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.