This is not a question of compromise. It is a question whether we have or have not a government. If we have a government it is capable of making itself respected abroad and at home. If we have not a government, let this miserable rope of sand which purports to be a government perish, and I will shed no tears over its destruction. Sir, General Washington reasoned not so when the whisky rebellion broke out in Pennsylvania; he called out the posse comitatus and enforced the laws. General Jackson reasoned not so when South Carolina in 1832 raised the black flag of rebellion; he said: "By the Eternal, I will hang them;" and he would have done it.
After these illustrious examples, we are told that six States have seceded, and the Union is broken up, and all we can do is to send commissioners to treat with traitors with arms in their hands; treat with men who have fired upon your flag; treat with men who have seized your custom-houses, who have erected batteries upon your great navigable waters, and who now stand defying your authority! What will be the result of such a treaty? You would stand disgraced before the nations of the earth, your naval officers would be insulted by the Algerines, your bonds would not be worth the paper on which they are written, to-morrow. If you submitted to this degradation your government would stand upon a par with the governments of South America and the Central American States.
Sir, I will never submit to this degradation. If the right is conceded to any State to secede from the Union, without the consent of the other States, I am for immediate dissolution; and if the State which I have the honor in part to represent will not follow that advice, I, for one, upon my own responsibility and alone, will resign my seat in this body, and leave this government, so soon as I can prepare the small matters I shall have to arrange, for emigration to some country where they have a government. I would rather join the Comanches; I will never live under a government that has not the power to enforce its laws.... I see before me some of those men who have been fighting this corrupt organization (the Democratic party) for the last twenty years, who now turn about in dismay at the threatened disruption of the government. Why are they terror-stricken? Why do they not stand firm and denounce you as infamously connected with a plundered treasury instead of cowering before your threats? This thing has gone far enough.... Sir, this Union is to stand; it will stand when your great-grandchildren and mine shall have grown gray—aye, when they shall have gone to their last account, and their great-grandchildren shall have grown gray. But the traitors who are to-day plotting against this Union are to die. I do not say, literally, that they are all to die personally and absolutely; but they are soon to pass from the stage, and better and purer men are to take their places. God grant that that consummation, "so devoutly to be wished," may be early accomplished!...
For the Union-loving men of this nation, for the true patriots of the land, there is no reasonable concession that I would not most cheerfully make; but for those men who profess to be Union men and who are Union men with an "if"; who will take all the concessions we will give them—all that they demand—and then turn about and say "your Union is dissolved," I have no respect; and for them I will do nothing. For the men who love this Union, who are prepared to march to the support of the Union, who will stand up in defense of the old flag under which their fathers fought and gloriously triumphed, I have not only the most profound respect, but to their demands I can scarce conceive anything that I would not yield. But, sir, when traitorous States come here and say, unless you yield this or that established principle or right, we will dissolve the Union, I would answer in brief words—no concession, no compromise; aye, give us strife even to blood before yielding to the demands of traitorous insolence.
This "blood letter" (as it was commonly termed) Mr. Chandler was often called upon to meet in the course of his subsequent public life, and he never failed to justify its writing or to stand by its language. In the extra session of the Senate in March, 1861, John C. Breckenridge alluded to "Senatorial threats of blood-letting," and Mr. Chandler retorted by re-reading Jefferson's letter and re-asserting the purpose to meet attempted treason with force. In the last session of the Thirty-seventh Congress (on Feb. 13, 1863) William A. Richardson of Illinois said in a debate upon a war loan measure:
The Senator from Michigan, at the outset of this controversy, declared in a letter to the Governor of the State of Michigan, that this government was not worth a rush without some blood-letting. Standing in array against all our history for seventy years, standing in array against the peace of the country for seventy years, the constitution itself in every proceeding from that time to this being but compromise, he declared at the outset against any compromise for the peace of the country, and he is responsible to a very large extent for the arbitrament of war that is now upon us. He is responsible for those consequences that are now flowing to us from the position assumed then strongly by him at the head of a dominant party in the country.
Mr. Chandler was prompt in meeting this attack, and said:
Mr. President: I do not propose to-day to go over my record. It has been made before the country and the world. There let it stand. So far as my loyalty and devotion to the country are concerned, I doubt if any man ever seriously attempted to cast suspicion on them. But, as I said before, my record is made. I stand upon it and am proud of it in all its entirety. The Senator alluded to the blood-letting letter, as it is called in Michigan. That letter has been discussed before the people of that State. Thousands and tens of thousands, and, for aught I know, hundreds of thousands of copies of it, were scattered broadcast throughout that State. What were the circumstances under which that letter was written? We had traitors in this body proclaiming from day to-day that this government was then destroyed, and there was no rebuke from the Senator of Illinois or his friends. There was no rebuke from the administration then in power, whom he aided in placing there. They proclaimed that the government was entirely destroyed; and that it should never be restored. Senators proclaimed on this floor that you might give them a blank sheet of paper and allow them to fill it as they pleased, and still they would not live with us under the same government.... Here in this hall and in the other chamber, and on the streets wherever you went, you heard traitors declare that the government was ended, declare that if you attempted to coerce the rebel States it would lead to war. I believed then, as I believe now, that they intended to break up this government; that they intended a disruption of the nation. And I believed then, as I believe now, that without the intervention of armed force to put down armed rebels and traitors, your government was destroyed. Believing it, I so wrote to the governor of a sovereign State—a confidential note, it is true, but that is of no account. I stand by that letter precisely as it was written. A majority of the people of this nation believe to-day, as I believed then, that there was and could be but one way to save the nation, and that was by putting down armed rebels by force. That is what I believed then, what I believe now.
Another thing the Senator says: Nobody is more responsible for this bloody and wicked war than myself. Mr. President, let us look a little into the matter of responsibility. There is a responsibility somewhere, and a fearful responsibility, for this rebellion and this dreadful war, but that responsibility is not upon my soul.... You may go through all the ranks of rebeldom, aye, sir, you may take all the officers of your regular army, who have deserted by hundreds and violated their oath, and gone into the ranks of the enemy, and are fighting to overturn the government; go and poll the whole of them, and you cannot find one that ever co-operated with me politically. They are all Democrats, every man. Yes, sir, and go among the officers of the navy who have deserted and gone over to the enemy, and are now fighting against their flag and attempting to overturn this government; poll them, and among all the hundreds of them you cannot find a single Republican—not one. No, sir, they are all Democrats, every man. You may go and poll the whole four or five hundred thousand men the rebels have now in arms against this government, and you cannot find a man who was ever a Republican or who even sympathized with the Republicans. They are all Democrats or "Union men" such as we had here two years ago, men who had professed to be for the Union when their hearts were with the enemies of the government. Sir, go among the Northern sympathizers with the rebellion, the men who are proclaiming to-day that this government is overturned, and that it will never be restored, who are to-day denouncing your currency and saying that your money is not worth the paper upon which it is written; search through all the sympathizers with this rebellion, and you cannot find a man who ever co-operated with me politically—not one. They are Democrats, but yet, forsooth, I am responsible for this war.... I have no responsibility for this rebellion, nor have the party with which I act. We have with perfect unanimity, in every instance, come up to the support of the government. When the government demanded 400,000 men, every single individual on this side of the house voted to give them 500,000 men. And when they demanded $400,000,000 to support the government, every man on this side of the house voted to give them $500,000,000 to save the nation. Sir, we have been ready under all circumstances to make any and every sacrifice so that this nation might be saved. Our armies are in large force and ably commanded; they are ready to advance and crush the hydra-headed monster of rebellion. Aye, sir, but we have an enemy insidious and dangerous. The seat of the rebellion is to-day not in Richmond, it is among the copper-headed traitors of the North, and if this government is overturned, if we should fail in saving the government, it will be, not from the force of rebels in our front, but because of the accursed traitors in our rear.
In the course of a debate in the Senate on Feb. 16, 1866, upon reconstruction topics, Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana said:
When the good and the patriotic, North and South, representing the yearning hearts of the people at home, came here in the winter and spring of 1861, in a peace congress, if possible to avoid this dreadful war, then the Senator from Michigan announced to his Governor and the country that this Union was scarcely worth preserving without some blood-letting. His cry before the war was for blood. Allow me to say that when the Senator's name is forgotten because of anything he says or does in this body, in future times it will be borne down upon the pages of history as the author of the terrible sentiment that the Union of the people that our fathers had cemented by the blood of the Revolution and by the love of the people; that that Union, resting upon compromise and concession, resting upon the doctrine of equality to all sections of the country; that that Union which brought us so much greatness and power in the three-quarters of a century of our life; that that Union which had brought us so much prosperity and greatness until we were the mightiest and proudest nation on God's footstool; that that grand Union was not worth preserving unless we had some blood-letting. Mr. President, it is not the sentiment of the Senator's own heart; it is the expression of a bitter political hostility; but it will carry him down to immortality; he is sure of living in history; he has gained that much by it.
To this Mr. Chandler's response was instant. He said:
The Senator from Indiana has arraigned me upon an old indictment for having written a certain letter in 1861. It is not the first time I have been arraigned on that indictment of "blood-letting." I was arraigned for it upon this floor by the traitor John C. Breckenridge, and I answered the traitor John C. Breckenridge, and after I gave him his answer he went out to the rebel ranks and fought against our flag. I was arraigned by another Senator from Kentucky, and by other traitors upon this floor; I expect to be arraigned again. I wrote the letter, and I stand by the letter and what is in it. What was the position of the country when the letter was written? The Democratic party as an organization had arrayed itself against this government—a Democratic traitor in the Presidential chair, and Democratic traitors in every department of this government, Democratic traitors preaching treason upon this floor and preaching treason in the hall of the other House, Democratic traitors in your army and in your navy, Democratic traitors controlling every branch of this government. Your flag was fired upon and there was no response. The Democratic party had ordained that this government should be overthrown, and I, a Senator from the State of Michigan, wrote to the Governor of that State "unless you are prepared to shed blood for the preservation of this great government the government is overthrown." That is all there was in that letter. That I said, and that I say again. And I tell that Senator, if he is prepared to go down in history with the Democratic traitors who then co-operated with him, I am prepared to go down on that "blood-letting" letter, and I stand by the record as made.
Because I wrote to the Governor of my State that unless he was prepared to shed blood for the preservation of this government it was overthrown, now I aim to be arraigned as going down to be remembered in history! Yes, sir, I shall be remembered, and I am proud of the record. May it stand, and stand as long as this government stands! When that Senator and the men who co-operated with him shall have gone down to eternal infamy my record will be brilliant.