"We will, of course, have to seize and hold that," was the answer, "but we will not tax your commerce."
To this, Mr. Chandler's indignant response was, "We own that river, Mr. Slidell; we bought and paid for it; and, by the Eternal, we are going to keep it. It was a desert when we bought it, and we will make it a desert again before we will let you steal it from us."
Mr. Chandler labored assiduously to thwart the plots of the rebel leaders, and to make such preparation as was possible for the coming strife. It was at this time that he formed that close intimacy with Edwin M. Stanton, which continued until the death of "the Carnot of the United States." Mr. Stanton, as the Attorney-General of the Buchanan Cabinet in its closing months, rendered service of the largest value to the nation by urging vigorous measures on his imbecile chief, by boldly confronting the traitors who were among his colleagues, and by secretly and promptly informing the Republican leaders of each new development of the disunion conspiracy as revealed in Cabinet consultations. His information and counsels furnished sure guidance at a time of the greatest peril, and this it was that led to the early appointment by Mr. Lincoln to the Secretaryship of War of a man whom the public then chiefly knew as a minor Cabinet officer in a detested administration. Mr. Chandler always rated Mr. Stanton's services to the Union cause in the early months of 1861 as second only in value to his herculean labors in the War Department; placed the highest estimate upon his ability, vigor, and patriotism; aided greatly in securing his appointment and confirmation as one of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet; remained his firm friend and counselor, and was largely instrumental in obtaining from President Grant the nomination to the justiceship of the Supreme Court which so shortly preceded his death. It was also at this time that Mr. Chandler began to distrust the political fidelity of Mr. Seward, whose spoken suggestions of compromise and whose persistent negotiations with rebel emissaries, however diplomatic in origin and intent, were fruitful sources of Southern hope and Northern weakness. Time increased rather than diminished this dislike, and Mr. Chandler was always an impatient critic of Mr. Seward's influence upon the Lincoln administration, and saw in the course of the Secretary of State of Andrew Johnson's Cabinet only the fulfillment of his own suspicions and predictions.
The secret history of these exciting days, teeming with incident and concealing many startling revelations, has yet been but sparingly written; it is doubtful if the veil will ever be more than slightly lifted. Mr. Chandler himself guarded scrupulously from public knowledge much that was well known to him and a few associates and would have shed light on the hidden springs of actions of vast moment. This class of information he treated as state secrets, whose perishing with the actors in the great drama was desirable for public reasons. A well-known Washington journalist, who dined one day with Mr. Chandler and Mr. Wade, and listened with interest to their reminiscences of "war times," suggested to these gentlemen that their recollections should be recorded while they were still fresh for the benefit of history, and did succeed at first in obtaining their consent to an arrangement by which the two "war Senators" were to devote one evening in each week to the relation of the inside history of the period between the fall of 1860 and the end of Johnson's administration. These narratives were to be taken down by a stenographer, whose notes were to be written out, carefully compiled, and subjected to the revision of Messrs. Chandler and Wade. The manuscript was then to be sealed and placed in such keeping as should make it certain that it would not be published until the lapse of many years. On the following Saturday night the literary gentleman was promptly at Mr. Chandler's residence with the stenographer. Mr. Wade shortly afterward came in, and at once said: "I have been thinking this matter over, Chandler, and you must allow me to decline. There is no use in telling what we know unless we tell the whole truth, and if I tell the whole truth I shall blast too many reputations. These things would be interesting and valuable if they were preserved in a book, but they would not be as valuable as the reputations that would be destroyed. The days we were going to talk about were exciting days, when good men made mistakes, and their mistakes ought to be forgotten." Mr. Chandler promptly assented, and the reminiscences were never written.
In the Senate at this time Mr. Chandler's course was bold and straightforward. On Feb. 19, 1861, he denounced on its floor "traitors in the Cabinet and imbeciles in the Presidential chair." He steadfastly opposed the Crittenden Compromise, well described by Charles Sumner as "the great surrender to slavery," and the circumstances of his opposition to "the Peace Congress" attracted national attention then and afterward. The Legislature of Virginia in January, 1861, adopted resolutions inviting a conference of delegates from the various States to meet at Washington on February 4, and consider how the pending "unhappy controversy" could be adjusted by (of course) some plan giving "to the people of the slaveholding States adequate guarantees for the security of their rights." Twenty-two States answered this invitation, and their representatives, presided over by John Tyler, deliberated in Washington for nineteen days, and in the end recommended to Congress a so-called "compromise measure," which was thus justly characterized at the time: "Forbearing all details, it will be enough to say that they undertook to give to slavery positive protection in the constitution, with new sanction and immunity—making it, notwithstanding the determination of the fathers, national instead of sectional; and, even more than this, making it one of the essential and permanent parts of our republican system." Its origin and its avowed object made this body distrusted from the outset by the sincere anti-slavery men, who did not believe that it could accomplish anything except to still farther debauch the public mind of the North. The result proved that it was called in the interest of slavery, and was designed to strengthen that system. Mr. Chandler from the outset opposed all Republican participation in this Congress, and, through the urgent recommendations of its Senators, Michigan was one of the five Northern States which did not send delegates. But after the Congress had met and was at work, it was thought that the friends of freedom on its floor might be able to accomplish something if they were increased in numbers, and accordingly application was made to Mr. Chandler and Mr. Bingham to procure the appointment by their State of delegates who could take their seats before final action was reached. Under such circumstances those gentlemen telegraphed to Lansing a request for the appointment of a delegation, and followed the message up with letters of the same tenor, which, although in the nature of private communications to Governor Blair, were shown at Lansing, and soon appeared in the newspapers; they were as follows:
Washington, Feb. 11, 1861.
My Dear Governor: Governor Bingham and myself telegraphed you on Saturday, at the request of Massachusetts and New York, to send delegates to the Peace or Compromise Congress. They admit that we were right and that they were wrong; that no Republican States should have sent delegates but they are here, and cannot get away. Ohio, Indiana and Rhode Island are caving in, and there is danger of Illinois; and now they beg of us for God's sake to come to their rescue, and save the Republican party from rupture. I hope you will send stiff-backed men or none. The whole thing was gotten up against my judgment and advice, and will end in thin smoke. Still I hope as a matter of courtesy to some of our erring brethren, that you will send the delegates. Truly your friend,
Z. CHANDLER.
His Excellency Austin Blair.
P. S. Some of the manufacturing States think a fight would be awful. Without a little blood-letting, this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.
Washington, Feb. 10, 1861.
Dear Sir: When Virginia proposed a convention in Washington, in reference to the disturbed condition of the country, I regarded it as another effort to debauch the public mind and a step toward obtaining that concession which the imperious slave power so insolently demands. I have no doubt, at present, but that was the design. I was therefore pleased that the Legislature of Michigan was not disposed to put herself in a position to be controlled by such influences. The convention has met here, and within a few days the aspect of things has materially changed. Every free State, I think, except Michigan and Wisconsin, is represented, and we have been assured by friends upon whom we can rely, that, if those two States should send delegations of true, unflinching men, there would probably be a majority in favor of the constitution as it is, who would frown down the rebellion by the enforcement of laws. These friends have urged us to recommend the appointment of delegates from our State, and in compliance with their request, Mr. Chandler and myself telegraphed to you last night. It cannot be doubted that the recommendations of this convention will have a very considerable influence upon the public mind and upon the action of Congress. I have a great disinclination to any interference with what should properly be submitted to the wisdom and discretion of the Legislature, in which I place great reliance. But I hope I shall be pardoned for suggesting that it may be justifiable and proper by any honorable means to avert the lasting disgrace which will attach to a free people who, by the peaceful exercise of the ballot, have just released themselves from the tyranny of slavery, if they should now succumb to treasonable threats, and again submit to a degrading thraldom. If it should be deemed proper to send delegates, I think if they could be here by the 20th it would be in time. I have the honor, with much respect, to be, Yours truly,
K. S. BINGHAM.
The Legislature of Michigan refused to follow even these recommendations (although an effort to make the two Senators themselves delegates received a strong support), and that State was not represented at any stage of the abortive Peace Congress. On the 27th of February Senator Powell of Kentucky presented to the Senate newspaper copies of these letters, and then moved to lay aside the army appropriation bill which was pending, in order that the Senate could proceed at once to amend the constitution. He added that it might "better be at that than be appropriating money to support an army that is to be engaged, it seems, in the work of blood-letting." Mr. Chandler followed by stating that the letter was a private one of which no copy had been preserved, but that whether the printed copy was accurate or not he adopted it as his, and would at another time speak on the questions it involved. He added: "The people of Michigan are opposed to all compromises. They do not believe that any compromise is necessary; nor do I. They are prepared to stand by the constitution of the United States as it is, to stand by the government as it is; aye, sir, to stand by it to blood if necessary." On the 2d of March Mr. Chandler made his promised speech in reply to Mr. Powell. He commenced: "I desire to ask the Senator whether, after we have adopted this or any other compromise, he is prepared to go with me, and with the Union-loving men of this nation, for enforcing the laws of the United States in the thirty-four States of this Union." Powell's response was: "I am for enforcing the laws in all the States that are within the Union, but I am opposed to making war on the States that are without the Union. I am opposed to coercing the seceded States.... We have no right, under the constitution, to make war on those States." Upon this frank admission from one of its most ardent advocates of the utter fruitlessness of compromise, this confession that it would be a sale without consideration, Mr. Chandler's comment was: "That is just what I expected; it is just what I want the North to know; that those men who profess to be for the Union with an 'if' are against it under all circumstances." He then quoted the letter of Thomas Jefferson written at Paris on Nov. 13, 1787, to Colonel Smith, and closing as follows:
And what country can preserve its liberties if the rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take up arms! The remedy is to set them right as to facts; pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
And with this authority of Thomas Jefferson on "a little blood-letting" as his text, Mr. Chandler spoke nearly an hour, denouncing the treason about him with unsparing vigor and branding the Democracy as responsible for the impending crime against the nation. In the face of such distempers he did not hesitate to pronounce war for the suppression of rebellion the only adequate remedy. The tone and style of this speech will appear from these extracts: