FOOTNOTES:
[39] In the fall of 1877 Mr. Chandler delivered the annual address before the Branch County Agricultural Society, and while in Coldwater was the guest of the Hon. Henry C. Lewis of that city, who invited a few friends to meet him socially. In the course of the conversation Mr. Chandler said that he was going to his Lansing farm to spend a few days. His reticence in regard to the Hayes administration was then a matter of remark, and the Hon. C. D. Randall said to him: "Well, Mr. Chandler, when you get out in the center of your great farm and alone, you will have a fine opportunity to express your opinion about the Hayes 'policy.'" Mr. Chandler's reply was: "No, sir; that Lansing farm will never answer my purpose. To do that I shall have to be on the top of a high hill behind the meeting-house and with the wind blowing the other way!" The audience responded with a hearty laugh.
[40] The heavy black lines in this map are the boundaries of the farm; the waving lines indicate the border of the uplands surrounding the marsh. The drainage is from Mud Lake via "the big ditch" to the Looking-glass river. The lateral ditching (of which there are over fifty miles) is shown on the plat by the fine lines.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE MICHIGAN ELECTION OF 1878—MR. CHANDLER'S RETURN TO THE SENATE—"THE JEFF. DAVIS SPEECH."
The township elections in Michigan in April, 1878, revealed an astonishing growth in the number of the advocates of an irredeemable paper currency. "Hard times," Democratic disgust over the result of the electoral dispute, and Republican disappointment at "the Southern policy" of the new administration greatly relaxed existing party ties, and made the way ready for the expounders of the seductive theory that prosperity depends upon a great volume of the currency, and that large issues of paper bearing the government stamp must greatly add to individual wealth. Throughout the West and South, Republican and Democratic leaders had fostered these fallacious ideas, and thus prepared the field of public sentiment for this "Greenback" sowing. In Michigan the result was that the National party (which in 1876 gave only 9,060 votes to Peter Cooper for President) in April, 1878, cast over 70,000 votes for its township candidates, elected a large number of supervisors in the most populous counties of the State, and showed greater strength than either of the old parties in four Congressional districts. This was the gravest situation the Republicans of Michigan had ever been called upon to face. A conference of their representative men was at once held, at the call of the State Central Committee, and the situation was thoroughly discussed. Among those participating was Gov. Charles M. Croswell, who said that he believed that the party should boldly declare for a sound currency, and resist with all its power the further spread of financial heresy; for himself, he preferred defeat on that platform to a victory won by any surrender to false theories. The endorsement of his views was substantially unanimous, and an aggressive campaign was determined upon. The State Convention was promptly called, and met in Detroit on June 13. It was the ablest political gathering ever held in Michigan, and its delegates included the foremost men of the party from every county. Mr. Chandler presided; Governor Croswell was renominated at the head of a strong State ticket; a platform, admirable for its soundness of doctrine and clearness of statement[41] (its author was Frederick Morley, formerly editor of the Detroit Post), was adopted; and Mr. Chandler was, amid the prolonged cheering of the convention, placed at the head of the State Committee. He had at that time about completed his plans for a European journey, and it was suggested to him by friends that his chairmanship of the National Committee afforded a valid excuse for declining this new appointment, which would make him responsible for the result of a doubtful fight, with the certainty that defeat would greatly impair his political prestige. To this advice Mr. Chandler simply replied, "If Michigan Republicanism goes down, I will go with it." He promptly canceled all other engagements, appointed his confidential secretary, G. W. Partridge, secretary of the committee (with the consent of its members), and threw his energy and vigor into that State campaign. The contest that followed under his leadership preserved the spirit of the convention and upheld the doctrines of the platform. The financial question was discussed in every phase "upon the stump" and by the press. Mr. Chandler himself spoke in all the leading cities of the State, and was seconded by many other orators, including James G. Blaine, James A. Garfield, and Stewart L. Woodford, whose addresses were masterly examples of the candid, luminous and popular treatment of a topic usually regarded as too abstruse and dry for profitable public discussion. The courage and honesty of this fight were justly rewarded. The Republicans carried the State by over 47,000 plurality, and elected every Congressional candidate and a Legislature with a large Republican majority upon joint ballot. The victory was a signal one. In no Western State had financial heresy ever been as resolutely grappled with and as thoroughly beaten, and his prominent share in this battle must rank among Mr. Chandler's most unselfish and honorable public services.
An unforeseen but almost poetically just result of this triumph was his own return to Congress. Senator Christiancy's failing health compelled him in the winter of 1879 to seek (under physician's advice) rest and a change of climate. The President offered him the embassadorship at Berlin, or at Mexico, or at Lima, and he finally decided to accept the latter. His nomination was sent to the Senate on Jan. 29, 1879, and confirmed without reference to a committee. On February 10, his resignation as Senator was laid before the Michigan Legislature, and on the 18th that body filled the vacancy by election. With the earliest hints of the possibility of Senator Christiancy's retirement, Republican opinion and the popular expectation had agreed that Mr. Chandler would be chosen for the remaining years of what the Republicans of Michigan had unsuccessfully sought to make his fourth term. This was regarded as due to him, as still more due to the party which had in 1875 been deprived of its choice, and as securing the restoration to public activity of a man of national influence and prominence, at an hour when the sagacity of his political judgment had been vindicated by the alarming attitude of the South, and when the sturdiest qualities of leadership were needed in Washington. The legislative action reflected this strong current of public sentiment. In the Republican caucus (held in the new Capitol of that State), Mr. Chandler was nominated for Senator on the first formal ballot, receiving sixty-nine of the eighty-nine votes cast. In the Legislature he was elected by the vote of every Republican in his seat in either branch.
THE MICHIGAN CAPITOL AT LANSING.
On Feb. 22, 1879, Mr. Chandler's credentials were presented and read in the Senate, and he was escorted by Senator Ferry to the Vice-President's desk, where the official oath was administered to him by William A. Wheeler. He took the seat upon the outer row of the Republican side, which he had occupied in other Congresses. The circumstances of his return to public life attracted national attention, and his re-appearance in the Senate was everywhere accepted as significant of the growth of Republican courage and resolution. But what followed outstripped all expectation and was dramatic in its accessories. Upon February 28, he first addressed the Forty-fifth Senate, speaking briefly upon a bill providing for pension arrears, and in advocacy of an amendment to make more efficient the methods of detecting pension frauds by taking expert examiners from one part of the country and sending them to another. In this connection he referred to his own experience as Secretary of the Interior, saying that he had declared that with $100,000 to so use he could save $1,000,000 to the Treasury yearly. Upon the same day, he also spoke briefly upon the Sundry Civil Appropriation bill, opposing a proposition in it to re-open a settled claim of the war of 1812, based on expenditures made by some of the older States for military purposes. He spoke from recollection of a discussion in 1857, when this matter came up, and showed that the principal of the claims had been already paid, and that this was an attempt to collect compound interest. This measure, which Mr. Chandler repeatedly opposed during his Senatorial career, was again defeated at this time. On March 1, a proposition to pay Georgia over $72,000 compound interest upon advances alleged to have been made in 1835-'38 in the Creek, Seminole and Cherokee wars was strenuously and successfully opposed by him. On the 28th of February, a bill had been passed by the Senate making appropriations for the arrearages of pensions. To this an amendment was offered and adopted extending to those who served in the war with Mexico the provisions of the law passed in 1878, giving pensions to the surviving soldiers of 1812. This amendment was adopted without full consideration, and on the evening of Sunday, March 2, a motion was made and carried for a reconsideration. Then an amendment was offered excluding persons who served in the Confederate army or held any office under the "Confederacy" from the benefits of this bill. This amendment was defeated by the votes of the Democrats and two Southern Republicans. Another amendment was offered by Senator Hoar excluding Jefferson Davis from the benefits of any pension bill. An astonishing debate followed. For some hours the Senate Chamber rang with fervent eulogies upon the arch-rebel of the South. Senator Garland declared that Davis's record would "equal in history all Grecian fame and all Roman glory." Senator Maxey pronounced him "a battle-scarred, knightly gentleman." Senator Lamar characterized the proposition as a "wanton insult," springing from "hate, bitter, malignant sectional feeling, and a sense of personal impunity;" he added, "The only difference between myself and Jefferson Davis is that his exalted character, his pre-eminent talents, his well-established reputation as a statesman, as a patriot, and as a soldier enabled him to take the lead in a cause to which I consecrated myself;" he further declared that Davis's motives were as "sacred and noble as ever inspired the breast of a Hampden or a Washington." Senator Harris pronounced him "the peer of any Senator on this floor." "I will not," said Senator Coke, "vote to discriminate against Mr. Davis, for I was just as much a rebel as he." Senator Ransom said, "I shall not dwell upon Mr. Davis's public services as an American soldier and statesman. He belongs to history, as does that cause to which he gave all the ability of his great nature." There was no lack of Republican protest against this apotheosis of unrepentant treason, but it was not wholly free from a certain deprecatory tone. The Senators who spoke in support of Mr. Hoar's proposition rather remonstrated against than denounced the assumption that it was their duty to quietly assent to legislation which would place the unamnestied and still defiant representative of the Great Rebellion on the pension-rolls of the nation. After the debate had lasted for over two hours, Mr. W. E. Chandler of New Hampshire, who was watching its progress from the reporters' gallery, said to Senator E. H. Rollins of his State, "Tell Zach. Chandler that he is the man to call Jeff. Davis a traitor." Mr. Rollins delivered the message, which was received with a nod of acquiescence in the direction of the gallery. Senator Morgan of Alabama was speaking at the time, with Senator Mitchell of Oregon in the chair. As Mr. Morgan closed, Senator Chandler rose and said:
Mr. President, twenty-two years ago to-morrow, in the old Hall of the Senate, now occupied by the Supreme Court of the United States, I, in company with Mr. Jefferson Davis, stood up and swore before Almighty God that I would support the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Jefferson Davis came from the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce into the Senate of the United States and took the oath with me to be faithful to this government. During four years I sat in this body with Mr. Jefferson Davis and saw the preparations going on from day to-day for the overthrow of this government. With treason in his heart and perjury upon his lips he took the oath to sustain the government that he meant to overthrow.
Sir, there was method in that madness. He, in co-operation with other men from his section and in the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, made careful preparation for the event that was to follow. Your armies were scattered all over this broad land where they could not be used in an emergency; your fleets were scattered wherever the winds blew and water was found to float them, where they could not be used to put down rebellion; your Treasury was depleted until your bonds bearing six per cent., principal and interest payable in coin, were sold for 88 cents on the dollar for current expenses, and no buyers. Preparations were carefully made. Your arms were sold under an apparently innocent clause in an army bill providing that the Secretary of War might, at his discretion, sell such arms as he deemed it for the interest of the government to sell.
Sir, eighteen years ago last month I sat in these halls and listened to Jefferson Davis delivering his farewell address, informing us what our constitutional duties to this government were, and then he left and entered into the rebellion to overthrow the government that he had sworn to support! I remained here, sir, during the whole of that terrible rebellion. I saw our brave soldiers by thousands and hundreds of thousands, aye, I might say millions, pass through to the theater of war, and I saw their shattered ranks return; I saw steamboat after steamboat and railroad train after railroad train arrive with the maimed and the wounded; I was with my friend from Rhode Island (Mr. Burnside) when he commanded the Army of the Potomac, and saw piles of legs and arms that made humanity shudder; I saw the widow and the orphan in their homes, and heard the weeping and wailing of those who had lost their dearest and their best. Mr. President, I little thought at that time that I should live to hear in the Senate of the United States eulogies upon Jefferson Davis, living—a living rebel eulogized on the floor of the Senate of the United States! Sir, I am amazed to hear it; and I can tell the gentlemen on the other side that they little know the spirit of the North when they come here at this day, and, with bravado on their lips, utter eulogies upon a man whom every man, woman, and child in the North believes to have been a double-dyed traitor to his government.
SENATOR CHANDLER DENOUNCING THE EULOGIES UPON "JEFF." DAVIS.
[In the Senate Chamber, at 3 A. M., Monday, March 3, 1879.]
This speech was made at about the hour of half-past three in the morning of Monday, March 3, 1879. But few people were in the galleries at that time, and the Senate had lapsed into a listless state. Mr. Chandler's bearing as he arose to speak, and the first sentence that resounded through the Senate Chamber in his strong voice, aroused instant attention. The spectators above listened with new and eager interest, Senators came in from the lobbies and cloakrooms, sleep was shaken off by drowsy attaches, and his closing words "a double-dyed traitor to his government" fell in ringing tones upon an intent audience and were answered by an applause from the galleries which the gavel of the presiding officer could not check. His excited hearers listened eagerly for a reply, but none came. After some silent waiting the presiding officer stated the pending question, and was about to put it to vote. Senator Thurman then rose and began the discussion of another branch of the subject, and no answer was attempted to Mr. Chandler's just denunciation of the eulogizing of the man, whose past history and present attitude unite to make him at once the representative of treason's crimes and the embodiment of its unrepentant spirit. When the vote was taken, one majority was given for Mr. Hoar's amendment, and after that result the original amendment itself was defeated.
This speech was a masterpiece in its way—in its brevity, in its skillful use of the speaker's early official association with Jefferson Davis, in its vivid epitome of the history of American treason, and in the rugged power of its simple language. It most profoundly stirred the people. It may be said without exaggeration that years had passed since any Congressional utterance had received such public attention. Democratic and Southern denunciation of Mr. Chandler followed abundantly, but this was wholly overshadowed by the enthusiasm of the response of the patriotic sentiment of the Union to his indignant refusal to let treason raise its head in insolence without branding it as it deserved. The Northern press reprinted the speech with unstinted praise. Public men hastened in person, by telegraph, and through the mails to tender their congratulations. Letters of fervent thanks poured in by the hundreds; from utter strangers, from the rich and the humble, from veteran soldiers, from mothers whose sons were buried on Southern battle-fields, from the colored men, from the Republicans of the South, from every State and Territory came the expressions of gratitude for the utterance given at so opportune a moment and with such force to the loyal feeling of the republic. It was this spontaneous approval of the masses of the people that Mr. Chandler especially prized.
On March 18, 1879, the extra session of the Forty-sixth Congress commenced, and the Democrats made their abortive attempt to force the repeal of the laws relating to the supervision of national elections by withholding appropriations. Their reactionary programme (the striking of the last vestige of the war measures from the statute books was even threatened) and revolutionary menaces aroused the North, and in the end they quailed before the rising popular wrath. Mr. Chandler denounced their schemes vigorously on the floor of the Senate, even charging explicitly that twelve of the Southern Senators "held their seats by fraud and violence." He also earnestly opposed all propositions to compel the unlimited coinage of the silver dollar of 412½ grains, a measure which would have given to the country a superabundance of silver currency of depreciated value to the exclusion of gold. His last Congressional speech was this carefully prepared and forcible "arraignment of the Democratic party," of which tens of thousands of copies were circulated throughout the Union in the following campaign:
We have now spent three months and a half in this Capitol, not without certain results. We have shown to the people of this nation just what the Democratic party means. The people have been informed as to your objects, ends, and aims. By fraud and violence, by shot-guns and tissue ballots, you hold a present majority in both Houses of Congress, and you have taken an early opportunity to show what you intend to do with that majority thus obtained. You are within sight of the promised land, but like Moses of old we propose to send you up into the mountain to die politically.
Mr. President, we are approaching the end of this extra session, and its record will soon become history. The acts of the Democratic party, as manifested in this Congress, justify me in arraigning it before the loyal people of the United States on the political issues which it has presented, as the enemy of the nation and as the author and abettor of rebellion.
1. I arraign the Democratic party for having resorted to revolutionary measures to carry out its partisan projects, by attempting to coerce the Executive by withholding supplies, and thus accomplishing by starvation the destruction of the government which they had failed to overthrow by arms.
2. I arraign them for having injured the business interests of the country by forcing the present extra session, after liberal compromises were tendered to them prior to the close of the last session.
3. I arraign them for having attempted to throw away the results of the recent war by again elevating State over National Sovereignty. We expended $5,000,000,000 and sacrificed more than 300,000 precious lives to put down this heresy and to perpetuate the national life. They surrendered this heresy at Appomattox, but now they attempt to renew this pretension.
4. I arraign them for having attempted to damage the business interests of the country by forcing silver coin into circulation, of less value than it represents, thus swindling the laboring-man and the producer, by compelling them to accept 85 cents for a dollar, and thus enriching the bullion-owners at the expense of the laborer. Four million dollars a day is paid for labor alone, and by thus attempting to force an 85 cent dollar on the laboring-man you swindle him daily out of $600,000. Twelve hundred million dollars are paid yearly for labor alone, and by thus attempting to force an 85-cent dollar on the laboring-man you swindle him out of $180,000,000 a year. The amount which the producing class would lose is absolutely incalculable.
5. I arraign them for having removed without cause experienced officers and employes of this body, some of whom served and were wounded in the Union army, and for appointing men who had in the rebel army attempted to destroy this government.
6. I arraign them for having instituted a secret and illegitimate tribunal, the edicts of which have been made the supreme governing power of Congress in defiance of the fundamental principles of the constitution. The decrees of this junta are known although its motives are hidden.
7. I arraign them for having held up for public admiration that arch-rebel, Jefferson Davis, declaring that he was inspired by motives as sacred and as noble as animated Washington; and as having rendered services in attempting to destroy the Union which will equal in history Grecian fame and Roman glory. [Laughter on the Democratic side and in portions of the galleries.] You can laugh. The people of the North will make you laugh on the other side of your faces!
8. I arraign them for having undertaken to blot from the statute-book of the nation wise laws, rendered necessary by the war and its results, and insuring "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to the emancipated freedmen, who are now so bulldozed and ku-kluxed that they are seeking peace in exile, although urged to remain by shot-guns.
9. I arraign them for having attempted to repeal the wise legislation which excludes those who served under the rebel flag from holding commissions in the army and navy of the United States.
10. I arraign them for having introduced a large amount of legislation for the exclusive benefit of the States recently in rebellion, which, if enacted, would bankrupt the national Treasury.
11. I arraign them for having conspired to destroy all that the Republican party has accomplished. Many of them breaking their oaths of allegiance to the United States and pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors to overthrow this government, they failed, and thus lost all they pledged.
Call a halt. The days of vaporing are over. The loyal North is aroused and their doom is sealed.
I accept the issue on these arraignments distinctly and specifically before the citizens of this great republic. As a Senator of the United States and as 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. I go before that tribunal confident that the Republican party is right and that the Democratic party is wrong.
They have made these issues; not we; and by them they must stand or fall. This is the platform which they have constructed, not only for 1879 but for 1880. They cannot change it, for we will hold them to it. They have made their bed, and we will see to it that they lie thereon.