FOOTNOTES:
[31] Mr. Chandler explained the ground of his opposition to the ten per cent. loyal basis plan of reconstruction proposed by Mr. Lincoln for the admission of Louisiana and Arkansas. There were not more than seven or eight members of the Senate with him at the beginning of the session on that question, although there was a large majority before its close. The Democrats did not believe in this ten per cent. doctrine, and they voted with those who did not believe in admitting those States without guarantees. This admission was finally prevented by a night of filibustering. Only six Republicans remained and voted during that night. The result, however, proved that those six men were right, and that Mr. Lincoln and the others were wrong. If Louisiana and Arkansas had been admitted, then we would have been compelled to admit all the other States in the same way, and to-day we would have eleven rebel States in the Union. Those two States, Louisiana and Arkansas, had become the most intensely rebel of all the States that were in rebellion.—Report of his speech, before the Republican caucus at Lansing on Jan. 6, 1869.
[32] Mr. Greeley's comment in the New York "Tribune" was: "Precisely why Mr. Lincoln thought this action called for at this moment, rather than at any other time in the last four months, we are not told." This chapter shows that Mr. Chandler could have "told" him.
[33] If the North had been a unit the rebellion would long ago have been crushed. But the rebels found out we were not a unit at any time, so they persevered, so they invaded Pennsylvania, so they hoped to take Washington, and to raise insurrection all over the land. The only hope of the South to-day is in the traitors of the North.... They will fail in the contest. Instead of having established a slave empire they will have, by their own acts, destroyed all the securities that slavery ever possessed. They will have swept away all the compromises by which slavery has been tolerated by a forbearing people.—Senator Chandler at Springfield, Ill., on Sept. 7, 1863.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JOHNSON—RECONSTRUCTION AND IMPEACHMENT.
On the evening of April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated at Ford's theater in the city of Washington. The universal grief was fitly described by Disraeli, who said, in the British Commons, that the character of the victim and the circumstances of his death took the event "out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touched the heart of nations and appealed to the domestic sentiment of mankind." Its effect upon the American people was profound, and it deepened vastly the public appreciation of the essential barbarity of the prejudices, passions and ambitions which had plunged the republic into civil war.
The members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War returned on the evening of this crime from Richmond, having made an unsuccessful attempt to visit North Carolina for the purpose of taking testimony in regard to the Fort Fisher expedition. On the following morning they met, and addressed a formal note to Andrew Johnson, who had, while a Senator, served upon that committee, expressing the wish of his "old associates" to call upon him and acquaint him with "many things which they had seen and heard at Richmond." They were promptly admitted to his apartments at the Kirkwood House, and were among the first to talk freely with the man who had been so tragically made President of the newly-restored Union. Mr. Johnson had just been sworn into office by Chief Justice Chase in the presence of some of the Cabinet and a few Congressmen, and naturally the conversation chiefly turned upon the pursuit of the assassins, and the proper punishment of the men who had inspired or countenanced this crime, as well as of its actual committers. As a sequel of this conference, an important meeting was held on the following day (Sunday, April 16, 1865) in the President's rooms. By appointment Senators Chandler and Wade and John Covode (an original member of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, then a contestant for a seat in the House) called upon Mr. Johnson, and proceeded to consider with him what policy should be pursued toward the chiefs of the conquered rebellion. They believed that the public interest required that examples should be made of a few of the more guilty of the Southern traitors, and urged such a course upon the President. They found him—confronted as he was with the danger of assassination, and recollecting his own sufferings as a Southern Unionist—eager for measures of extreme rigor, and were compelled at the outset to seek to moderate a violence of intention on his part, which was certain to defeat the aim they were anxious to secure, namely: that of impressing the public with a sense of the justice as well as the severity of the punishment of deliberate and inexcusable treason. Andrew Johnson's disposition was to give to the contemplated proceedings rather a revengeful than a sternly retributive complexion. The relations of Mr. Chandler, Mr. Wade and Mr. Covode with their former fellow-committeeman were then exceedingly intimate, and they labored to restrain his vehemence and to direct his determination into a channel of action which should be just and not passionate, and should thus yield wholesome influences. It had been suggested that Davis and other fugitive rebels should be allowed to escape to Mexico or Europe, and the question of their punishment thus evaded; this plan was promptly condemned by all the participants in the conference, and there was a general agreement that the leaders of the rebellion should be arrested as rapidly as possible and held to answer for their offenses. The next question that arose related to the best method of procedure after these men had been captured, and then it was decided than Gen. Benjamin F. Butler should be sent for to give his advice as a lawyer. Mr. Covode undertook this errand and soon returned with him. Mr. Chandler then stated to General Butler the subject of the conference, and the President added that he was anxious to make a historical example of the leading traitors, for its moral effect upon the future, and took exceedingly extreme ground on this point, much more so than the other gentlemen were willing to approve. All of those present expressed their opinions in turn, after Mr. Johnson had concluded, and all agreed upon one point, namely: that in the case of the seizure of Jefferson Davis he should be summarily punished by death. Mr. Chandler remarked, with emphasis:
"You have only to hang a few of these traitors and all will be peace and quiet in the South. A few men have done the mischief, and the masses of the people were misled by them. They have put the country in great peril to gratify their political ambition and they ought to suffer the penalty of treason as a warning to all men hereafter."
To this Andrew Johnson replied that Mr. Chandler could not know the full enormity of the crime Davis and his associates had committed, that Northern men could never realize the sufferings the rebellion had brought upon the loyal people of the South, and that no punishment could be too severe. He added that he was determined that a precedent should be established that would be forever a terror to such men as had conspired to overthrow the government.
After some further conversation, the President asked General Butler for his professional opinion, as to whether Davis, Benjamin, Floyd, Wigfall, and the other civil officers of the Confederacy, could be tried by a military commission. General Butler replied that if they could be arrested in the insurrectionary States—in any locality under military control and where no civil authority existed or was recognized—they could be arraigned before such a tribunal, but a court of this character would have no jurisdiction if the criminals should get upon foreign soil, or, before being apprehended, reach any district where the civil law was in force. Mr. Chandler then urged that Davis should, by all means, be secured before he had a chance to leave the seceded States; and inquired as to the situation of the troops in the South and the probability of their defeating an attempt by Davis to fly through Mexico, or by boat on the Gulf. President Johnson replied that no way was open for his escape, but that he would be captured, dead or alive. The supposition that Davis was implicated in the assassination plot was then discussed with some difference of opinion, and finally the President asked General Butler to indicate a plan for the prosecution and punishment of Davis and his associates, for the use of the government. General Butler consented and the conference ended.
With the preparation of the memorandum thus requested, General Butler occupied almost his entire time for several weeks, investigating precedents, and examining authorities with the utmost thoroughness. During this work he was repeatedly in consultation with Mr. Chandler, who saw all of his notes and made many suggestions; before its completion, Davis had been captured and sent to Fortress Monroe. General Butler's plan was submitted to President Johnson in the latter part of May, 1865. It was long and elaborate, was based upon an exhaustive examination of the history of all military tribunals, and set forth in substance these propositions:
1. That Davis could be tried by a military commission, having been captured while in rebellion in a locality where no lawful civil authority existed. This tribunal could sit at Fortress Monroe, where Davis was a prisoner, as that was still within the military lines.
2. That this commission should be composed of the thirteen officers of the highest rank in the army; this provision would have made it consist of Lieut.-Gen. U. S. Grant; Major-Generals H. W. Halleck, W. T. Sherman, George G. Meade, Philip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, and Brigadier-Generals Irwin McDowell, Wm. S. Rosecrans, Philip St. George Cooke, John Pope, Joseph Hooker, W. S. Hancock, and John M. Schofield.
3. That in case of conviction, before the sentence should be executed, Davis should be allowed an opportunity to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States; this would silence criticism, secure Davis all his legal rights, and establish a precedent which might stand for all time.
4. That the only doubt that existed as to the conviction of Davis was to be found in the question of the jurisdiction of the military commission.
5. That the prosecution should hold Davis's assumption of military authority against the United States as the overt act of treason, and that his military orders, his commissions of officers, his official announcements of himself as "commander-in-chief of the military and naval forces of the Confederate States," his official reviews of troops, the official reports made to him by commanders of armies in rebellion, should be proven to establish the case.
6. That the record of the oaths taken by him as an officer in the United States army, as a Senator, and as Secretary of War, should be shown with evidence that he had violated them.
7. That the various acts of cruelty to prisoners of war committed by his orders should be proven; other minor counts could also be introduced in the indictment to secure an accumulation of charges.
General Butler's memorandum further set forth that the prosecution should expect to be met by the defense:
1. With the question of jurisdiction.
2. With an attempt to prove the right of secession.
3. With the claim that the duty of allegiance to a state was superior to the duty of allegiance to the general government.
4. With the claim that the acts of which Davis was accused were performed by him as the head of a de facto government, to which office he had been elected under forms of law.
5. With the further point that the recognition of this de facto government by the United States in the exchange of prisoners, in the acceptance of terms of surrender, in the observance of flags of truce, and in correspondence of various kinds, amounted to such a recognition of the existence of a government with which it was at war, as must prevent the United States from claiming that participation therein was treason.
These were the chief points which General Butler thought the defense would set up, and in his brief he grouped a powerful array of precedents and decisions upon which the prosecution could rest its case and meet these objections. During the early stages of this work, Mr. Chandler, General Butler and others, who firmly held that stern punishment should be meted out to a few conspicuous rebels—not in a spirit of vengeance, but from a belief that salutary results would follow if it should be established as a historical fact that in the United States treason is a high crime whose penalty is death—were constantly anxious lest the President should by some violent act or word destroy the moral effect of their position. In public he said repeatedly at this time that "the penalties of the law must be in a stern and inflexible manner executed upon conscious, intelligent and influential traitors," but his private utterances far outstripped this language, and were often scarcely less than bloodthirsty. Mr. Chandler, on one occasion, came away from the White House greatly disturbed by Mr. Johnson's disposition to treat this subject with mere anger, and characteristically said to Senator Wade and Mr. Hamlin, "Johnson has the nightmare, and it is important that he should be watched." General Butler's memorandum Mr. Chandler heartily approved as clear in scope, just in spirit, and certain to prove effective in operation, but, by the time it was fully completed, a great change had taken place in the disposition of the President. In April he was in favor of hanging every body; in June he was opposed to hanging any one. He finally ignored entirely the memorandum which General Butler had drawn up at his request, and decided that Davis should be tried by the civil authorities at Richmond, where his crimes had been committed. As a result the arch-rebel was allowed to remain in prison at Fortress Monroe for nearly two years, because of the lack of a civil court competent to take jurisdiction of his case. In 1866 he was indicted and arraigned, and in 1867 was admitted to bail; a year later a nolle prosequi was entered, and the case against him dismissed. Before this matter had reached its second stage even, Mr. Chandler had become convinced that Andrew Johnson had determined to desert the party which had elevated him to the vice-presidency, and with that knowledge ceased to act as his adviser and became one of the most active of his political enemies. The leniency of the course finally pursued toward Davis Mr. Chandler then and afterward regarded as a grave public mistake, and believed that the failure to enforce the death penalty where it was so thoroughly deserved was exceedingly unfortunate in its influence upon popular opinion, and did more than any other one cause to encourage the disloyal classes of the South in their plans for ultimately recapturing the political supremacy they had forfeited by rebellion.
Precisely the causes which led Andrew Johnson so quickly back into close fellowship with the men whom he had regarded as his inveterate enemies will never be known. It is probable that originally they were slight, but his temperament rapidly widened disagreement into irreconcilable hostility. His maudlin speech on Inauguration-day so incensed many of his supporters that the Republican senators, at a formal gathering, actually considered a proposition (urged by Mr. Sumner) to request him to resign the office he had disgraced. The conference decided against such a step, but Mr. Johnson heard of the movement, and regarded those who approved it with much bitterness; his hatred of them undoubtedly fed his growing dislike for the party of which they were influential leaders. Again, he was a thorough representative of the "poor whites" of the South. He felt their jealousy of the planting aristocracy which monopolized political power in his section, and this made him such a vigorous opponent of the secession conspiracy which that oligarchy organized and led. But he also shared in the prejudice of his own class against the negroes, and, when he saw the disposition of the Republicans to accord to the freedmen equal rights and privileges before the law, he refused to join in that movement and set doggedly about defeating such plans. Precisely how great Mr. Seward's influence over him was at this time is not clear, but it is certain that the change in his attitude toward Republicanism was simultaneous with the slow recovery of his Secretary of State from the blows of Payne's dagger. His combative obstinacy also made him fiercely resent the vigorous criticisms which his "policy" of reconstruction invited when first announced; Congress did not meet for months after his accession to the presidency, and its leaders were not in position to check his course, either by organized remonstrance or by legislative interposition; the rebels who had been denouncing him savagely were prompt to flatter his vanity and to offer promises of support; and, as a result, when the Thirty-ninth Congress met on December 4, 1865, the break between the President and the Republican party had passed beyond mending. Mr. Johnson entered at once upon that shameful course, which included the betrayal of those who had trusted him and the disgrace of his high office by lamentable public exhibitions of passion and boorishness, and which led to great and durable public injury by trebling the difficulties surrounding the delicate and important work of reconstructing the "Confederacy." Mr. Chandler's distrust of the President commenced with his change of tone in regard to the punishment of treason and with the first manifestation of his intention to assume full control of reconstruction and to practically restore the rebels to power in the subdued States. They had one stormy interview at the White House, in which Mr. Chandler, after touching upon the implicit character of his confidence in the President during their senatorial service, denounced his new course as a violation of his sacred pledges and a base surrender to traitors, and left him indignantly and forever. From that time he regarded Andrew Johnson as a public enemy, whose opportunities for evil were to be lessened by every possible lawful restriction. He did not oppose the efforts made by his more hopeful associates in December, 1865, to re-establish harmony between the Capitol and the White House, but he predicted their failure. All the legislation which diminished Johnson's power for harm he ardently supported. The bills to admit Nebraska and Colorado (the Colorado bill failed at this time) he was especially active in pushing, from a belief that it was important to increase the Republican ascendency in the Senate while there was an uncertainty as to how much strength the "Johnson men" proper (Senators Doolittle, Dixon, Norton, and Cowan) might develop. It was largely through Mr. Chandler's untiring exertions, also, that the Fortieth Senate elected Benjamin F. Wade as its President, and thus made him the acting Vice-President of the United States, a position of the very highest responsibility in the then critical state of national affairs.
Mr. Chandler aided in shaping and passing the reconstruction measures of 1866-'67-'68, not for the reason that they precisely embodied his ideas of the true method to be pursued, but because they presented a plan upon which the Republicans could be united, which was practicable, and which promised to reorganize the Southern States on the basis of the supremacy of the loyal elements in their population. When Andrew Johnson took the first step in unfolding his "policy" (by his general amnesty proclamation and by the appointment of a provisional governor for North Carolina, both acts bearing the date of May 29, 1865) the "Confederacy" had ceased to exist, its chieftain was a captive, its armies were prisoners of war on parole, its capacity for resistance had been consumed in the furnace of battle, but its bitterness still glowed and the prejudices and ambitions which gave it being were undestroyed. The amnesty proclamation relieved, with a few exceptions, those who bore arms against the government and the most virulent supporters of rebellion who remained at home from all pains and penalties on the sole condition that they should subscribe to an oath of future loyalty. The provisional government proclamations permitted all persons thus amnestied, who were voters according to laws of the States previous to the rebellion, to elect delegates to conventions to amend the local constitutions and restore the States to their "constitutional relations with the federal government." By this process the loyal colored men of the South were denied the right to participate in the work of reconstruction and the entire machinery of reorganization was placed in the control of men whose hands were yet red with Union blood. Their discretion was only hampered by three conditions, compliance with which was made essential to the presidential approval of their work. They were required to annul the secession ordinances, to formally recognize the abolition of slavery, and to repudiate all debts created to promote rebellion. Beyond this, the disloyal classes of the South were left in undisputed mastery of the situation. The control of the insurgent States, and of the lives and fortunes of the loyalists, white and black, were surrendered absolutely to the men who but a few weeks before had been wrecked in the catastrophe which overwhelmed the rebellion. That they were prompt to improve this unexpected, undeserved and mistaken leniency need not be said. Their use of their new power was both presumptuous and intolerant. In elections, which proscribed Union men as unworthy of trust, conventions were chosen which accepted ungraciously the mere fact of emancipation, and which repudiated the rebel debts only under repeated presidential compulsion. State governments were then organized, which placed men whose disloyalty had been conspicuous in responsible positions, and which sent unamnestied leaders of the rebellion in the field and in council to Washington as claimants of Congressional seats. The State legislation which followed embodied in shameful laws the unquenched diabolism of the slave power. In statutory phraseology these enactments declared, "politically and socially this is a white man's government," and, impudently asserting that Congress was without any power over the matter, the men who had, in form, admitted the death of slavery proceeded to establish peonage in its stead. No body of laws adopted by any civilized nation in this century has equaled in studied injustice and cruelty those by which the "Johnson governments" of 1865 and 1866 sought to prevent the freedmen from rising from the level of admitted and hopeless inferiority, and to convince the blacks that in ceasing to be slaves they had only become serfs. Colored people were denied the right to acquire or dispose of public property. It was made a crime for a negro to enter a plantation without the consent of its owner or agent. Freedmen were declared vagrants, and punished as such for preaching the gospel without a license from some regularly organized church. Colored men failing to pay capitation tax were declared vagrants and the sale of their services was permitted as a penalty. Black persons were prohibited from renting or leasing lands except in incorporated towns or villages. Their owning or bearing arms was declared to be a violation of the peace. For a negro to break a labor contract was made an offense punishable by imprisonment. Colored laborers on farms were prohibited from selling poultry or farm products, and it was made a misdemeanor to purchase from them. This class was also denied the right of forming part of the militia, and it was made an offense for any freedman to enter a religious or other assembly of whites, or go with them into any rail car or public conveyance. White persons "usually associating themselves with freedmen, free negroes, or mulattoes" were also declared to be vagrants in the eye of the law. The colored people were prohibited from practicing any art, trade or business except husbandry, without special license from the courts. And most infamous of all were the statutes for the compulsory apprenticeship of colored children with or without the consent of parents, which practically re-established over the next generation of the freed people slavery with the whipping-post and overseer's lash. One State by joint resolution tendered thanks to Jefferson Davis "for the noble and patriotic manner in which he conducted the affairs of our government while President of the Confederacy," and other resolutions were adopted declaring that "nothing more is required for the restoration of law and order but the withdrawal of federal bayonets." [The fell spirit and tendency of the reaction which was thus revealed found still more significant expression in the revolting butchery in and around the Mechanic's Institute of New Orleans on the 30th of July, 1866.] Some of these infamous measures were adopted in all the insurrectionary States, others in only some of them, but without exception the new Southern governments which Andrew Johnson's "policy" created were founded upon the traditions of the slave system and the memories of "the lost cause." The objection that the President had, in thus taking the work of reconstruction into his own hands, usurped authority devolved upon Congress by the constitution, was a strong one, but it received but little popular attention. Anger at the results of that "policy" obscured the mere disapproval of its methods. When it was seen that the rebellion had merely changed its theater of action, and that what it lost on the battle-field it proposed to secure by legislation, there was but one opinion among the masses of the people who had heartily supported the war and were sincerely anxious to preserve its fruits. Their emphatic demand was that the illegal and reactionary governments set up by the President should be overturned, and the South reconstructed in the interests of loyalty and liberty. Congress, as part of its stubborn contest with Andrew Johnson, undertook this work. It refused to recognize the pretended State governments or to admit their Congressmen. It divided the territory of the conquered States into five military districts, and placed it under the control of the army until a juster system of reconstruction could be applied. It then provided that in the calling of conventions to frame new constitutions colored men should be permitted to vote; that those revised instruments must confer the elective franchise upon all loyal colored people and all whites not disfranchised for rebellion; that the work of the conventions must be submitted to the colored and white people not disfranchised for approval; that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the national constitution must be ratified; and that the State constitutions so adopted must be submitted to and accepted by Congress. Upon this general plan the South was reconstructed, not without much friction, not wholly to the satisfaction of the men who marked out this course of procedure, but with the faith (or at least the trust) on their part that it would restore that section to the Union with genuinely free institutions, that it would protect the emancipated slave in his rights, and that it would substitute for disloyal communities States controlled by those whose interests and traditions lay with the national cause. The reconstruction laws were not vengeful in character; the aim of the men who passed them was not retaliation, not even retribution except in so far as the application of mild penalties to treason might increase the security of the future. To prevent a repetition of the terrible struggle which had just closed was the aim; that a political system had been devised, which both recognized human rights, and by its natural operations would exclude from political power the men who had plunged the country into civil war, was the hope. Within ten years the scheme failed utterly, and what it was designed to prevent had been accomplished upon its ruins. No body of laws can maintain itself in the face of organized murder and terrorism which authority refuses to either punish or prevent.
The reconstruction measures, while they commanded Mr. Chandler's general assent, were laxer in details than he would have made them. He felt, as Thaddeus Stevens said, that much that they ought to have contained was "defeated by the united forces of self-righteous Republicans and unrighteous Copperheads," but held that the bills which were passed deserved support as a whole on the ground that it was not wise to "throw away a great good because it is not perfect." Schuyler Colfax closed one of his speeches upon this subject as follows: "Loyalty must govern what loyalty preserved." Mr. Chandler complimented him warmly and said, "You got it all into one sentence," and that doctrine and the belief in equal rights for citizens of every color guided his share of the work upon all measures affecting reconstruction. His chief regret was that the process of this reorganization was not prolonged until the loyal sentiment of the South had become strong enough and intelligent enough to maintain itself. If his wishes had prevailed, the provisional governing of that section would have been continued until the education of the blacks, the death of the rebel leaders, and the extinguishment by time of the prejudices and animosities of the war had accomplished such a wholesome revolution in sentiment throughout that section as would in itself have been a loyal and durable reconstruction. As this was not possible, he spared no effort to make successful the experiment which was attempted; if others had been as resolute and faithful as he, it would not have failed. He did not share in the disposition of so many Republicans to abandon what had been just commenced because of the imperfection of its first fruits. He stood manfully for the maintenance by Northern opinion and by the aid of the United States of the loyal State governments of the South, not claiming they were faultless, but because they were based on justice and were far better than that which would take their place if they fell. When they were assailed by assassination, by massacre, and by systematic terrorizing, he believed that it was the duty of the general government to use all its authority and all its force to protect its citizens in their rights and to prevent the harvesting by unpunished traitors of the fruits of atrocities as brutal and bloody as Saint Bartholomew. The policy of political murder triumphed finally at the South, not through any weakness of such men as he, nor through any failure upon his part to denounce that vast crime. He labored strenuously to kindle Northern opinion into such a flame of just wrath as would have made impossible that victory of organized brutality.
Mr. Chandler, was often described by political opponents as "the relentless enemy of the South;" nothing was farther from the fact. That small minority of the Southern people, who ruled that section with oligarchical power before and during the war, who organized and led the rebellion, and who have now regained supremacy by outrage and murder, he always distrusted and attacked. But the great majority of the people of the South—the blacks whom those men rob of their rights and the whites whom they mislead—he profoundly pitied, and their cause he espoused. For them he demanded equal rights before the law, a free ballot box, the common school, and an opportunity to prove their manhood. Those who resisted a policy so just and civilizing he was quick to denounce in unstinted terms, and upon them he did not waste conciliation. They—not "the South"—found him the inappeasable, but still "the avowed, the erect, the manly foe."
In the elections of 1866 the issues were chiefly those connected with reconstruction, and Mr. Chandler as usual spoke in his own and other Western States, exposing the malign results of Mr. Johnson's "policy" and in advocacy of the Congressional plan and the Fourteenth Amendment. The general tenor of his speeches will appear from this extract from an address delivered at Detroit, at the close of the political campaign:
These perjured traitors are permitted to live here, but we say to them they can never again hold office unless Congress by a two-thirds vote shall remove the disability; why, a man who has committed perjury alone, right here in Michigan, you would not allow to testify before a justice of the peace in the most petty case. But we forget the perjury of the rebels which would send them to the State prison, we forget the hanging which follows treason, and say to them simply, that for the future they can never hold office. Personally I am not in favor of the last clause of this section which gives Congress the power to remove this disability by a two-thirds vote. I would have let this race of perjured traitors die out, out of office, and educate the rising generation to loyalty. But it is in the amendment and I advocate its adoption as it is.
Often during the progress of the obstinate struggle between Andrew Johnson and Congress his attempts to evade law and his encroachments upon the powers vested in the legislative branch of the government led to the serious consideration in the House of Representatives of the question of impeachment. Several resolutions ordering the preferring of charges against him at the bar of the Senate were presented without action, but on the 7th of January, 1867, the Hon. J. M. Ashley of Ohio offered a preamble, beginning, "I do impeach Andrew Johnson, Vice-President and acting President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors. I charge him with usurpation of power and violation of law in that he has corruptly used the appointing power; ... corruptly used the pardoning power; ... corruptly used the veto power; ... corruptly disposed of public property; ... and corruptly interfered in elections." With this preamble was a resolution referring the charges to the Judiciary Committee to inquire if the President had been guilty of acts which were "calculated to overthrow, subvert or corrupt the government." By a vote of 108 yeas to 39 nays this reference was ordered, but no report was made until November 25, 1867, and then a resolution of impeachment was submitted by Mr. Boutwell in behalf of the majority of the committee. On December 7, this resolution was rejected by a vote of 57 to 108. Encouraged by this result Mr. Johnson, who had suspended Edwin M. Stanton from the Secretaryship of War during the Congressional recess of 1867, and whose action had been disapproved by the Senate under the Tenure of Civil Office act, undertook to force Mr. Stanton out by a second suspension on February 21, 1868, accompanied by an order appointing Gen. Lorenzo Thomas Secretary ad interim. Mr. Stanton declined to acknowledge the President's power to take this step, refused to give place to General Thomas, and for many days and nights remained in constant occupation of the department offices. The House of Representatives at once arraigned the President before the Senate for this attempted violation of the Tenure of Office act, and his trial followed. Chief Justice Chase presided; the proceedings lasted from February 25 until May 26, 1868; and in the end Mr. Johnson was acquitted, exactly the number of Republican Senators necessary to defeat conviction voting with the Democratic minority. These proceedings Mr. Chandler watched with the liveliest interest, and the failure of the impeachment was one of the most bitter disappointments of his political career. He sincerely believed that Johnson's course fully merited a verdict of "guilty," and he felt that the great difficulties surrounding the problem of the loyal reconstruction of the South would disappear if the executive department of the government was administered with the Jacksonian vigor and patriotism of Benjamin F. Wade. Mr. Stanton's refusal to permit the President to displace him without the consent of the Senate he endorsed with the utmost heartiness, and, while the Secretary remained in his office to prevent its seizure by Mr. Johnson's ad interim appointee, Mr. Chandler spent night after night with him, and did all that was possible to strengthen his resolution and to lighten his voluntary confinement. On one occasion, when there were signs of an intention on the part of the claimant to use force, Mr. Chandler, General Logan, and a few others gathered together about a hundred trusty men, who occupied the basement of the department, and there did garrison duty until the danger was past. During Johnson's trial Mr. Chandler was not forgetful of his position as a judge, and was an attentive listener to the evidence and the arguments before and in the court of impeachment. He was restive under the length of the proceedings, however, and did advise the managers on the part of the House to push the case along as rapidly as possible, urging that the public interest required the ending of the general suspense. He felt then, and said afterward, that the delay was used to effect combinations with, and apply pressure to, individual Senators, which would induce them to favor acquittal. That this was done he never doubted, and he repeatedly denounced in the strongest terms, both in public and private, the action of the seven Republicans (Senators Fessenden, Trumbull, Grimes, Henderson, Fowler, Ross and Van Winkle) who voted "not guilty" with the Democrats and the "Johnson men." He was especially indignant at the course of Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Trumbull, and on several occasions in after years came into sharp personal collision with them during the Senate debates. The final failure of the impeachment movement he felt as a blow. One who knew him well has said: "He believed that republican government was at stake and impeachment a necessity. Never was there a time when he came so near despairing of the republic as at that event."
The Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses remained in nearly continuous session for over three years "watching the White House." Outside of the exciting political topics which received so large a share of their attention, they were compelled to deal with important financial, commercial and material questions affecting vitally the general interest. The currency and public debt demanded simplification; the tax system was to be changed from a war to a peace footing; the commercial wrecks of many years called for a bankrupt law; bounties were to be equalized, pensions provided, and war claims adjusted on wise bases; neglected internal improvements clamored for renovation and extension; the ocean commerce required national care; and innumerable minor interests, long neglected under the stress of civil war, needed instant attention. Mr. Chandler worked with characteristic energy and practical wisdom in all these branches of legislative activity, and rendered public services of varied and permanent usefulness.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PRESIDENCY OF GENERAL GRANT—THE REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE.
In the presidential election of 1868 Mr. Chandler was even more than usually active, both as an organizer and speaker. He delivered nearly forty addresses in his own State, which gave to the Grant and Colfax ticket 31,492 majority, and elected a Republican Congressman in each of its six districts. The Legislature chosen at the same time had 66 Republican majority upon joint ballot, and re-elected Mr. Chandler for his third Senatorial term, the Democratic vote being cast for the Hon. Sanford M. Green of Bay City. In the Republican caucus there was practically no opposition to Mr. Chandler's renomination, and he received on the first and only ballot 78 votes, 13 other ballots being cast for seven gentlemen by way of personal compliment. The inauguration of President Grant, on March 4, 1869, renewed Mr. Chandler's influence with the executive branch of the government, and the political and personal friendship between him and the modest, resolute, and illustrious soldier who succeeded Andrew Johnson grew mutually stronger and more appreciative from that day.
Very much of the legislation of President Grant's first term, which received Mr. Chandler's vigilant attention and absorbed no small share of his energy, related to the details of the public business, and furnishes no biographical material of permanent interest. He supported the Fifteenth Amendment in all its stages, and also the Civil Rights bills, which he regarded as incomplete, but still as the taking of steps in the direction of justice.[34] It was his firm purpose to contribute his share toward making American citizenship mean something, for both black and white, and, if life was spared, to cease not his labors until the humblest freeman in the United States should be in firm possession of every natural and constitutional right, should have free access to an honest ballot-box, should suffer no proscription for his political opinions, and should be amply protected in his liberty to think, say, go, and do as he pleased within the limitations laid down by law for the regulation of the conduct of all. The battle, in which he was so eager and stalwart a leader, will not be finished until that result is forever secured.
Early in General Grant's term the friends of Edwin M. Stanton determined to secure for him such an official appointment as should be congenial to his tastes and guarantee him an adequate support in old age. His iron constitution resisted the enormous labors of the civil war successfully. For many months he worked from fifteen to twenty hours in each day; his assistant secretaries were energetic and trained men of affairs, but their strength successively gave way in attempting to keep up with their chief. When the strain was finally withdrawn, it was perceived that his own powers were greatly exhausted. Rest restored their tone somewhat, and he made one or two legal arguments and public addresses, which showed that his intellectual vigor was undiminished, but these efforts were followed by extreme nervous prostration. Under these circumstances, Mr. Stanton's friends determined to secure for him a judicial appointment. For such a position he was qualified by eminent professional attainments, and this fact and the permanency of tenure made the tender of a place upon the bench grateful to him. Accordingly, when Judge Grier resigned his position as a member of the Supreme Court, Mr. Stanton's appointment to the vacant Associate Justiceship was at once urged upon President Grant. Mr. Chandler was very active in this matter and pressed it with all his energy. The effort was successful, and on Dec. 20, 1869, this nomination was sent to the Senate and promptly confirmed. Four days afterward, and before his commission was made out, Mr. Stanton's overtaxed constitution broke down, and he died after a brief illness, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, as thorough a sacrifice to the nobility of his own patriotic devotion during the war as the bravest soldier who fell on any of its battle-fields. During his fatal illness, Mr. Chandler was a frequent watcher at his bedside, and was one of the last persons with whom the dying statesman conversed. After his death it was found that the man who had controlled the disbursement of hundreds of millions had died poor, and had not left an estate adequate to the support of his children. Congress directed a year's salary of a Justice of the Supreme Court to be paid to his heirs. Mr. Chandler and others of his friends also set on foot a movement to raise a national memorial fund. A meeting of Republicans was called at the residence of Congressman Samuel Hooper of Massachusetts, and a committee was there appointed who collected over $140,000 (Mr. Chandler contributing $10,000 and President Grant $1,000), which was invested in United States bonds and placed in the hands of a few trustees, of whom Surgeon-General Barnes of the army was chairman, for the benefit of the Stanton family.
During General Grant's term the subject of "war claims" commenced to attract national attention. Originally the Republican Congresses dealt liberally with the South in the matter of compensation for damages inflicted upon its loyal citizens during the rebellion. By a series of carefully-guarded laws (and by a few private relief measures passed to meet exceptional cases) a large sum was paid to residents of the rebel States who suffered war losses, and were able to produce satisfactory proof of their fidelity to the Union. In this matter the national government certainly went to the extreme verge of generosity. The experience attending the disbursement of the money thus appropriated established conclusively the fraudulent and outrageous character of a large percentage of these claims. In thousands of cases investigation showed conclusively that arrant rebels were willing to swear that they had been "Union men," and that small losses had, by false affidavits, been magnified into great sums. As reconstruction broke down, and the survivors of the rebellion gained in strength at the Capitol, a new danger arose. No statute of limitations barred the indefinite presentation of claims to Congress, and it soon became evident that, not merely Southern loyalists, but avowed rebels who suffered losses in the war were looking to the general government for compensation for the damages which their own treason had invited. The movement on the Treasury in their interest did not take on the form of an attack in front, but by the flank. It commenced with plausible applications for the "relief" of Southern institutions and corporations, and not of individuals. It further manifested itself in propositions for such a relaxation of the terms of the laws and regulations governing this class of claims as would abolish all distinctions of "loyalty" and put the "Confederate" upon an equal footing with the Union applicant for this kind of "relief." The precise dimensions of this scheme, which has been well characterized as "an attempt to make the United States pay to the South what it cost it to be conquered in addition to what it cost to conquer it," have not yet fully appeared, but the cloven hoof has been sufficiently revealed to justly arouse and alarm the loyal sentiment of the North. Mr. Chandler's record upon this question affords a striking illustration of the soundness of his judgment as to the scope and tendency of any particular line of public policy. When this subject first demanded attention, he took the position which his party substantially assumed ten years later. His clear and practical mind saw what the consequences would be of any general reimbursement of war losses, and he strenuously resisted the taking of any false steps at the outset. Thus, on March 2, 1865, upon the bill to pay Josiah O. Armes for the destruction of property within the rebel lines, he said in the Senate:
I hope this bill will not pass the Senate.... If you pass it, if you set this precedent, if you say to every rebel and every loyal man, and every man throughout the South, by the passage of this bill, that you intend to pay for every dollar of property that has been destroyed by order of our generals, you will give a more fatal blow to the credit of the government than by any other act that you can perform in this body. I should look upon the passage of this bill as a national calamity, and one that we cannot afford at this time to bring on our heads. It will do more to shake the faith of our own citizens and of the moneyed centers of the world in the credit of your securities than any other act you could perform.
In his address before the Republican caucus which renominated him for the Senate in January, 1869, he also said:
The moment this government begins to allow claims for damages accruing to individuals during the war in the South, it is placed in a position of great peril. Every rebel in the South who lost a haystack or barn by fire during the war will prove his loyalty and secure damages. It requires the greatest vigilance to prevent some of these claims from being allowed, as they are continually being pressed upon Congress, and probably will be for many years. The laws of war do not require nor justify the allowance of this class of claims even to loyal men. If they are loyal, then they have served the government, and that is compensation enough. If they are disloyal, they have no claim.
These quotations indicate his original position on this issue, taken in the days when it had received but the slightest public attention. They are exactly in the line of the vigorous utterances upon the same topic which formed one of the important features of his public addresses in 1879, when the subject had aroused marked popular interest, and other leaders had stepped up to the platform he had so long occupied.
But Mr. Chandler did more than strenuously oppose the payment of the "war claims" of Southern disloyalists; his farsightedness placed in their path a serious practical obstacle. In 1873, a Colonel Pickett, who had been confidentially connected with the War Department of the "Confederacy," came to Washington and offered to sell to the authorities a vast quantity of the archives of the rebel government, which he had secreted before the capture of Richmond. Congress was not in session, and the Secretary of War, having no authority in law, refused to buy the documents. Mr. Chandler was in that city at the time, and Pickett was referred to him as a man of means and as one who would be apt to appreciate the importance of such a purchase. After one or two calls, Mr. Chandler determined that the matter deserved investigation at least. He asked for a schedule of the documents and for a statement of their prices. Pickett promptly furnished the former and offered to sell them for $250,000. Mr. Chandler, after a careful examination of the schedule, replied with a proposition that, if the papers corresponded with the list furnished, he would pay $75,000 for them. This offer was at last accepted, and Mr. Chandler deposited that sum in a Washington bank, subject to Pickett's order after a thorough examination of the documents had been made. Confidential clerks were at once set at work upon them, and it was found that they even surpassed their owner's representations as to value. The purchase was therefore completed, and the documents became the private property of Mr. Chandler, who had them locked up in a vault. When Congress met, a bill was passed authorizing the Secretary of War in general terms to purchase the archives of the Confederate government if it was ever possible, and appropriating $75,000 for this purpose. As soon as the bill became a law Mr. Chandler transferred the documents to the Secretary of War, and they are now in the possession of that department and constitute one of the most valuable and useful features of its record of the rebellion. The amount that has been saved to the government by this purchase, in furnishing evidence to defeat rebel claims, already exceeds many-fold the original price. Case after case in the Quartermaster-General's office, before the Southern Claims Commission, and before the Court of Claims has been defeated by evidence found among these papers.[35] One single conspicuous instance in which they saved to the Treasury more than four times their entire cost attracted much deserved attention at the time. On Nov. 16, 1877, an effort was made by leading Southern Democrats in the House of Representatives to pass under a suspension of the rules, and without debate, a joint resolution, ordering the immediate payment of several hundred thousand dollars to mail contractors in the rebel States who forfeited their contracts at the commencement of the rebellion. An objection from the Hon. Omar D. Conger prevented action on that day, but the resolution came up again on Feb. 15, 1878. Representative John H. Reagan of Texas, who had been the Postmaster-General of the rebel Cabinet, then took charge of the measure, and assured the House that the resolution was a purely formal matter, that it only provided for the payment of liabilities incurred before the war commenced, and that the rebel government had never paid these men for the same services. The Hon. Edwin Willits of Michigan, by a timely examination of the phraseology of the resolution, discovered that it provided for the payment of these contractors, not down to the actual beginning of the rebellion, but until May 31st, 1861, many weeks after the rebel government had been formed and after the firing upon Fort Sumter. Calling attention to this fact, he obtained the further postponement of the consideration of the resolution. When it came up again (on March 8, 1878) Mr. Willits came to the House armed with a volume of the rebel statutes and with important extracts from documents contained in the rebel archives. With this evidence he demonstrated in ten minutes' time, beyond question, that the rebel government had assumed the payment of this class of claims, that it confiscated United States money and applied it to that purpose, that the men so paid agreed to refund to the rebel treasury any money subsequently given them on this account by the United States, and that the joint resolution was but an attempt to pay a second time contracts already paid and also properly declared forfeited through treason. The scene attendant upon this expose was a dramatic one, and it resulted in the virtual abandonment then of the measure by those who were responsible for it. This result would not have been possible, had not the rebel archives thus opportunely yielded up their secrets. Their possession by the government is undoubtedly worth millions to the Treasury.
In 1871, the second term of Jacob M. Howard, as Senator from Michigan, expired, and Thomas W. Ferry, then a member of the House of Representatives, was chosen as his successor. With his new colleague Mr. Chandler's relations were always close and cordial, and upon the questions of reconstruction, equal rights, and the national supremacy their accord was complete. Mr. Ferry rapidly attained distinction in the upper branch of Congress, and was for several successive years the President pro tempore of the Senate. The death of Vice-President Wilson in 1875 made him Acting Vice-President of the United States, and he held that responsible position throughout the trying weeks of the electoral dispute of 1876-'7, when his good sense, the perfect discretion of his course, and the dignity and impartiality with which he discharged duties of the gravest character amid vast and dangerous excitement, both deserved and received universal praise. Mr. Ferry was re-elected during this critical period, and, as Mr. Chandler's term as Secretary of the Interior was then about to close, it was suggested in some quarters that Michigan should send him back to the Senate in Mr. Ferry's stead. The quality of Mr. Chandler's fidelity as a friend and of his estimate of Mr. Ferry's public usefulness were shown in the fact that, anxious as he avowedly was to become again a Senator, these suggestions obtained from him only peremptory negatives, and his advice and influence contributed to Mr. Ferry's unopposed re-election. Mr. Howard died suddenly at Detroit from apoplexy shortly after the close of his Senatorial service. As further illustrating the nature of the friendship existing between him and his colleague from Michigan, and the estimation in which he was held by the eminent men with whom he came in contact, this private letter from Mr. Chandler to President Grant, with an endorsement made thereon by the latter, is here given:
Washington, Sept. 21, 1870.
My Dear Sir: Secretary Cox has done my colleague an unintentional but a serious injury.
In 1869 the whole Michigan delegation united in recommending the Rev. W. H. Brockway, one of the most popular Methodist clergymen in the State, for Indian Agent.
He was nominated and confirmed, but acquiesced in the transfer of Indian affairs to the military. Since the adjournment of Congress, my colleague made a personal request to the Secretary of the Interior, that the Rev. Mr. Brockway be commissioned as Indian Agent for Michigan. Instead of sending the commission, he has sent a man from New Jersey to attend to our Indian affairs. This has given offense to the most numerous and powerful religious denomination in the State and seriously injured my colleague. I ask for my colleague that the New Jersey commission may be immediately revoked, and Mr. Brockway may be at once commissioned....
It is really important that this be done at once. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Z. CHANDLER.
To President U. S. Grant.
AUTOGRAPHIC ENDORSEMENT BY PRESIDENT GRANT.
Referred to the Secretary of the Interior.
I think Mr. Brockway might with great propriety be assigned to the Indian agency in his own State, to which he has once been appointed and confirmed.
He is a minister, and therefore the new rule adopted will not be violated by his appointment.
I want, besides, to accommodate Senator Howard, whom I regard as an able supporter of the Republican party and of the Administration.
Sept. 22, 1870.
U. S. GRANT.
Mr. Chandler was a member of one or two of the special Congressional committees appointed to investigate those atrocious political murders which made infamous the return of the disloyal classes to power in the South. This general subject received no small share of his attention; the facts which investigation disclosed deepened his conviction of the essential barbarity of much that passes for civilization in that section, and added to the inflexibility of his opposition to a political system, which was responsible for the atrocious crimes of the Ku-Klux-Klan, "the Mississippi plan," the White League, and the "rifle clubs," and for the horrible massacres of Colfax and Coushatta, of Hamburg and Ellenton.
Two of his speeches in the Senate in 1871 and 1872 attracted general attention and were widely republished. One of them was delivered on January 18, 1871, in reply to Mr. Casserly of California, who had challenged a comparison between the records of the Republican and Democratic parties. In the course of twenty minutes Mr. Chandler rapidly sketched the services of the Republican party in defeating the Democratic plot to surrender the territories to slavery, in crushing a Democratic rebellion, in emancipating four million slaves, in building a trans-continental railway to the Pacific coast, in inviting the settlement of the Great West by a homestead law, in establishing the national banking system, in maintaining the public credit against Democratic attack, and in reconstructing the South on the basis of freedom and loyalty. He closed as follows:
These measures were carried, not with the Democratic party, but in spite of the Democratic party. Sir, we are not to be arraigned here and put on the defensive, certainly not by that old Democratic party.
And now, Mr. President, they ask us to do what? To forgive the past and let by-gones be by-gones. You hear on the right hand and on the left, from every quarter, "Let by-gones be by-gones; let us forget the past and rub it out." Sir, we have no disposition to forget the past. We have a record of which we are proud. We have a record that has gone into history. There we propose to let it stand. We never propose to blot out that record. There are no thousand years in the world's history in which so much has been accomplished for human liberty and human progress as has been accomplished by this great Republican party in the short space of ten years. Blot out that record? Never, sir, never! It is a record that will go down in history through all times as the proudest ever made by any political party that ever existed on earth. But, sir, do gentlemen of the Democratic party want to blot out their record? I do not blame them for wanting to, for that record is a record of treason. It, too, has gone into history, and there it must stand through all ages. Sir, the young men of this country are looking at these two records, and they are making up their minds as to which they desire their names to go down to history upon; and I am happy to say that of the young men now coming upon the stage of action, nine out of every ten are joining this great Republican party. They desire that their record shall be associated with those who saved this great nation, and not with those who attempted its overthrow. The day is far distant when that old Democratic party that attempted to overthrow this government will again be entrusted with power by the people of this nation.... Mr. President, if this record of the two parties does not please my Democratic friends, I have only to say to them that they made it deliberately and they have got to stand by it.
On June 6, 1872, Mr. Chandler replied in the Senate to that part of Mr. Sumner's elaborate attack upon General Grant in which he declared that Edwin M. Stanton had said, in his last days, "General Grant cannot govern this country." The excessive egotism, which marred Mr. Sumner's character and which inspired that unfortunate speech, was always a cause of impatience with Mr. Chandler, and this display of it aroused his anger. In his reply, he challenged squarely the credibility of Mr. Sumner's statement. He first read from Mr. Stanton's reported speeches, to show that their enthusiastic and repeated commendation of General Grant by name proved that Mr. Sumner's assertion that Mr. Stanton had also said, "In my speeches I never introduced the name of General Grant; I spoke for the Republican cause and the Republican party," was exactly contrary to the fact. He then proceeded:
Mr. President, I had occasion with Mr. Wade, formerly Senator from Ohio, as member of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, to see Mr. Stanton, I think once a day on an average, during the whole war, and I was in the habit of visiting him up to the time of his death, and never, under any circumstances, did he express in my presence any but the highest opinion of General Grant, both as to his military capacity and as to his civil capacity.
Mr. President, on the Friday before the death of E. M. Stanton, I had occasion to visit him in company with two friends, members of the other House, one Hon. Judge Beaman, then a member for Michigan, the other Judge Conger, now a member from Michigan. We had that day a long interview of not less than an hour and a half, wherein Mr. Stanton expressed the highest opinion of President Grant, both as to his military and civil capacity. I awaited an interview with these parties before making this statement, and their recollection is the same as my own. I have likewise held two or three interviews with Senator Wade since then, and his recollection of the expressions of the late E. M. Stanton is equally strong as my own to-day. Mr. Stanton said, in the presence of two witnesses, "The country knows General Grant to be a great warrior; I know he will prove a great civilian." ...
Mr. President, the relations between the President of the United States and the late Secretary Stanton were of remarkable kindliness. Never did I hear either express any but the highest esteem and regard for the other.... I think the last interview he ever had was the interview with me in the presence of these two living witnesses.... Surgeon-General Barnes was his attending physician at the hour of his death. According to his testimony, from the hour I last saw him up to the time of his death, there was no change, so far as can be known.
In another part of this speech the President is arraigned as a great gift-taker. Sir, General Grant was a great taker. Few men have ever been as eminent as takers. He took Fort Donelson with some twenty or thirty thousand soldiers; and he took Shiloh, and took Vicksburg, and took the Wilderness, and took Murfreesboro' and Appomattox and all the rebel material of war. He, with his army, took the shackles from 4,000,000 slaves. And, sir, after he had taken the vitals out of the rebellion, he was urged by his friends to accept a small donation to take himself out of the hands of poverty, a thing that has been done by all nations and by all grateful peoples in all ages of the world. Sir, he is to be arraigned as a great gift-taker because he accepted the voluntary contributions of a grateful people!
Why, sir, there were few men of capacity, few men of fitness to occupy positions under this government who did not subscribe, gratefully, anxiously subscribe, to that fund to relieve U. S. Grant from his poverty. And yet, he is to be arraigned here as a gift-taker, as though that was a crime!
Mr. President, there are two classes of people in this world, and we see specimens of them both. We have great o-ra-tors and great men of business. On this floor our o-ra-tors have occupied the time of this session to the exclusion of business, and while these o-ra-tors have been wasting the time of this body to the detriment of the business of the nation, willing to indulge in windy orations at the expense of the government, U. S. Grant, President of the United States, has been managing the affairs of this nation better than they were ever managed before. While your o-ra-tors were here delivering windy words, he was paying the national debt faster than these o-ra-tors could count it. While they were o-ra-ting, he was negotiating treaties and attending to the civil service of the nation. While they were o-ra-ting on this floor during the war, he was winning victories in the bloodiest part of the fight. And now, while they are o-ra-ting on this floor, he is endearing himself to the hearts of the whole people of this land as no other man ever did. Stanton was prophetic; he is not only great in war, but he is greater as a civilian.
The act of March 3, 1873, which raised the annual salaries of Congressmen from $5,000 to $7,500, gave also to this increase a retroactive effect and made it apply to the members of Congress who passed the measure and whose official terms ended on that very day. Public opinion did not approve of any aspect of this change, but it condemned vehemently the voting by Congressmen to themselves of $5,000 each for services already rendered and in addition to liberal salaries fixed at the time of their acceptance of office. So emphatic were the manifestations of popular wrath at both this act and its methods, that the next Congress promptly repealed "the salary grab," as it was commonly called. Mr. Chandler's integrity and good sense kept him from any participation in this obnoxious performance. He opposed the increase of compensation earnestly in the Senate, voted against it at all stages of the contest, and refused to accept his "back pay." When the bill had been passed and the increased salary had been placed to his credit on the Senate books, he went to the Treasury with his colleague and they deposited the difference between the old and the new rate to the credit of the government, writing the following letter to the Secretary of the Treasury:
Washington, March 28, 1873.
Sir: Herewith find drafts on the Treasury, one of $3,906.80 payable to Z. Chandler, the other of $3,920, to T. W. Ferry, being avails of retroactive increase of salary passed during the expiring days of and for the Forty-second Congress, and this day placed in our hands by the Secretary of the Senate.
Not willing to gain what we voted against, we request that the same be applied toward the cancellation of any of the six per cent. interest-bearing obligations of the nation. Lest such return be distorted into possible reflection upon the propriety of dissimilar disposition by others, you will oblige us much by giving no publicity to the matter. Very respectfully, yours,
Z. CHANDLER,
T. W. FERRY.
The amount refunded was the exact difference between the sums allowed under the old and the increased rate. The new law gave an increase of salary for the term, without mileage. The old law allowed $5,000 less salary, but gave mileage in addition. Mr. Chandler and Mr. Ferry took the amount due them under the old system, and returned the additional sum which was allowed them under the new. The spirit of scrupulous honesty which dictated this proceeding is shown in the last sentence of the joint letter, asking that publicity might not be given to their action. They took this step voluntarily and not under any constraint from public opinion.
In the general elections of 1870 and 1872 Mr. Chandler was exceedingly active, making the usual number of public addresses, and also devoting much time to organization and to the general distribution of political literature. The latter branch of party effort had become the special province of the Republican Congressional Committee. For more than twenty years there have been two distinct executive organizations within the Republican party, independent of each other, but always working in harmony, namely: The National Committee, and the Congressional Committee. The latter is composed of a Representative in Congress from each State, chosen by the Republican members of the respective delegations. No man can serve upon this committee unless he holds a seat in Congress, and States which have no Republican Congressmen are unrepresented in its membership. Mr. Chandler and James M. Edmunds were the founders of the Congressional Committee as a practical and influential working body; their plans and efforts first made it a power in American politics, and it remained under their joint control until Mr. Chandler became chairman of the National Committee. The special objects which it aimed to accomplish were the securing of a uniform treatment of political topics by newspapers and speakers throughout the country, and the circulation (under the franking privilege, or otherwise) of instructive and timely documents. During the reconstruction era it also devoted much attention to the work of Republican organization in the South, where special efforts were necessary to form into effective voting masses the emancipated slaves, not yet freed from the blindness of bondage or familiar with the responsibilities of citizenship. But the great aim of the committee—all else that it did was subsidiary to that—was the circulation of political literature. This end it sought to reach by two methods: First, by the publication and mailing to individuals and to local committees in all parts of the country of such Congressional speeches as treated thoroughly and effectively any phase of the current political situation; second, by furnishing the Republican press, through the medium of weekly sheets of carefully prepared matter, with accurate information as to the facts underlying existing issues and with suggestions as to their best treatment before the people. Obviously this work could be done to much better advantage at Washington than elsewhere, for the capital city is the focus of the thousand currents of political opinion and the depository of the official statistics of the nation. Hence it was deemed wise to establish a system of guidance from that point of the public discussions of each national campaign, so that increased intelligence, cohesion, and efficiency could be given to the general attack on the enemy; this idea—which is, in brief, that the systematizing of the political education of the people is an important element of well-planned party warfare—James M. Edmunds always held tenaciously; aided by Mr. Chandler's friendship, influence, means, and co-operation, he proved its soundness most conclusively.
Early in his Senatorial service Mr. Chandler was made the chairman of this committee, and Mr. Edmunds its secretary. The two men were admirably matched. Mr. Edmunds was a natural planner, keen in his intuitions, shrewd in observation, and a skillful judge of the bearing and tendency of party and public policies. In determining what was the most promising line of attack, where the weakest points of the enemy's lines were to be found, wherein the strength of any position lay, or what strategy would make victory the most certain and complete, he had no superior. When his acute and experienced judgment was reinforced by Mr. Chandler's vigor in execution, influence with public men, and large wealth great results never failed to follow. These two men quickly made the Congressional Committee one of the most powerful agencies of party warfare known in American politics. In many campaigns its influence was almost literally felt in every Northern township, and its labors were not without some effect, more frequently greater than less, in unifying and invigorating the contest in every Congressional district from Maine to Texas and Florida to Oregon. Its work was done quietly, but most thoroughly; its managers rather shunned than courted publicity; and the people at large, who were informed and inspired by its labors, knew nothing of its methods and activity, hardly the fact of its existence. From 1866 to 1874 Mr. Chandler was very active in connection with this committee, and never failed to provide the agencies and the resources for the adequate carrying on of its work. When its treasury grew empty his private check made good any deficiency, and repeatedly his advances upon its account reached tens of thousands of dollars. His confidence in Secretary Edmunds was implicit, and the latter's mature recommendations never failed because of any lack of means. In 1870 the work of this committee was especially productive; its value became much more clearly apparent then than had ever been the case before, and Mr. Chandler repeatedly said to the President and other Republican leaders, "Judge Edmunds is the Bismark of this campaign." In 1872 Mr. Edmunds first suggested the necessity of meeting the Greeley movement by the thorough searching of the files of the New York Tribune and of Mr. Greeley's record, for the ample material therein contained which would make impossible his support by the Democratic masses. Mr. Chandler approved of this plan, and promised that the money needed should be forthcoming. Before all the work was completed, his advances had reached nearly $30,000. At times, in the course of efforts of this character, Mr. Edmunds guided the pens of upward of three hundred writers gathered under his general supervision, while the results of their labors informed the editorial pages of thousands of Republican newspapers, and thus reached millions of voting readers. For some time, also, a monthly periodical named The Republic was issued, which preserved in durable form the most careful and elaborate articles prepared under the committee's supervision. This work of the political enlightenment of the people, clearly the most rational agency of party warfare, has never been executed on this continent with the thoroughness, intelligence and efficiency which marked the labors of the Congressional Committee when Mr. Chandler was at its head and Mr. Edmunds was its executive officer.
JAMES M. EDMUNDS.
The man whose name is so closely coupled in these pages with that of Mr. Chandler deserves the grateful and lasting remembrance of the Republican party. James M. Edmunds was a natural politician of the best type. Patriotic instincts and sincere convictions were interwoven with his nature. The party whose tendencies satisfied those instincts, and whose policies most nearly accorded with those convictions, he served loyally and with rare capacity; more than this, he served it unselfishly. He cared nothing for prominence, and never sought after reputation. He made no speeches, he rarely shared in any public demonstration, he held no conspicuous positions, he manifested no personal ambition, but for twenty years he was the trusted counselor of famous men at the capital, his influence was felt in national legislation and party movements, and important events with which his name never was and never will be connected received the impress of his acute observation and sagacious judgment. Especially in Republican political management was he a wise and strong "power behind the throne." Mr. Edmunds was a native of Western New York, but emigrated to Michigan in 1831. He was for many years a prominent business man at Ypsilanti, Vassar and Detroit, in that State, and was always politically active. The Whigs sent him repeatedly to the Legislature, and made him their (unsuccessful) candidate for Governor in 1847. He was chairman of the Republican State Central Committee from 1855 to 1861, and Controller of the city of Detroit for two of those years. At the commencement of Mr. Lincoln's administration he removed to Washington, and was there successively Commissioner of the General Land Office, Postmaster of the Senate, and Postmaster of the city of Washington. Personally he was a tall and spare man, exceedingly plain in his manners and simple in his tastes, utterly without either the liking for or faculty of display, retiring in disposition, firm of purpose, of strict integrity, and exact in his dealings and habits. Mr. Edmunds's remarkable strength as a politician consisted in his experience, in his lack of any personal aspirations, in his skill in controlling men and the accuracy of his judgment as to their motives, and in an almost prophetic ability to reason out the probable direction and effect of any given plan of action. He became a man whom those charged with great responsibilities could profitably and safely consult, and his well-considered and shrewd advice often had decisive weight at the White House, on the floors of Congress, and in the private councils of eminent men. Outside of the Congressional Committee, he did much campaign work in directing organization and suggesting plans. He was one of the founders of the Union League, and directed its operations during the years of its great political usefulness in the South. It may be said without exaggeration that no single member of the Republican party ever rendered it services as great and as slightly requited as were those of James M. Edmunds.
Mr. Chandler's close friendship with Mr. Edmunds covered a period of nearly half a century, and included an implicit confidence in the man himself and in his prudence and the sagacity of his judgment. The comment made upon their intimacy by one who knew them both well was, "Sometimes it seemed to me that no man could be as wise as Mr. Chandler believed that Judge Edmunds was." They were in almost constant consultation upon public questions, their co-operation was ever hearty, and this friendship the Senator valued as a priceless possession. "In death they were not divided;" the dispatch, which announced that Mr. Chandler's busy life had ended so suddenly in Chicago, came to Mr. Edmunds while infirm in health; it affected him powerfully, and his spirit did not pass from under the shadow of this blow; within a few weeks his own death followed.