FOOTNOTES:

[1] The glass for the meeting-house was procured before the building was ready for it, and it was loaned to different members; the careful record kept shows how scarce and costly an article it then was.

CHAPTER II.
PARENTAGE AND CHILDHOOD.

The Chandlers of New England are the descendants of William Chandler, who came from England in the days of the Puritan immigration—about 1637—and settled in Roxbury, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Chandlers of Bedford, N. H., are the posterity of one of his descendants, Zechariah Chandler of Roxbury, who was among the grantees of Souhegan-East in the right of his wife, the daughter of a soldier in King Philip's War. They were the conspicuous English family in that Scotch-Irish Presbyterian settlement, and their farm is the only one in that town which is still in possession of the lineal descendants of an original grantee. That Zechariah Chandler was a man of some means is shown by this document, which is still on record and reads curiously enough in the biography of a most inveterate and powerful opponent of slavery and the slave power:

Boston, November 11, 1740.

Received of Mr. Zechariah Chandler, one hundred and ten pounds, in full, for a Negro Boy, sold and delivered him for my master, John Jones.

£110

WM. MERCHANT, Jun'r.

This slave was taken to Bedford, but soon freed by his owner, when he assumed the name of Primas Chandler. Although past the usual military age, in 1775 he enlisted as a private in the service of the colonies, was captured by the British at "The Cedars" and was never afterwards heard from by his friends. He left a wife and two sons in Bedford, but his family has since become extinct.

The first settlers in Bedford located chiefly on the rocky and hilly territory which is now the central and most thickly inhabited portion of the town. East of this, in the smooth and fertile intervale of the Merrimack, judging by the names on the most ancient maps, the settlers were chiefly of English descent, and among them was Thomas Chandler, the son of Zechariah, and the first actual occupant of the land granted to his father. He married Hannah, a daughter of Col. John Goffe, by whom he had four children—three daughters and a son named also Zachariah, who married Sarah Patten, the second daughter of Capt. Samuel Patten. This Zachariah, the grandfather of his namesake, the Senator, died on April 20, 1830, at the age of 79, and his widow died in 1842, aged nearly 94. From them were descended the two families of Chandlers, who in the present generation have been prominent in Bedford.

The oldest son of Zachariah was named Thomas, and was born August 10, 1772. He had four children—Asenath, who married Stephen Kendrick, of Nashville; Sarah, who married Caleb Kendrick; Hannah, who married Rufus Kendrick, a well-known citizen of Boston; and Adam, who now lives in Manchester, where also reside his three sons, Henry and Byron, who are connected with the Amoskeag National Bank, and John, who is a prominent merchant of that city. The only daughter of Zachariah, Sarah, remained single, and lived at the old homestead, which had become her property, until her death in 1852. Throughout that whole region she was known for years as "Aunt Sarah."

THE CHANDLER HOMESTEAD, AT BEDFORD, N. H.

Samuel, the second son of Zachariah, was born May 28, 1774, and married Margaret Orr, the oldest daughter of General Stark's most trusted officer, Col. John Orr. They had seven children, one of whom died in infancy. Those who reached maturity were Mary Jane, who was successively married to the Rev. Cyrus Downs, the Rev. David P. Smith, and the Rev. Samuel Lee, and who is still living, the last surviving member of the seven, at the present homestead; Annis, who married Franklin Moore and became a resident of Detroit; Samuel, Jr., who, after four years at Dartmouth and Union colleges, lost his health and died in Detroit in 1835; Zachariah, the subject of this memorial volume; and John Orr, who, after graduating at Dartmouth, spent one year in Andover Theological Seminary, came in feeble health to Detroit where he was tenderly cared for by his brother, and finally went by way of New Orleans to Cuba, where he died in January, 1839, his remains being subsequently removed to the Bedford burying-ground. The father, Samuel, died in Bedford on January 11, 1870, at the age of 95, and the mother in 1855, at the age of 81.

The Chandlers during the three generations from Thomas to Samuel were thus allied by marriage to three of the most noted families, not only in Bedford but in New Hampshire, the Goffes, Pattens and Orrs. They were generally long-lived, although consumption developed in different generations, and were always prominent in town and church matters. The Thomas Chandler who first settled in Bedford was one of the signers of the petition for incorporation in 1750, and was conspicuously connected with all local movements at that time. His grandson Thomas, the Senator's uncle, was in the Legislature several terms, and in Congress from 1829 to 1833, being elected as a Jackson Democrat. His name is frequently mentioned in the records of the church where he was choir-leader and where he formed a class for instruction in sacred music. He was also selectman for many years, and held other positions in connection with the town government. He as well as his father "kept tavern" on one of the main New England thoroughfares of those days, and both were widely known through that region. Samuel, the father of the Senator, played the first bass-viol ever used in the church choir, and helped to stem the tide of indignation with which the introduction of this "ungodly" instrument was met by the more rigid members of that orthodox Presbyterian body. His name often appears in the records as clerk of the church, selectman, and town clerk. He was for over twenty years consecutively a justice of the peace, and in his hands was usually placed such business as the settlement of estates. In the list of town officers the name of Chandler appears almost every year, and in almost all church and public gatherings for over a century some member of this family was present among the active and public-spirited citizens.

THE BIRTHPLACE OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER.

The first house built on the Chandler farm was on the east side of the river road, and not far from the present homestead. It was torn down many years ago, but the cellar was visible until within a comparatively recent period. The second house was built before the Revolutionary War, by the grandfather of the Senator, and this is still standing, though it has been remodeled and modernized. It was used as a tavern and court-house during that war. In this the second Zachariah and his wife lived for many years, and in this they and their daughter Sarah died. During their declining years they were cared for there by the mother of Rodney M. Rollins, the present occupant and owner of the place, and the house, with forty acres of land, was willed to Mrs. Rollins by "Aunt Sarah" previous to her death. This was the first alienation from the possession of the family of any part of the Chandler farm. Although the house has been remodeled, it retains many of its old features, and one apartment at the northwest corner has been preserved nearly as it was at the time of the Revolution. It is called the Revolutionary room, and has still in its furniture some of the chairs that were there a hundred years ago, and among its fixtures an ancient buffet, carved by hand and unchanged except by paint since 1776.

On the opposite side of the road, fronting the east, and in sight of the Merrimack, where it takes its broad sweep above Goff's Falls, is the present Chandler homestead, which was built by Samuel Chandler in 1800, before his marriage. It remains to-day almost precisely as first constructed, and seems good for half a century more. Its rooms are large, and the ceilings unusually high for a farm-house of the earlier times. The front portion contains four large apartments on the lower floor, and in the rear are the dining-room, the kitchen, the pantry, and store-rooms. In the second story are five bed-rooms, with closets and additional store-room, and above these is a spacious attic. Among the furniture are chairs and chests of drawers of pro-revolutionary times, one of the ancient four-post bedsteads common a hundred years ago, and brass andirons which would delight the eyes of a lover of antique relics. Here still lives the Senator's oldest sister, and here the family of seven were born.

In the ancient family bible, printed in 1803 and preserved by Mrs. Lee, is an entry of a birth, of which this is a fac-simile:

Zacharias Chandler

Born Decr. 10th 1813

It will be noticed that the given name is written Zacharias. Mrs. Lee still speaks of her brother as Zacharias, and his name is also so printed in the Chandler genealogy in the centennial history of Bedford. The Senator in his signatures simply used the initial of his first name, but he ultimately adopted the ancestral Zachariah, and that was the name which he made famous, and by which he will be known in this biography.

Zachariah Chandler's father and paternal grandfather, Samuel and Zachariah, are described as spare men of medium stature, but energetic and full of endurance. His mother, Margaret Orr, was tall and powerful; her distinguished son resembled her in face, and inherited from her many of his most vigorous traits. She was a woman of great strength of character and robust sense, and exercised a large influence over her children. Her family was a remarkable one; her father was the conspicuous man of his day in his part of New Hampshire; her brother, Benjamin Orr, became the foremost lawyer of Maine early in the present century, and served one term from that State in Congress; her half-brother, the Rev. Isaac Orr, was a man of many accomplishments and a diverse scholarship, a prolific writer on scientific and philosophical topics, and with a claim on the general gratitude as the inventor of the application of the air-tight principle to the common stove.

The boy Zachariah was healthy, strong, quick-tempered, and self-reliant, and the contrast was marked between his sturdiness and the constitutional feebleness of his short-lived brothers. The traditions of his childhood, still fondly cherished by his surviving sister, all show that from his cradle he was ready to fight his own battles, and that his "pluckiness" was innate. One juvenile anecdote related by Mrs. Lee will illustrate scores that might be repeated: His father's poultry-yard was ruled by a large and ill-tempered gander, the strokes of whose horny beak were the dread of the smaller children. The oldest brother was one day driven back by this fowl while attempting to cross the road, when the young "Zach.," then three years old, called out "Do, Sammy, do, I'll keep e' dander off," and rushed into a pitched and victorious battle with the "dander," during which his brother made good his escape.

His rudimentary education was obtained in the little brick school-house at Bedford, which remains substantially unchanged and is still used. Here he attended school regularly from the age of five or six until he was fourteen or fifteen. He had an excellent memory, and was a good scholar, standing well with others of his age. He was a leader in the boys' sports, always active, and entering with zest into every frolic. Of these days, one of his early playmates—now the Rev. S. G. Abbott, of Stamford, Conn.—thus writes: "The death of Mr. Chandler revives the memories of half a century ago. The old brick school-house where we were taught together the rudiments of our education; the country store where his father sold such a wonderful variety of merchandise for the wants of the inner and outer man; the broad acres of field and forest in the ancestral domain where we used to rove and hunt; his uncle's 'tavern,' the cheerful home of the traveler when there were no railroads, situated on a great thoroughfare, constantly alive with stages, teams, cattle, sheep, swine, turkeys, and pedestrian immigrants—all these form a picture as distinct to the mind's eye as if a scene of the present. No unimportant feature of that picture in my boyish memory was a rough-built, overgrown, awkward, good-natured, popular boy, who went by the never-forgotten, familiar sobriquet of 'Zach.' He never forgot it. After more than forty years' separation, when I called on him in the capitol, and apologized for calling him Zach., in his old, rollicking way he said 'Oh, you can call me old Zach., that's what they all call me out West.'"

THE SCHOOL-HOUSE AT BEDFORD, N. H.

In his fifteenth and sixteenth years he attended the academies at Pembroke and Derry, with his older brother, who was fitting for college. In the winter following he taught school one term in the Piscataquog or "Squog" district. As is the rule in country schools, many of the pupils were about as large as the teacher, and the "Squog" boys had the reputation of being especially unruly. The usual disorders commenced, but after some trouble the energetic young man from the Chandler farm established his supremacy, and the scholars recognized the fact that there was a head to the school. Mr. Chandler always spoke with interest of his brief experience in teaching, although he never claimed any particular success in that calling. While he was thus employed the teacher of the brick school, in which he had been so long a pupil, was a Dartmouth sophomore who in his "boarding around" was especially welcome at the house of Samuel Chandler. This was James F. Joy, who then formed with the young Zachariah an intimacy, which ranked among the causes that determined Mr. Joy's own selection of Detroit as a home, and lasted through life.

In the latter years of his school life young Chandler worked on the farm through the summer, and the last season that he was home he took entire charge, employing the help and superintending the labor. Thomas Kendall, who was with him during three summers, and who is still living in Bedford, says, "Zach. was a good man to work and a good man to work for." He was just in his dealings with the men, but vigorous as an overseer, and himself as good a "farm hand" as there was. Stories are still told of his achievements in mowing contests with the men. He had no liking, as had many of his fellows, for hunting or fishing, but he was fond of athletic sports, and was the best wrestler in town. "Whoever took hold of Zach.," says Mr. Kendall, "had to go down."

During one of the last years of his residence at Bedford, Mr. Chandler was enrolled in the local militia company and turned out at the "general muster." He did not, however, succeed in bringing himself to perfect obedience to the orders of the young captain, whom he knew he could easily out-wrestle and out-mow, and was arrested for insubordination. He was kept under arrest through one afternoon, but the court-martial which had been ordered for his trial was recalled and he was released. He was afterwards for a short time on the staff of the commanding officer, General Riddle, but his removal from New Hampshire took place at about this time. After his Janesville, Wis., speech, two days before his death, Mr. Chandler was called upon by the Captain Colley who had placed him under arrest nearly fifty years before. Mr. Colley is now a resident of Rock county, Wis., and had driven a long distance to listen to his old-time subordinate, or rather insubordinate, and to revive with him old memories.

In the year 1833 Zachariah Chandler entered the store of Kendrick & Foster of Nashua, and in September of that year, moved by the same impulse that has sent so many New Englanders into the growing territories, turned his face Westward, and in company with his brother-in-law, the late Franklin Moore, came to the city, which from that time to his death was his home. He had not then shown in any marked degree the qualities which made his future success so eminent, and was apparently simply a good specimen out of thousands of the energetic, determined, and sagacious young men, who, leaving more sterile New England, have subdued the forests, moulded the politics and conducted the business of half a dozen Western States.

For the old homestead and its occupants, and for the town of Bedford, Mr. Chandler always entertained a warm affection. He was a good correspondent, and his home letters, which until his entrance into public life were frequent and long, breathed a genuine feeling of filial and brotherly affection. After his election to the Senate, with the voluminous correspondence which his official position involved, his letters to the old home became less frequent, but to the last he kept up occasional communication with the surviving friends at his birthplace. During his father's life he visited Bedford twice or more each year, and after his father's death made at least one annual journey there. In 1850, when the centennial celebration of the incorporation of the township occurred, Mr. Chandler was among those invited to be present, and sent the following letter of regret:

Detroit, May 16, 1850.

Gentlemen:—I regret exceedingly my inability to accept your kind invitation to be present at your Centennial Celebration of the settlement of the good old town of Bedford. It would have afforded me great pleasure to meet my old friends upon that occasion, but circumstances beyond my own control will prevent. The ashes of the dead, as well as the loved faces of the living, attract me strongly to my native town, and that attachment I find increasing each day of my life. Permit me, in conclusion, to offer: "The town of Bedford—May her descendants (widely scattered through the land) never dishonor their paternity."

Be pleased to accept, for yourselves and associates, my kind regards, and believe me,

Truly yours,
Z. CHANDLER.

His later visits were looked forward to with much interest, not only by his relatives, but by the neighbors, to whom a talk with him was one of the events of the year. He was there always genial and friendly, kept up his acquaintance with the old residents, and thoroughly enjoyed his association with them. His last visit to the homestead was after the close of his campaign in Maine, in August, 1879. He then met many of his boyhood friends, and enjoyed a ramble over the undulating fields which stretch from the central hills toward the banks of the Merrimack. And as he drove for the last time down the road from the house of his birth toward Manchester, he pointed to a pine grove which skirts the northern border of the Chandler farm, and said to his companion, "That, to me, is the most beautiful grove in the world."

New Hampshire has been prolific in strong men with the granite of its hills in the fibres of their characters. Bedford itself has been the birthplace of scores of the leading men of the thriving city of Manchester; of Joseph E. Worcester, the lexicographer; of Benjamin Orr, of Maine; of David Aiken, Isaac O. Barnes, and Jacob Bell, of the Massachusetts bar; of the Hon. David Atwood, of Wisconsin; of Judge A. S. Thurston, of Elmira, N. Y.; of Hugh Riddle, of the Rock Island Railroad, and Gen. George Stark, of the Northern Pacific; of the Rev. Silas Aiken, of the Boston pulpit; and of others of large influence in their generations. But upon no one of its sons was the impress of its peculiar history so indelibly stamped as upon the young man who left it to aid in founding a powerful State amid the Great Lakes, and who became the foremost representative of that State's vigorous political conviction and purpose.

CHAPTER III.
REMOVAL TO MICHIGAN—MERCANTILE SUCCESS—BUSINESS INVESTMENTS.

In 1833 Zachariah Chandler, then still a minor, joined the current of Western emigration from New York and New England which had sprung up with the completion of the Erie canal, and in the fall of that year entered into the retail dry-goods business at Detroit. Franklin Moore (the husband of his sister Annis), who had already visited Michigan, came with him as a partner in the enterprise, and the original firm name was Moore & Chandler. At the outset the young merchant had some assistance from his father, who, the tradition is, offered him $1,000 in cash or the collegiate education which his brothers received, the money being chosen. Samuel Chandler also subsequently bought a store for his son's use, but it is understood that all such advances were speedily and fully repaid. The building in which the future Senator first laid the foundation of his ample fortune was located where the Biddle House now stands; it adjoined the mansion of Governor Hull, and was subsequently transformed into the American House. Upon its shelves Moore & Chandler displayed a small general stock, representing the ample assortment usual in frontier stores, and saw a promising business answer their invitations. In the following spring they removed to a brick store (on the site now occupied by S. P. Wilcox & Co.), near the main corner of the town (where Woodward and Jefferson avenues meet). In the summer of 1834 Detroit was visited by the Asiatic cholera, which appeared in malignant form, and was attended by an appalling death rate, and an almost entire suspension of general traffic. Mr. Chandler did not yield to the prevalent panic, but remained at his business and was indefatigable in his efforts to relieve the universal distress. His vigorous constitution and plain habits guarded his own health, and he cared for the sick and buried the dead without faltering amid the dreadful scenes of the pestilence. For weeks he and a clerk (Mr. William N. Carpenter, of Detroit) alternated in watching by sick beds, and, with others of like strength and courage, brightened with unassuming heroism the gloomy picture of a season of dreadful mortality.

On August 16, 1836, the firm of Moore & Chandler was dissolved, and the junior partner retained the established business, and continued its vigorous prosecution. Those who knew him then describe a fair-haired, awkward, tall, gaunt and wiry youth, blunt in his ways, simple in habits, diffident with others, but shrewd, tireless in labor, and of unlimited energy. He worked day and night, slept in the store, often on the counter or a bale of goods, acted as proprietor, salesman, or porter as was needed, lived on $300 a year, avoided society, and allowed only the Presbyterian church to divide his attention with business. He kept a good stock, especially strong in the staples, bought prudently, and there was no better salesman in the West. His trade became especially large with the farmers who used Detroit as a market, and the unaffected manners and homely good sense of the rising merchant soon gave him a popularity with his rural customers that foreshadowed the strong hold of his later life on the affectionate confidence of the yeomanry of the State.

The training which this intense application added to native vigor of judgment early made him a thorough business man, exact in dealings, strong in an intuitive knowledge of men, sound in his judgment of values, prudent in ventures, and of an unflagging energy which pushed his trade wherever an opening could be found. As interior Michigan developed he added jobbing to his retail department, and became known as a close and prudent buyer, a shrewd judge of credits, and a most successful collector. A business established at the commencement of an era of marvelous growth, pushed with such industry, drawn upon only for the meagre expenses of a young man living with the closest economy, and unembarrassed by speculation, meant a fortune, and at twenty-seven years of age Mr. Chandler found himself with success assured and wealth only a matter of patience. His nearest approach to financial disaster was in the ruinous crash which swept "the wild-cat banks" and so many mercantile enterprises out of existence in Michigan in the year 1838. Like others he found it almost impossible at that time to obtain money, and the Bank of Michigan which had promised him accommodations was compelled by its own straitened condition to decline his paper. Thus it happened that a note for about $5,000 given to Arthur Tappan & Co. of New York fell due and went to protest. Mr. Chandler, accustomed to New England strictness in business and exceedingly sensitive on the point of meeting all engagements, was inclined to treat the protest as bankruptcy itself, and called upon his Bedford friend, James F. Joy, then a young lawyer in Detroit and for years afterwards Mr. Chandler's counsel, to have a formal assignment drawn up. What followed is given in Mr. Joy's language: "I looked carefully into his affairs, and found them in what I believed to be a sound and healthy condition. I then said: 'I won't draw an assignment for you, Chandler; there is no need of it.' 'What shall I do?' was his answer, 'I can't pay that note.' My reply was, 'Write to Tappan & Co. and say that you cannot get the discounts that have been promised, but that if they will renew the note you will be able to pay it when it next falls due.' He took my advice and went through, and never had any trouble with his finances after that. I reminded Mr. Chandler of that occurrence about two months before his death, when he said he remembered it perfectly, and added that if it had not been for that advice he might have been a clerk on a salary to this day."

Mr. Chandler's was the first business in Detroit whose sales aggregated $50,000 in a single year, and the reaching of that limit was hailed by the community as a great mercantile triumph. He showed increasing commercial sagacity at every stage of his active business life. He pushed his jobbing trade in all directions and made his interior customers his personal friends. He invested his surplus profits in productive real estate which grew rapidly in value. He was never tempted into speculation, and he was very reluctant to incur debt. As a result, ten years after he landed at Detroit he had a reputation throughout the new Northwest as a merchant of ample means, personal honesty, large connections, and remarkable enterprise.

Between 1840 and 1850 Mr. Chandler reduced his business to a purely wholesale basis and made himself independently and permanently rich. He had opportunities and they were improved to the full. [And it may be here said without exaggeration that every dollar of the fortune with which he closed his career as an active merchant represented legitimate business enterprise; it was the product of personal industry and good judgment put forth in a field wisely selected and with only slight aid at the outset.] The wiry stripling had become a stalwart man, despite a family consumptive tendency which at times caused alarm. Prosperity did not affect the plainness of his manners and speech, nor the simplicity of his character, and maturity added method to, without impairing, his powers of personal application. He was a man alive with energy and thoroughly in earnest. He was active and influential in all public matters in Detroit. Every year he drove through the State, visited its cross-roads and its clearings, saw its pioneer merchants at their homes and in their stores, made up his estimate of men and their means, studied the growth of the State, and marked the course of the budding of its resources. He thus kept himself thoroughly informed as to the material development of Michigan, and acquired that intimate knowledge of the State and its representative men which formed such an important part of his equipment for public life. His companion in these numerous commercial journeys was the man who succeeded him in the Senate, the Hon. Henry P. Baldwin of Detroit, who came to Michigan largely through his solicitations, was engaged in business for years by his side, and remained his intimate associate through life. This part of Mr. Chandler's career abounded in the making of friendships which endured until death. While strict in all his dealings, he was considerate and his sympathy was quick with struggling industry and honesty. He aided when they needed it many who afterwards rose to position and wealth, and these men became the most firmly attached of his supporters in his public career.

THE CHANDLER BLOCK.

Shortly after 1850 political affairs commenced to receive Mr. Chandler's attention, and he gradually entrusted more and more of the actual management of his large business to others, though he still for some years directed in a general way the operations of the house. He had been already absent one winter on a trip to the West Indies for his health, and had made a brief and not wholly satisfactory experiment (about 1846) at establishing a jobbing fancy-goods trade in New York. With these exceptions he had made his Detroit dry-goods business his personal charge. The firm name had generally been Z. Chandler & Co., although it was for some time Chandler & Bradford, and some of his relatives had been and were associated with him in business. From his second location he had moved his stock to more commodious quarters on the site now occupied by the Chandler Block, and in 1852 he again moved to the stores built jointly by himself and Mr. Baldwin on the southwest corner of Woodward avenue and Woodbridge street. In 1855, as outside matters commenced to press constantly upon Mr. Chandler's attention, there came into his employment as a clerk a young man of twenty-three from Kinderhook, N.Y., Allan Shelden. He showed an aptitude for business and a capacity for work that recalled to the head of the house his own earlier days, and Mr. Shelden's rise in his employer's confidence was rapid and permanent. On Feb. 1, 1857, just before Mr. Chandler took his seat as the successor of Lewis Cass in the Senate, the firm name was changed to Orr, Town & Smith, with Mr. Chandler as a special partner, with an interest of $50,000. In the fall of that year, it became Town, Smith & Shelden; in the fall of 1859 it was changed to Town & Shelden; on Feb. 1, 1866, it was again changed to the present name of Allan Shelden & Co. Three years later Mr. Chandler ceased to be a special partner, and thus finally sundered his formal connection with the business he had established. The mercantile pre-eminence in Michigan of his house in its line of trade has been maintained by his successors, and it now occupies the magnificent Chandler Block, built for its accommodation by its founder in 1878 on Jefferson avenue in Detroit. Mr. Shelden himself continued in confidential relations with his predecessor, and was entrusted in later years with the management of a large share of his private affairs.

During his active business life no Northwestern merchant surpassed Mr. Chandler in credit, in enterprise, or in success, and he left the counter and office of his store with wealth and with an unsullied mercantile character. His commercial integrity and sagacity always remained among his marked characteristics. He made profitable investments, became interested in remunerative enterprises, and, while he lived generously after his income warranted it, saw his riches steadily increase under prudent and shrewd management. At the time of his death, his estate which was absolutely unincumbered was roughly estimated as exceeding, at the least, two millions, representing valuable business property in Detroit, several farms, large tracts of timbered lands, the marsh farm at Lansing, residences in Washington and Detroit, bank stock, government and other securities, and investments in railroad and like enterprises. His business habits remained in full vigor to the last. He was punctuality itself in all appointments; he was rigid in his adherence to his engagements; he hated debt, and never permitted the second presentation of an account; he did business on business principles and with business exactitude; he spent money freely but knew where and for what it went; and always his counsel was sought and prized by men engaged in enterprises of the largest magnitude. Without being ostentatious or profuse in his charities he was a large giver, rarely refusing a meritorious application for aid, but he invariably satisfied himself that the object was worthy, and put a heartiness into his "no" when a refusal seemed to him to be in order.

His business instincts he never relaxed except for well-considered reasons. The ditching of the marsh farm he regarded as an experiment of far-reaching public importance, and he paid its cost cheerfully for the sake of settling the question of the possibility of reclaiming such lands. Some of his "imprudences" of this deliberate and well-weighed sort proved profitable. During the war and when the credit of the United States was at an alarmingly low ebb as shown in the ruling prices of its bonds, he visited the city of New York in company with Representative Rowland E. Trowbridge, of his State. On the way there he spoke, in private, in a tone of unusual depression of the financial difficulties of the government, and lamented the absence of any available remedy. The next day there was a decided improvement in the rates for "governments" on Wall street, and the firmer feeling it created never wholly disappeared but was followed by a gradual appreciation in this class of securities. Mr. Trowbridge called his attention to the advance on the day following, and the Senator answered, "I know all about it. I gave my broker orders to buy heavily and the street, finding that out, said 'Chandler is just over from Washington and knows something,' and so they followed my lead, and there was a rush which sent the market up." Years afterwards, Mr. Chandler was reminded by Mr. Trowbridge of the permanent character of the improvement in the government's credit which attended his speculation and of his own profit in the matter. He replied that while he had sold many of his bonds bought during the war, he still held those which came into his possession at that time, cherishing them for their associations with an investment which he made at some risk to help the treasury in its difficulties and which had proved very remunerative.

During his public life information legitimately acquired and the broadening of his judgment by contact with men undoubtedly helped his investments, and thus added to his wealth, but individual pecuniary advantage he resolutely ignored in shaping his public career. And his sturdy incorruptibility as a legislator was proverbial at the capital. An illustration of this fact was shown in his strenuous resistance to and emphatic denunciation of the bills to remonetize and coin without limit the old silver dollar. While these measures were pending he had considerable investments in silver mining stocks, which would have been greatly increased in value by the proposed policy, but, showing one day to a friend a large draft representing a silver-mine dividend, he said, "I ought for personal reasons to favor these bills, but I can't consent to make money at the expense of the people." Another incident exemplifies this phase of his character: In February, 1873, the city of Manistee, on the shore of Lake Michigan, sent Gen. B. M. Cutcheon to Washington to secure an increased appropriation for the improvement of its harbor. Senator Chandler, as the chairman of the Committee on Commerce and with a reputation for vigilance in caring for Michigan interests, was naturally relied upon for valuable assistance. He received General Cutcheon cordially, gave his personal attention to the matter of introducing the representative of Manistee to influential Congressmen and to department officials, and then made an appointment for the consideration of what his own share in the work should be. At that private meeting he expressed to General Cutcheon his cordial sympathy with his errand, but added, "My hands are tied; the fact is that I am interested in large tracts of pine on the Manistee river, and, if I should take charge of your appropriation, it would be said, 'Chandler is feathering his own nest;' and if I am going to retain my influence for good here, I must keep clear of even the suspicion of a job."

The great multitude who knew Mr. Chandler as a public man knew nothing of this early chapter of business life. It wholly ante-dated his appearance at Washington, and the channels in which his strong energies made themselves felt there and in his younger days were widely distinct. But it is a fact that he was a remarkable man of business and as thorough a merchant as ever developed in the West a great trade from small beginnings. His was a doubly successful career. Before he had reached middle age he had won success in business and a fortune. Then he entered public life and made himself a leader of men in a historic era.

CHAPTER IV.
THE PANORAMA OF NORTHWESTERN DEVELOPMENT.

The forty-six years of Zachariah Chandler's life in Michigan saw a vast material empire supplant an almost unbroken wilderness. His commercial enterprise and success and his labors as a legislator were among the influential agents in this marvelous development and give its story a title to a place in his biography.

As early as 1634 Jesuits Brebuef, Daniel and Davost, following a route explored by Samuel Champlain eighteen years before, passed up the River Ottawa, across Lake Nipissing, down French river and along the lonely shores of the great Georgian bay to the dark forests bordering Lake Huron. Brebuef reached there first; Daniel came later, weary and worn; Davost came last of all, half dead with famine and fatigue.[2] Champlain had been before them, and other explorers preceded Champlain, but these three were the first Europeans who made a habitation by the shores of the great lakes which roll their tireless flood down through the gateway of Detroit. They erected a hut, and daily rang a bell to call the surrounding savages to prayers. Behind them was the tangled forest they had penetrated; at their feet were the broad waters of Lake Huron; beyond—toward the setting sun—was an abyss so soundless that no echo had ever come from it. And these three soldiers of the cross, converters of the heathen, unarmed and alone amid a multitude of savages, were the advance ripples of the mighty wave that two centuries later was to break across the lake at their feet and the rivers below them and surge over the trackless wilderness beyond.

Seven years later (September, 1641,) Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jaques embarked in a frail birch-bark canoe, paddling northwest from Georgian bay among the countless islands of the St. Marie river, amid scenery that filled them with delight. After seventeen days the Sault de St. Marie burst upon their enraptured vision. There they were welcomed "as brothers" by the Chippewas and there began the first known white settlement in Michigan.

On the 28th of August, 1660, Rene Mesnard left Quebec, resolved to make greater progress in the exploration of the Northwest. He ascended the Sault in a canoe, coasted along the northern shore of the upper peninsula of Michigan, and on the 15th of October of that year reached the head of Keweenaw bay to which he gave the name of St. Theresa. Eight years later (1668) a permanent mission was established at the Sault. In the autumn of 1678 occurred an event forever memorable in the annals of Michigan. There was then laid on the Niagara river the keel of the first large vessel built on the shores of the great lakes. It was completed and launched early in the following summer, and on the 7th of August, 1679 (200 years ago), amid the discharges of arquebuses and the sound of swelling Te Deums it began the first voyage ever made by Europeans upon the upper inland seas of North America. This was the "Griffin," sixty tons burden, carrying five guns, with La Salle commander, Hennepin missionary and journalist, and a crew of Canadian fur traders. Three days later (August 10), after many soundings, they reached the islands grouped at the entrance of Detroit river. They thus knew the lake was navigable by vessels of large size—this was one step toward solving the destiny of the West. Ascending the river, the explorers passed by a large number of Indian villages; these had been visited years before by Jesuit missionaries and coureurs des bois. Some fix the date as early as 1610, but others make it later, no names being given in either case. Louis Hennepin gives the earliest description of the river: "The strait (De troit) is finer than Niagara, being one league broad, excepting that part which forms the lake that we have called St. Clair." The strait once voyaged and understood, its value was quickly appreciated by the French as a means of resisting the inroads of the persevering English (who from New York and New England were pressing upon their possessions in the East), and of preventing British interference with the valuable hunting privileges or with the Indian tribes dwelling upon the borders of the Northern lakes. With this in view the Marquis de Nonville, Governor-General of the Canadas, ordered (June 6, 1686) M. Du Lhut, who had been commandant at Michilimackinac, "to establish a post on the Detroit, near Lake Erie, with a garrison of fifty men," and the order added, "I desire you to choose an advantageous place to secure the passage, which may protect our savages who go to the chase, and serve them as an asylum against their enemies and ours." In obedience to these instructions, M. Du Lhut proceeded to the entrance of the strait from Lake Huron, where he built a fort and established a trading post (on the site of the present Fort Gratiot) which he called Fort St. Joseph. Thus (1686) was made the first settlement by Europeans in the lower peninsula of Michigan.

The misfortunes of the war with England which terminated with the peace of Ryswick (Sept. 1, 1697,) still further convinced the most sagacious of the leading French colonists of the importance of a fort on the Detroit river which would command this channel of communication with the great lakes above. Impressed with this fact, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a Gascon sailor who amid a career of romantic adventure came to be commandant at Michilimackinac, crossed the Atlantic in person, and earnestly and repeatedly pressed upon the colonial minister, Count Ponchartrain, the necessity of the prompt establishment of a permanent post on the Detroit, where it would bring the French forces in closer proximity to the Iroquois and would give them command of the waters of the upper lakes and of the great fur trading regions about them. Cadillac did not urge this as a missionary enterprise but for its commercial and military advantages, and the force and vigor of his representations prevailed at the palace. He sailed from France with the royal order, "Take prompt possession of Detroit," with this supplement from Ponchartrain: "Prosecute vigorously; if the Jesuits obstruct, return and report." Cadillac arrived in Quebec early in the first year of the eighteenth century (March 8). Three months later (June 5) his preparations were made, and on that day he took his departure from La Chine. With him were Captain Tonti, Lieutenants Dugue and Chacornacle, fifty soldiers, and fifty Canadian traders and artisans. Nineteen days later he arrived upon the site of the present city of Detroit. In his memoir Cadillac wrote: "I arrived at Detroit, July 24 (1701), and fortified myself there immediately. I had the necessary huts made and cleared up the ground preparatory to its being sowed in the autumn." When he touched the shore of Michigan, with pomp and ceremony he erected a cross, a cedar post beside it; then with a sword in one hand and a sod in the other he made solemn proclamation with many words of "possession taken" of all the country round about, from the great lakes to the south seas, in the name of the King of France.

Thus French Michigan began, and so it remained until Wolfe's victory gave new rulers to Canada and to all the French possessions beyond. On Nov. 29, 1760, the French flag floated for the last time over Detroit, as a part of the dominion of France. On that day Maj. Robert Rogers, an English provincial officer, native of New Hampshire, took possession in the name of another king, ran up the Cross of St. George, fired a salute, gave some round British cheers, and (the Treaty of Paris confirming this occupation) Michigan was English. It so remained until the Revolution and the treaty of 1783 made it American. But it was not until thirteen years after (1796) that it was evacuated by the British garrison; in June of that year Captain Porter with a detachment of American troops entered the fort and hoisted the Union flag for the first time, and took formal possession in the name of the United States. The Hull surrender again swept Detroit and that part of Michigan lying within its command under the Cross of St. George (Aug. 16, 1812,) to remain until Perry's victory and the subsequent military successes of General Harrison expelled the English and restored it permanently to the Union, on Sept. 28, 1813. During the Revolution Detroit was the headquarters of British power in the Northwest, and from it were sent out the expeditions which ravaged the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The British captain, Rogers, who took possession in 1760, afterwards reported the population (1765) as: Able-bodied men, 243; women, 164; children, 294—total, 701. This was exclusive of the garrison, who were sent away as prisoners of war, and included the 60 men, women and children who were slaves. He also reported that of the French families remaining in the settlement there were 23 men able to bear arms, 24 women, and 41 children. The others were probably English who had followed upon the track of the troops. Captain Rogers's report gives strength to this supposition. It says: "There are in the fort many English merchants, several of whom have bought houses." Then it gives this insight into the industrial condition of the settlement: "Of farms there are 40, and some fourscore acres in depth with a frontage on the river; of these several farms are at present in cultivation." The number of acres under cultivation is given as 404; number of bushels of wheat raised the preceding year, 670; bushels of corn, 1,884. The report quaintly adds: "The Indian corn would have been in greater abundance, had proper care been taken of it; the most part has been devoured by birds."

Here remote from the world, with the joyous sparkling of the great river at their feet, the luxuriance of the forest about them, the cottages of the settlers peeping out from the green foliage in which they were half hidden, these simple colonists lived uneventful lives, surrounded by the beauty and the bounties of nature. The forests teemed with game, the marshes with wild fowl, and the rivers with fish. The long winters were seasons of enjoyment. In summer and autumn traders, voyageurs, coureurs des bois, and half-breeds gathered from the distant Northwest, and the settlement was boisterous with rude frolic and gaiety. This was Detroit and Michigan in 1765.[3]

Between the French surrender and American occupancy, little was done toward the development of the peninsulas. In 1796 there were a few straggling settlements on the Detroit river, as also on Otter creek and on the rivers Rouge, Pointe aux Tremble, and other small streams flowing into Lake Erie. The French Canadians had extended their farms to a considerable distance along the banks of the St. Clair. Detroit was a small cluster of rude wooden houses, defended by a fort, and surrounded by pickets. Villages of the Ottawas and Pottawatamies stood on the present site of the city of Monroe, and near them were a few primitive cabins constructed of logs, erected by the French on either bank of the river Raisin; this was called Frenchtown, and is now part of Monroe. On the upper lakes there were the posts on the island of Mackinac, at St. Marie, and at St. Joseph (on the St. Joseph river). The transition from France to England had given the monopoly of the fur trade to the Hudson Bay Company, thus changing the direction of its profits; otherwise the effect upon Michigan had been a change of masters, flag and garrison, and little else. And the shifting from England to the United States also meant only new faces and new colors in the fort; otherwise it was for the time effectless.

The interior of the country was but little known except to those engaged in the fur trade, and they were interested in depreciating its value. Even as late as 1807 the Indian titles had only been partially extinguished, and no portion of the public domain had been brought into the market. The opposite shore was occupied by a vigilant and jealous foreign power. The interior of the future State swarmed with the savages who yet made it their home, and an Indian war was threatening. These things repelled the tide of immigration that was already surging over Ohio and the country bordering on the Ohio river. Fourteen years after American possession the population of Michigan was given as: Whites, 4,384; free blacks, 120; slaves, 24—total, 4,528. Five years before the number of householders in the lower peninsula was officially given as 525. There are antecedent estimates of population and assertions, but no facts that can be relied on. It is, however, probable that at the time of the British evacuation (1796) the population did not exceed 2,500 souls, for two years afterwards (1798) Wayne county, then co-extensive with the present State of Michigan, sent a representative to Chillicothe, where it was claimed that the Northwest Territory was entitled to a delegate in Congress because there were then 5,000 inhabitants within its boundaries. It can scarcely be possible that half of that aggregate was in Michigan alone, and that its settlers then equaled in numbers those scattered over the inviting and fertile region which now includes the powerful and populous States of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

The growth of the decade succeeding 1810 was trifling. In 1820 the census showed but 9,048 souls in Michigan Territory, which included the present State and the region beyond the lakes north of Illinois. The war was over. Indian depredations had ceased and the Indian titles had been quieted. The perils of settlement were removed. The seeming obstacles of the toil and privations of frontier existence were mere cobwebs in the way of the hardy and adventurous. But there yet remained serious impediments to Michigan's growth. Distance was one, for the State was still difficult of access, and canals and railroads were yet in the future. A more serious impediment was a blunder. On May 6, 1812, Congress passed an act requiring that 2,000,000 acres of land should be surveyed in Michigan Territory. The surveyors went into the forest with their chains and poles, and the result was a report to Congress which may be thus summarized: "Many lakes of great extent; marshes on their margins; marshes between; other places covered with coarse high grass; this grass covered with water from six inches to three feet; lakes and swamps over half the country; the intermediate space poor, barren and sandy; the dry land composed of sand-hills, with deep basins between and more water; the margins of many of the streams and lakes literally afloat, or thinly covered with a sward of grass with water and mud underneath; the country altogether so bad that there would not be more than one acre out of a hundred, if there would be one out of a thousand, that would in any case admit of cultivation." Official stupidity had its effect on Congress, and in 1816 (April 29) that body cancelled the survey order, and abandoned Michigan to the hunters and trappers and their game. For two years this continued; but the adventurous would plunge into the wilderness and would come back and talk of beautiful valleys, broad prairies and fertile soils. Explorations widened and a multitude of witnesses came with their facts to prove that the curtain of forest concealed something more inviting than marsh and barren and sand-hill. Then the government (1818) ordered a new survey and out of all this came part of the truth, namely: There was in this wilderness an immense variety of forest trees—oak, maple, ash, elm, sycamore, locust, butternut, walnut, poplar, whitewood, beech, hemlock, spruce, tamarack, chestnut, white, yellow, and Norway pine. There were plains and natural parks; there were level prairies and hills rising with gradual swell away to the center of the State. Of soils there were deep sandy loams mixed with limestone pebbles, deep vegetable moulds mingled with clay producing dense and luxuriant vegetation, brown loams mingled with clay, deep vegetable moulds with a surface covering of black sands. There was water in abundance, rivers and streams and creeks and beautiful lakes. All these reports and more, confirmed and re-confirmed by pioneers and surveyors, came back from the interior, until the exceeding richness and great agricultural value of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan was established.

But another event was to exercise a most important influence upon the future State. In 1817 the first steamer upon the Northern lakes, the "Ontario," was launched, and, amid bonfires, illuminations and most lively demonstrations of joy, made her first trip upon Lake Ontario. This heralded the dawn of a material revolution. One year later, on the 27th day of August, 1818, the "Walk-in-the-water," the first steamer launched above Niagara Falls, came up to the wharves of Detroit after a passage of forty-four hours from Buffalo. This vessel, of only 340 tons, and lost three years later, was a puny affair, but wise men saw in her advent the promise of a future which time has more than realized. Then in the wake of the steamer, Congress (1819) ordered the public lands of Michigan placed in the market for sale. At this time Detroit contained 250 houses, 1,415 inhabitants, and the entire territory a population of 8,896. In 1825 the Erie canal was completed, and its far-sighted projector, De Witt Clinton, sailed amid national acclamations from Lake Erie to tide-water. It completed the link of direct water communication with Michigan, and the stream of Western emigration was quickly swollen to a torrent.

Mr. Chandler first came to Michigan in 1833. Three years before (1830) the census of the entire territory, as it was constituted when Illinois was admitted to the Union, was 32,531. The growth during the preceding decade had been steady, not immense; that was to come after. It was in the year of 1833 that the first settlement was made in the present State of Iowa. And in that fall (September) the people of Detroit were rejoicing that "arrangements were in train for the establishment of a new stage-line route to Chicago, by which travelers can go from one place to the other in five days." There was not then a mile of railroad in the territory, and not until five years after (1838) was the first twenty-nine miles completed to Ypsilanti. Detroit was still a frontier post numbering less than 4,000 inhabitants. On all the Western lakes at the beginning of that year there were but eighteen steamers, ranging from fifty to 395 tons in burden, and aggregating but 3,710 tons, and with the best of these a voyage of thirty-nine hours from Buffalo to Detroit was a remarkable passage. All this was improvement; yet the Detroit merchant in that year could not expect to receive his purchases made in New York within less than from three to six months after the time of setting out to procure them. During the winter steamboats and river craft were ice-bound, and the settlements at Detroit, the River Raisin and elsewhere throughout the broad peninsula, were shut out from the Eastern world, except as travelers braved the tedious and painful staging through Canada to Buffalo, with its week of continuous day and night journeying.

A year later (1834) Congress defined the boundaries of Michigan Territory. Let the finger trace on the atlas the northern borders of Ohio and Indiana, follow around the south shore of Lake Michigan to the boundary between Wisconsin and Illinois, pursue that line to the Mississippi river, then down its stream to the north line of the State of Missouri, along that westward to the Missouri, and up that river until between the 25th and 26th degrees of west longitude the finger reaches the faint line, coming down into the Missouri from the north, of the White Earth river—all the land and lakes between the Detroit straits and this little White Earth river and between the line so traced and the British possessions, was Michigan Territory in 1834 and until Michigan was admitted as a State into the Union. It was an imperial domain, larger than Sweden and Norway united; nearly three times greater than England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the Channel islands; surpassing the united territories of France, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark and The Netherlands; even exceeding the combined acreage of Italy and the German Empire. Yet in all this region, when Mr. Chandler displayed his first stock of goods in Detroit, there was not one mile of railroad or telegraph, not one steam mill or manufactory, but one city approaching 4,000 inhabitants and not one exceeding it, and not a single mile of paved street or sewerage. There was but one water-works, and no gas-works. There was not one daily newspaper, and but few of any kind. The valuable iron deposits of the Upper Peninsula were undiscovered. The wealth of pine timber was unknown. In the previous year (1832) the total value of foreign and domestic produce exported from Michigan amounted to but the trifling sum of $9,234, and in the preceding federal census (1830) the entire civilized population of this vast area of limitless possibilities was less than 33,000, although there were then in the Union twenty-four States with a population of 12,866,020.

DETROIT TN 1834.

Mr. Chandler came in with the first swell of the great tide of emigration which broke over Michigan Territory. Up to within a brief period preceding, that extensive and fertile region was scarcely known except as it appeared on maps. Its rich prairies, its fertile plains, its deep forests with all their wealth, were a terra incognita to all white men except the fur traders. But it was being rapidly known and understood. Its fame had rolled back over the East, and the fruits were seen in the new faces and sturdy forms swarming to Detroit as a point of departure to the new and beautiful land. In that year (1833) it was a matter of boasting that as many as "one hundred and seventy-five emigrants had landed in Detroit in one day." The next year Niles' Register had a report from Detroit that the arrivals had reached the magnificent proportions of "nine hundred and sixty in one day," and that "the streets of Detroit were full of wagons loading and departing for the West," principally for the region about Grand river. And the same journal said: "The character of these emigrants is in every respect a subject of felicitation. They will give Michigan a capital stock of wealth and moral worth unequaled by any of the newly-formed States, and scarcely approximated by Ohio."

In 1833 and for more than a year afterward the business part of Detroit was confined to the narrow space bounded by Wayne and Randolph streets, Jefferson avenue and the river, and at the same time there were but few buildings on Jefferson avenue above Rivard, and but one on Woodward avenue north of State street. Old wind-mills lined the shores; the little unsightly French carts clattered through the streets; ducks, geese and pigs were the only city scavengers. This sounds like another age—another continent—but it was the Detroit and Michigan of but forty-six years ago. Change came with population—slowly at first, then with increased speed, then with immense strides. Mr. Chandler lived to see it all and to be a part of it. He came with the early tide of population; he saw the tide rising, at first languid, halting and uncertain; he saw it year by year gathering momentum and volume until it swelled and rolled over Michigan a mighty flood of brawn and brain, of enterprise and conscience.

On the fifth day of November, 1879, tens of thousands of people looked upon the dead face of the stalwart Senator and followed his body to its last resting place in the city to which he had come in 1833. Forty-six years and a few weeks had passed; no more. But in that time the city which he made his home had spread its wings until it covered an area of thirteen and a half square miles, with 300 miles of streets (seventy-six miles paved), and some of them among the broadest and most beautiful in the world, shaded by rows of graceful trees of luxuriant foliage, and adorned by stores and private residences rich in finish and architecture. It had 200 miles of water-mains and 150 miles of sewers, making it one of the most perfectly-drained cities on the continent. Its population had grown to be 120,000, and its taxable wealth to exceed $87,000,000. School buildings, representing a public investment of $650,000 and accommodating 15,000 pupils, were scattered through its wards, and numerous churches and abundant public and private charitable institutions made proclamation of the faith and philanthropy of its citizens. Great manufacturing enterprises lined its wharves and suburbs; scores of railroad trains arrived at and departed from its depots daily; and the commerce of the lakes was passing along its river front at the rate of thousands of tons hourly.

But the change in Michigan had been no less marvelous. The State has a representation in the present Congress of the United States exceeding that of any one of eight of the first States of the Union, equaling the representation of that of two others (Georgia and Virginia), and only exceeded by that of three of the original thirteen—Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. In a single county of the Upper Peninsula, in 1833 supposed to be only a mass of barren, uninviting and uninhabitable rocks, there are three cities either one of which has a greater population than the Detroit of that day, and in Michigan out of its forty-three cities and 178 villages (April, 1879) there are over thirty more populous than Detroit in 1833—some of them with populations from five to eight times greater. The people of the State are a million and a half in number, spread over the greater part of the Lower Peninsula, about the Sault, and from Marquette to Ontonagon and south to Menominee in the Upper Peninsula. Its newspapers have grown to twenty-three dailies and over 300 with less frequent issues. Its railroads have developed from non-existence to 3,500 miles, owned by thirty-six corporations, connecting Detroit and the principal cities of Michigan with all portions of the State, penetrating to every center of population and industry, costing over $160,000,000, and paying in each year for salaries and operating expenses over $13,000,000. Strong institutions for the care of the deaf and dumb and the blind and for the insane, a thriving college for agricultural education, and that noblest monument of the wisdom and forethought of the latter-day founders of Michigan, the State University, were all planted in these years. And with this, the public school system was nourished until there are over 300 graded schools and over 6,000 public schools in the State, with property valued at over $9,000,000, paying almost $2,000,000 yearly in teachers' wages, and with annual resources amounting to nearly $4,000,000. In the mountains of the Upper Peninsula, so long reputed a barren wilderness, have been discovered exhaustless mines of the richest iron ores and the most extensive and valuable copper deposits known on the globe. The Saginaw Valley has poured a briny stream of wealth upon the State from its unfailing salt-wells, and from the forests about and beyond to the westernmost limits of Michigan have been gathered great treasures of pine and hard woods. And while nature was yielding its hidden stores to enrich the State its skilled citizens were not idle. Over 10,000 manufacturing establishments in Michigan now employ upward of 70,000 people, pay more than $25,000,000 annually in wages, make an infinite variety of wares, and turn out products each year amounting in value to more than $130,000,000. The statistics of agricultural development are equally remarkable. The log cabin and the clearings have yielded to ample farms. The marsh, the pine barren, even the hyperborean soil of the Upper Peninsula, have been transformed into productive wheat-fields. The cereals of Michigan exceed in their annual product 70,000,000 bushels, and $45,000,000 in their value. Highly cultivated and valuable farms (over 111,000 in number and with a total acreage of 10,000,000) cover the greater part of the Lower Peninsula. Comfortable, even stately, farm houses dot the landscape. School-houses, churches, villages, towns and cities stand where the forest was. The wilderness has fled away. Everywhere there are evidences of peace, prosperity, happiness and a high civilization. It is magic; courage, intelligence and industry have been the magicians.

The changes in the other parts of the Michigan Territory of 1833 have been no less marvelous. Four States have been carved out of that region whose boundaries in 1834 were traced on the atlas—Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota—and the great wheat farms of Dakota will soon develop into a fifth. This entire territory to-day has eight Senators, twenty-nine Representatives and one Delegate in Congress, has over 11,000 miles of railroad, seventy-seven daily papers and over 1,100 weekly or monthly publications, and several great cities larger than Philadelphia and New York when the United States had taken its second census. It has a population greater than that of the thirteen colonies which successfully defied the power of Great Britain during the Revolution, greater than that of the six New England States in the present day. It produces a larger amount of breadstuffs than the whole Union yielded when Mr. Chandler first came to the territory, and contains more wealth than did all the States fifty years ago.

This is a marvelous story of growth. Nothing in the Old World has equaled it. Nothing the New has exceeded it. It has confounded prophecy. It has outrun imagination. It is the achievement of a stalwart race. It is the triumph of faith, of zeal, of courage. It dazzles the men of to-day. And it will stand for centuries to excite the admiration of the historian and the wonder of the future.