonderful
city beyond the lakes, unnamed and unknown in those days
of his early manhood, he retired weary and secretly stricken
to his chamber, and when, alone —
Nor wife, nor child,
Nor one of all his myriad friends,
To bid his parting soul farewell,
his great spirit quit the familiar scenes of earth, and through
the upper air, still vibrating with the applause of those who
had just listened to his last thrilling words, sought rest in the
unknown realms of immortal life !
Mr. Speaker, we have all an inward consciousness that
"time and place and circumstance" are but the common names
of those mysterious powers and influences and agencies that
rule within and around us, to mold and fashion our mortal
life; that, under the Divine economy, our nature, ever strug
gling with powers and principalities, with things seen and
unseen, with right and wrong, with truth and error, with jus
tice and oppression, is constantly and imperceptibly changed
and fashioned and molded by all our earthly associations.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
In 1833, when this youthful wanderer made his home in
Detroit, all was strange, and new, and wonderful. The quaint
old city — the French kabitans, gay, vivacious, exclusive; the
old English families, proud, phlegmatic, reserved, not yet
reconciled to their lost dominion; the remnants of Indian
tribes whose fathers, if they did not themselves, remembered
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAU CHANDLER. 129
Pontiac, and Bloody Run, and Brownstown, and Tecumseh,
and Hull's surrender, and the Thames, and who traversed the
trails and portages, and floated on the waters, and traveled
over land once all their own, and who lingered continually
about their favorite old home on the straits; hunters and trap
pers and fishermen gathered there ; voyageurs who knew every
coast and every portage to "far-off Athabasca" crowded the
shores and loitered around in sad indolence as they heard the
rushing sound of steam and saw the mysterious vessels that,
without sail or paddle, usurped their dominion and occupa
tion; sailors were there who had fought with Perry on the
waters below; fur-traders who had brought thither their treas
ures from unknown mountains and plains ; immigrants gath
ering from all the world ; merchants from the interior and far-
off West. But time would fail to give more than a passing
glance at the scenes and associations into which our advent
urer was plunged, and amidst which his character was to be
formed, his energy to be tested, his triumph to be gained.
Amid such scenes he must, of course, be earnest, resolute,
almost aggressive. He must be inquiring, thoughtful, decided.
He must be just and honorable in all his intercourse with this
varied and peculiar population. He must be fearless and un-
cringing with the supercilious, and haughty, affable, and cor
dial with his equals and friends, and bold in defense of the
weak, else he would long since have gone down among the for
gotten and unknown.
And, such, indeed were the elements of his character, pre
dominating over all faults and foibles, illustrating many pecu
liarities, offensive to his opponents and sometimes incompre
hensible to his friends.
I have not the time, on this occasion, to illustrate the differ
ent phases of his character from actual events in his life. His
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130 ADDRESS OF ME. CONGEE ON THE
honesty and personal integrity have never been assailed or
questioned.
Never in the varied transactions of mercantile or commer
cial life has his good name been tarnished. In the fever heat
of political warfare no charge of corruption has pointed to
him.
There was a time in the late political contest when his pride
and ambition and the crowning wish of his life looked to a re
turn to his long-honored place in the Senate, when he was told
secretly by an old and trusted friend that if he would give his
influence to aid in securing a certain political appointment to a
friend of one who could secure the result he could be elected.
With one emphatic gesture, he replied : " I have lived among
the people of Michigan for almost half a century an honest
man, and I will never secure my election even by a promise
which at another time I might be willing to make voluntarily."
Equally characteristic of the man was his celebrated letter
to the governor of his State, so much criticised, so much ap
proved — the blood-letting letter, so called.
He saw treason spreading through the land, poisoning the
fountains of justice, invading the halls of legislation, threat
ening the free institutions of the country, selfish, unreasoning,
inexorable, gathering forces for the conflict, already arming
for the strife.
What should he, the watchman on the tower, say to his peo
ple? Let the Union be destroyed? Let the Constitution be
shattered? Surrender ignobly the inheritance to treason and
traitors ? No. War, if it must come, blood and life, if neces
sary, wealth and property and comfort and long years of strug
gle, but this Union must and shall be preserved. No surren
der to traitors! No yielding to timidity! No endurance of
vacillation, either in court or camp !
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 131
He spared neither high nor low, neither the head of the
Army nor the subaltern in the field. He had the great cour
age to attack alone the management of the campaign and to
change commanders. The history of his labors through the
war will never be written. They are only partially known
to the country, and not fully even to his friends.
When the war was over he demanded the fruits of victory —
submission to the Government, freedom in spirit and in fact
to the enfranchised ; absolute protection to the citizen in all
legal and political rights wherever the flag floats ; recognition
of the fidelity and valor of Union soldiers; confidence and
support to the Union men of the South; suppression of vio
lence and anarchy and kukluxism ; no recognition or payment
of rebel claims for losses in the war.
On these and like subjects he could not be silent. He was
not vindictive. He would not yield to injustice ; but, looking
upon the shattered hearth-stones, the maimed and suffering
soldier, and the innumerable graves of patriot citizens, he de
manded the results of victory, no more, no less, and that the
great struggle should close the contest once and forever.
Mr. Speaker, the record of his life and character will be
more fully made up by abler hands than mine. This time and
place permit but a glance at a few of the characteristics of
the man. I can but feebly echo the voice of ten thousand citi
zens of our mourning State in any expression of admiration
for our departed statesman — of sorrow for his untimely death.
In Michigan a million and a half of people are mourners. No
party lines divide our citizens as we lay the tribute of respect
upon his tomb. No citizen has died more universally known ;
none been attended to his last resting-place with more abound
ing sadness. The thousands who thronged the streets on the
day of his funeral and endured the tempestuous winter storm
132 ADDRESS OF MR. BRIGGS ON THE
for hours unmoved, as the long cortege moved "with slow
funereal tread " to his final resting-place, were but the repre
sentatives of millions throughout our land who cried as of
old, " Know ye not that a great man hath fallen in Israel this
day?"
Address of Mr. BRIGGS, of New Hampshire.
Mr. SPEAKER : ZACHARIAH CHANDLER was born in the dis
trict I have the honor to represent. Among my constituents
are the friends and associates of his early life. His birth
place, in the beautiful valley of the Merrimac, is only a short
distance from my own home. There his boyhood was spent,
and there he came forth to fame and fortune. His boyhood
gave promise of the great character which his manhood ful
filled. From very humble beginnings, by his own energy and
force of character, he worked his way to the front rank of the
statesmen of his country.
He adds another and most honorable name to the bright list
of New Hampshire's illustrious sons. Proudly we bear the
honor of his birth, and while his adopted State may be first,
let New Hampshire be next at the memorial altar.
The Granite State believes1 in men like Senator CHANDLER.
We believe in a statesmanship of positive ideas. Not only do
we honor his political principles, but for his very nature we
loved the man — for his open, generous, philanthropic nature ;
always exercising his great aggressive vigor against the wrong,
always taking the part of the weak and oppressed.
An outline of his busy and eventful life has already been
given by those who have preceded me, and I purpose only to
offer a few suggestions on the character of the man whom we
have met this day to honor. Of his abilities there can be but
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 133
one opinion. All the requisites of a great executive he cer
tainly possessed — decision, method, energy, self-reliance. He
was not merely a great executive ; to his capacity as such was
added that broader vision, that greater originality, in short,
that statesmanship which belongs to great administrators.
The executive need evolve only methods, the administrative
measures. Tried by any theory, or measured by his own great
success, Senator CHANDLER'S abilities lifted him to the dignity
of a great administrator. This might rest alone upon his busi
ness success ; it might rest upon his management of the Inte
rior Department for the brief period he was at its head ; it
might rest upon his republican leadership of the last twenty
years, a leadership that was more and more acknowledged
until at his death it almost approached supremacy. This ca
pacity for administration was shown in all these relations, and
even in his legislative career it was this faculty which comes
oftenest to the front. He possessed the qualities of a legis
lator of no mean or secondary order; he was invaluable in the
committee, but he was not the less of consequence upon the
floor of the Senate.
Trace the history of this country through a long and most
memorable period, and constantly as you may see his hand
in its measures you as constantly hear his voice in its debates.
He was bold and aggressive ; endowed by nature with that
clearness of logic, that directness, intensity, and vigor of state
ment that rendered him no "unknown quantity" in debate.
Any attempted analysis of his character seems superfluous,
his every quality is so well known to the world. He has been
prominently before the nation for a quarter of a century—
an era, measured by its great achievements, unparalleled in the
annals of mankind ; all the while closely identified with the
legislation of his country and with the leadership of a great
134
ADDRESS OF MB. BEIGGS ON THE
party which has done more for human liberty than any other
known to history.
The one particular characteristic of the man was his
strength. Other men were more finished. We have many
finished men, but few really strong ones. He was a man
whose every thought was strength, and with whom to think
was to do. Strength of conviction, strength of purpose,
strength of methods, strength of statement — these were his
in a supreme degree. History will never lose the impress of
his character.
He has been accused of a too zealous partisanship, but there
is no warrant for this charge. True he was no " half-and-half";
there was no duplicity, no dissimulation in his composition. If
he believed at all, it was with his whole great heart ; and with
his intensity of conviction he may have been wont to regard
success as a duty ; but his enemies, if such he had, will not
accuse him of unworthy and dishonorable means.
His methods were bold, as they were vigorous. He struck
hard, but he struck openly. Indeed his whole nature precluded
suspicion. There were no dark or secret traits in his charac
ter. He did everything openly and above-board, and despised
treachery, cant, and hypocrisy as only he had the scorn to de
spise them. With all his tremendous earnestness, he was yet a
chivalrous and generous antagonist ; generous as he was in all
the relations of life.
His character was of the kind to which generosity constitu
tionally belonged, for his faults were only those which belong
to the warmest natures.
Altogether he was one of those men who make history, and
stamp their impress upon the age in which they live ; a man
whose fame is still destined to increase like that of every true
statesman whose work is grounded in conviction.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 135
History will rank him among the most eminent of those
whose names are inseparably associated with the cause of
human rights.
Time has already vindicated his prescient radicalism, and
posterity will place him with the heralds who have gone be
fore their fellows to proclaim a better day.
In the official career of Senator CHANDLER, from the begin
ning to the close of his public life, we have a realization of the
poet's earnest prayer when he sang :
God give us men ; a time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands ;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill ;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking.
Address of Mr. BARBER, of Illinois.
Mr. SPEAKER : It did not occur to me that I should take part
in these proceedings until the resolutions of the Senate were
read in this Hall this afternoon. I rise now from a sense of
duty. I should do injustice to my own feelings, and I am sure
to the feelings of a very large number of the residents of the
city I have the honor to represent in part on this floor, should
I remain silent on this occasion. I come not, however, with
any elaborate eulogy. My acquaintance with Senator (/HAN
DLER was very brief. I saw him for the first time in March
last, at the extra session. My contact with him was but slight.
I cannot, therefore, speak of him either from long acquaint
ance or intimate relations. But it does so happen that the last
great speech made by the Senator was delivered in the Con-
136 ADDRESS OF MR. BARBER ON THE
gressional district which I have the honor to represent. On
the evening of the delivery of that speech I called upon him
at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago. I had a cordial greet
ing — a long and a pleasant interview. As I recall his stalwart
form, and bluff, hearty manner, I feel like exclaiming,
And shall I see his face again,
And shall I hear him speak t
I went with him to the hall, I sat upon the platform, I saw
him face as fine a political audience as was ever assembled
together, and I heard him deliver one of the grandest speeches
ever uttered upon this continent. I shall not attempt to de
scribe the enthusiasm of that occasion. Mr. CHANDLER had
never spoken in this great city before, and he had informed
one of his most intimate friends who was with him that he re
garded it as the peculiar and crowning honor of his life that
he had been invited to speak in the great commercial metrop
olis of the Northwest. He seemed to regard it as somewhat of
a recognition of the position which he had at last reached in
the estimation of this country. No man ever had a greater
triumph. The great city of the lakes was never moved by an
orator in that manner before. The echoes of that speech rung
out through the Northwest like the clear, strong blast of a
bugle.
I saw the Senator retire from that platform amid the thun
ders of applause and bearing on his brow the laurels he had
won. He had given upon that occasion the most decisive evi
dence of oratorical power by the manner in which he moved
and controlled that vast multitude assembled to hear him.
But, sir, the scene changes. On the morrow I stand by his
cold and lifeless form.
The present moment is our ain,
The niest we never saw.
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. l.'JT
Mr. Speaker, as one of the escort I went with the remains of
the distinguished dead to the city of Detroit. Amid the hush
of his awe-stricken friends we laid him down. Illinois to
Michigan delivered up the illustrious dead.
Mr. Speaker, among the patriotic names of this country that
of Senator CHANDLER is written high up, where it may be
read by all the ages. You cannot erase it without tearing from
the records one of the most important chapters in the history
of humanity. Glory to his memory ! Peace to his ashes !
Address of Mr. GARFIELD, of Ohio.
Mr. CHAIRMAN: It cannot be too late, however late the
hour, to pay our tribute of respect and affection to the mem
ory of ZACHARIAH CHANDLER.
There is a thought in connection with his life and the his
tory of his State which has been referred to by the gentleman
from New Jersey [Mr. KOBESON], and which may be still fur
ther developed. It only lacks two years of being a full cen
tury since Lewis Cass was born, and he and ZACHARIAH
CHANDLER have filled seventy-three years of that period with
active, prominent public service. And through all those sev
enty-three years there has shone like a star in both their lives
the influence of one great event.
In the stormy spring of 1861, when the foundations of the
Republic trembled under the tread of assembling armies, I
made a pilgrimage to the home of the venerable Lewis Cass,
who had just laid down his great office as chief of the State
Department, and for an hour I was a reverent listener to his
words of wisdom. And in that conversation he gave me the
thought which I wish to record. He said, " You remember,
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138
ADDRESS OF ME. GARFIELD ON THE
young man, that the Constitution did not take effect until nine
States had ratified it. My native State was the ninth. It
hung a long time in doubtful scale whether nine would agree ;
but when at last New Hampshire ratified the Constitution, it
was a day of great rejoicing. My mother held me, a little boy
of six years, in her arms at a window and pointed me to a
great man on horseback and to the bonfires that were blazing
in the streets of Exeter, and told me that the horseman was
General Washington and the people were celebrating the adop
tion of the Constitution." " So," said the aged statesman, " I
saw the Constitution born, and I fear I may see it die. "
He then traced briefly the singular story of his life. He
said : " I crossed the Alleghany Mountains and settled in your
State of Ohio one year before the beginning of this century.
Fifty-four years ago now, I sat in the General Assembly of
your State of Ohio. In 1807 I received from Thomas Jefferson
a commission as United States marshal which I still preserve,
and am probably the only man living to-day who bears a com
mission from Jefferson's hand." And so, running over the
great retrospect of his life and saddened by bloody prospect
that 1861 brought to his mind, said, " I have loved the Union
ever since the light of that bonfire and the sight of General
Washington greeted my eyes. I have given fifty-five years of
my life and my best efforts to its preservation. I fear I am
doomed to see it perish. "
But a better fate awaited both him and the Union. Another
son of New Hampshire took up the truncheon of power from
his failing hand, and, with the vigor of youth and liberty,
maintained and defended the Union through the years of its
supremest peril. ZACHARIAH CHANDLER, whose birthplace
was not more than thirty miles distant from that of Lewis
Cass, resumed the duty as Michigan's Senator with the vigor
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 139
of young and hopeful manhood. Aud he pushed forward that
great work until his last hour and died in the full glory of its
achievement. The State of New Hampshire may look upon
this day and these names we celebrate as her pride and special
glory.
The great Carlyle has said that the best gift God ever gave
to man was an eye that could really see ; and that only a few
men were recipients of this gift. I venture to add that an
equally rare and not less important gift is the courage to tell
just what one sees. Besides having an eye, ZACHARIAH
CHANDLER was endowed in an eminent degree with the cour
age to tell just what he saw.
If from these seats, Mr. Speaker, every Representative
should speak out the very inmost thought of the people he
represents, this Hall would be luminous with the spirit and
aspirations of the American people. The ruling principle of
Mr. CHANDLER'S life was this: that what he saw in public
affairs he uttered ; and having said it, stood by it — not with
malice or arrogance, but with the sturdiness of thorough con
viction. To a stranger he might, perhaps, appear rugged and
harsh — even to cruelty ; yet his heart was full of gentleness
when he had satisfied his sense of duty.
As a political force Mr. CHANDLER may be classed among
the Cyclopean figures of history. The Norsemen would enroll
him as one of the heroes in the halls of Valhalla. They would
associate him with Thor and his thunder hammer. The Ro
mans would associate him with Vulcan and the forges of the
Cyclops who made the earth tremble under the weight of his
strokes.
What man have we known who, without specially cultivating
the graces of oratory, was able to condense into ten minutes a
more enduring speech than the one which he delivered at the
140 ADDRESS OF MR. GARFIELD ON THE
session of 1879 ? Under the pressure of his intense mind
an hour of ordinary speech was condensed into a sentence.
He was not an orator in the ordinary sense of fine writing
and graceful delivery ; but in the clearness of his conceptions
and the courage and force with which he uttered them he was
a most remarkable speaker.
Somebody said long ago that "one man with a belief was a
greater power than ten thousand who have only interests."
Mr. CHANDLER was emphatically a man with a belief.
In the minds of most men the kingdom of opinion is divided
into three territories — the territory of yes, the territory of no,
and a broad, unexplored middle ground of doubt. That mid
dle ground in the mind of Mr. CHANDLER was very narrow.
Nearly all his territory was occupied by positive convictions.
On most questions his mind was made up more completely than
that of any man I have known.
His was an intense nature —
Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
It is curious to observe that, as a general rule, long service
in a legislative minority unfits men for the duties that devolve
upon a majority. The business of the one is to attack, of the
other to defend ; of the one to tear down, of the other to build up.
The leaders of the anti-slavery struggle in this country were
perhaps the most skillful in assault of any political party in
our history. But when, after years of service in the minority,
they came into power, but few of their prominent leaders were
fit for the constructive work of maintaining an administration.
Mr. CHANDLER was one of that small number who displayed
in constructive legislation abilities fully equal to those which
he exhibited as a member of the minority. His administration
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 141
of the Interior Department was au ample vindication of his
high qualities as an executive officer.
This Congress will miss him in its councils. His party and
his State will greatly miss him. I know he is sincerely mourned
in my own State, where within three weeks of the hour of his
death I had the honor to preside over the largest political
assemblage I have seen in many years. The name of ZACHA
RIAH CHANDLER called together that great multitude, who sat
at his feet and listened with reverence and enthusiasm.
Reviewing his life and summing up his qualities, we may
fitly apply to him the words which the laureate of England
applied to Wellington :
O iron nerve, to true occasion true,
O fallen at length, that tower of strength,
Which stood foresquare to all the winds that blew.
Address of Mr. WILLITS, of Michigan.
Mr. SPEAKER : ZACHARIAH CHANDLER needs no eulogy to
perpetuate his name in the State of Michigan; his nineteen
years' service in the Senate of the United States is recorded in
the annals of that distinguished body, and nothing that we
can say to-day can add to or diminish his fame. His public
like his private life was an active one and was well known
and conspicuous from the first. March 4, 1857, he succeeded
in the Senate of the United States a statesman long honored
by the State of Michigan ; who had taken a leading part in its
early history, having been its territorial governor from 1813 to
1830; who had for four years been Secretary of War under An
drew Jackson, seven years minister to France under Jackson
and Van Buren, the candidate of a great party for the office of
Chief Executive of the nation, Senator of the United States,
and finally Secretary of State under James Buchanan. It was
142 ADDRESS OF MR. WILLITS ON THE
such a man as this ZACHARIAH CHANDLER succeeded; a man
who had gathered to himself the honors of two continents, con
ferred dignity upon every position he had occupied, and for
half a century had added leaf after leaf to the well- filled chaplet
that had fallen so fittingly upon his brow. Lewis Cass was an
honored name in the State of Michigan ; it was a household
word in the homes of the hardy pioneers who had followed
him into the new State he had helped to found. Their chil
dren in like manner revered the man who had extinguished the
Indian title to the lands they now occupied and had made a
name historic in the annals of his country.
It was no whim that relegated Lewis Cass to private life. It
was no accident that brought ZACHARIAH CHANDLER to the
front instead. The people of the Peninsular State are not vol
atile or visionary, or forgetful of those who have shown them
selves worthy of honor. There is none of the feeling exhibited
by the Athenian clown, as related by Plutarch, who was tired
of hearing Aristides everywhere called the Just. The State of
Michigan was in no just sense unmindful of the great worth of
Lewis Cass, and would have delighted to continue him in the
high position he had so justly attained, if events had not con
spired to render it impossible. With these events he had failed
to keep himself fully abreast. There are times when public
sentiment will not endure a political laggard. Lewis Cass, with
all his breadth of intellect, with the experience of a statesman
and the amenities of the finished scholar and gentleman, was
not a positive man, was not an original man. Times were on
the threshold when both of these qualities were to be needed.
He was a true man at heart, loyal to his country, and so honest
that, when at last he saw the fallacy of his position, he resigned
his high place rather than compromise his fealty to the Union.
But he was too old to fight, and he was unable to devise a plan
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER. 143
to still the waves of the rising revolution. He bad to give way
to a sentiment he had been slow to perceive and utterly unable
to comprehend.
Among those who had been quick to perceive the logic of
events was the man whom we honor to-day. He was selected
by the people of the State of Michigan to succeed Lewis Cass;
not because he had had large experience in political affairs, for
he had had none ; not because he had culture and refinement,
for he had neither, as understood in the school or the drawing-
room ; not because he was learned in the law or skilled in the
arts of diplomacy, for he was wont to boast that he cared for
neither the abstruseness of the one nor the duplicity of the
other; but he was selected because he was a strong, positive
man who was in full sj'mpathy with the revolt against the
political tendencies of the party in power, and with which
Lewis Cass had been identified for half a century; he was
selected because he was a hearty hater of sham, an opponent
of the compromises that had insidiously taken more than they
had purported to give, and demanded more than the people of
his State were disposed to yield; because, in the "irrepress
ible conflict" then impending, he was on the side of the lib
erty which the fathers had aspired to, but from which the sons
had apostatized. In all these characteristics he was the repre
sentative of his people, who had the utmost confidence in his
integrity, strong common sense, and positive adherence to the
convictions born of this common sense.
From the advent of ZACHARIAH CHANDLER in the Senate
of the United States to the end of his career, so unexpectedly
terminated, he justified the confidence reposed in him. In the
terrible conflict that convulsed the land he was an important
factor, moving and controlling events and policies by the tre
mendous force of his will and the dictation of a restless en-
144 ADDEESS OF ME. WILLITS ON THE
ergy. Uutrammeled by the subtleties of the dialectician, he
held in supreme contempt the faltering hesitation of generals
and the doubting quibbles of lawyers in the face of an armed
enemy. To him war had its own laws, construed by the su
preme necessity of the hour and enforced by the musket ; the
road to essential justice was in a straight line, with no devious
paths leading into an ambush. Emancipation of the negro
race, prompt, decisive, by proclamation, presented to him no
legal difficulties. He would utilize the force which might be
let loose upon rebellion, and would for all time take from the
master the slave for whose thraldom he had risen in arms
against the Union; retributive justice should supplement un
warranted revolution.
He was restless over the delay of the proclamation, and
wheh the preliminary one had been issued in September, 1862,
he had none of the fears and doubts of the conservatives who
protested against it as unconstitutional and sought to have it
recalled. In the intervening months he visited Washington,
before the final proclamation was issued, to counteract, by his
presence and his positive views, the effort to have the step
abandoned. On his return I met him at the depot, at my own
home, and was informed exultingly: "Lincoln will stick." In
all these years he seemed to comprehend by inspiration what
some men never learned at all or acquired only by experience.
He was not swept along by the tide; he was a component part
of the tide itself — one of the forces of the times, one of the
men who make history. Nevertheless, he was not much given
to speech-making or formulating statutes. The records of Con
gress do not show for him as much, measured by the square
foot, as for the long line of disputative spouters who have
gone to the same graves as the speeches they made. He
would never have devised the electoral commission; he could
LIFE AND CIIAKAC'TER OP ZACIIARIAII CHANDLER. 145
iiot have done so if be would ; but be supplemented it with
organized facts witbout wbicb its findings would have had
altogether another termination.
He was a praetieal man not given to theories; not like
Archimedes, who from principles elaborated in his study con
structed his pulleys and engines, the one of which demolished
the Roman fleet and played pitch and toss with the Roman
ships, but rather like Marcellus, who in his practical way
captured the unguarded tower which overlooked doomed
Syracuse. He was a man of affairs. By his own exertions
he made an independent fortune, of which he never stole a
cent. No man ever charged him with larceny, or hypocrisy,
or lukewarmness to a friend, or placability to a foe, or cow
ardly desertion of a conviction, or compromise of a principle.
He was a generous fighter, who never fired a musket with hos
tile intent, and yet worthily earned the title of Michigan's
great war Senator. Over this title no worthy soldier on the
shores of the great lakes of the Northwest has ever been cap
tious or envious. He was the soldiers' friend, and he divided
with them the high esteem in which they held all the moving
spirits in the great contest in which loyal men shed so much
of their loyal blood. None have mourned his untimely death
more than the heroes of that war, and when the news of his
death was sent to the ends of the globe on the morning of the
1st day of November last, none bowed with a heartier sorrow
over the memory of the man they revered than the men who
had so faithfully in the field vindicated the policy advocated
by the illustrious Senator in the councils of the nation.
When the sad news reached me, I was on my journey home
from Chicago. 1 had parted with him the midnight before. I
was the last man that saw Senator CHANDLER alive. I now
and shall to my latest hour recall the room in the Grand
19 c
146
ADDRESS OF MR. WILLITS.
Pacific Hotel in which we had this last interview. The fire
was burning low; the hotel was as silent as the grave in
which he now lies ; we were as much alone as if we sat by a
solitary camp-fire in the pathless desert. After about twenty
minutes' conversation I left him alone with Death stealing
over the threshold of his room. I did not see him there,
but is it my imagination that recalls footfalls as I passed
along the silent, dimly-lighted corridors to my own room?
As the recollection comes to me, it seems as though these
echoes may have been the footfalls of the grim destroyer who
so closely follows the steps of mortal man. I recollect now
that there was a sense of something unsaid — what it was I
cannot recall — that led me to stop and turn back as if to rap
at his door and speak to him again, but knowing he was
weary I refrained, and went my lonely way. I can hardly
wish now that I had followed the impulse, for it is unlikely
that my presence would have changed the purpose of that
Providence that holds the issues of life and had then marked
him for death; but who knows what parting word might have
been said? Who knows but the impulse I had may have been
only a response to one he himself had, and which had spoken
to me as spirit talketh to spirit, calling for some word of sym
pathy, some kind remembrance? But he is gone, and I shall
never know whether he called or not till we again meet face to
face. Till then I can only join with the multitude of mourners
in lamenting the great loss we all sustained in the loss of a
great man, and in lading this last token upon his grave.
I move the adoption of the resolutions.
The question being taken on the resolutions, they were
adopted unanimously, and in obedience to the second resolu
tion the House (at six o'clock and twelve minutes p. m.)
adjourned.
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