Zachariah Chandler: An Outline Sketch of His Life and Public Services

by Unknown

The moment this government begins to allow claims for damages accruing to individuals during the war in the South, it is placed in a position of great peril. Every rebel in the South who lost a haystack or barn by fire during the war will prove his loyalty and secure damages. It requires the greatest vigilance to prevent some of these claims from being allowed, as they are continually being pressed upon Congress, and probably will be for many years. The laws of war do not require nor justify the allowance of this class of claims even to loyal men. If they are loyal, then they have served the government, and that is compensation enough. If they are disloyal, they have no claim.

These quotations indicate his original position on this issue, taken in the days when it had received but the slightest public attention. They are exactly in the line of the vigorous utterances upon the same topic which formed one of the important features of his public addresses in 1879, when the subject had aroused marked popular interest, and other leaders had stepped up to the platform he had so long occupied.

But Mr. Chandler did more than strenuously oppose the payment of the "war claims" of Southern disloyalists; his farsightedness placed in their path a serious practical obstacle. In 1873, a Colonel Pickett, who had been confidentially connected with the War Department of the "Confederacy," came to Washington and offered to sell to the authorities a vast quantity of the archives of the rebel government, which he had secreted before the capture of Richmond. Congress was not in session, and the Secretary of War, having no authority in law, refused to buy the documents. Mr. Chandler was in that city at the time, and Pickett was referred to him as a man of means and as one who would be apt to appreciate the importance of such a purchase. After one or two calls, Mr. Chandler determined that the matter deserved investigation at least. He asked for a schedule of the documents and for a statement of their prices. Pickett promptly furnished the former and offered to sell them for $250,000. Mr. Chandler, after a careful examination of the schedule, replied with a proposition that, if the papers corresponded with the list furnished, he would pay $75,000 for them. This offer was at last accepted, and Mr. Chandler deposited that sum in a Washington bank, subject to Pickett's order after a thorough examination of the documents had been made. Confidential clerks were at once set at work upon them, and it was found that they even surpassed their owner's representations as to value. The purchase was therefore completed, and the documents became the private property of Mr. Chandler, who had them locked up in a vault. When Congress met, a bill was passed authorizing the Secretary of War in general terms to purchase the archives of the Confederate government if it was ever possible, and appropriating $75,000 for this purpose. As soon as the bill became a law Mr. Chandler transferred the documents to the Secretary of War, and they are now in the possession of that department and constitute one of the most valuable and useful features of its record of the rebellion. The amount that has been saved to the government by this purchase, in furnishing evidence to defeat rebel claims, already exceeds many-fold the original price. Case after case in the Quartermaster-General's office, before the Southern Claims Commission, and before the Court of Claims has been defeated by evidence found among these papers.[35] One single conspicuous instance in which they saved to the Treasury more than four times their entire cost attracted much deserved attention at the time. On Nov. 16, 1877, an effort was made by leading Southern Democrats in the House of Representatives to pass under a suspension of the rules, and without debate, a joint resolution, ordering the immediate payment of several hundred thousand dollars to mail contractors in the rebel States who forfeited their contracts at the commencement of the rebellion. An objection from the Hon. Omar D. Conger prevented action on that day, but the resolution came up again on Feb. 15, 1878. Representative John H. Reagan of Texas, who had been the Postmaster-General of the rebel Cabinet, then took charge of the measure, and assured the House that the resolution was a purely formal matter, that it only provided for the payment of liabilities incurred before the war commenced, and that the rebel government had never paid these men for the same services. The Hon. Edwin Willits of Michigan, by a timely examination of the phraseology of the resolution, discovered that it provided for the payment of these contractors, not down to the actual beginning of the rebellion, but until May 31st, 1861, many weeks after the rebel government had been formed and after the firing upon Fort Sumter. Calling attention to this fact, he obtained the further postponement of the consideration of the resolution. When it came up again (on March 8, 1878) Mr. Willits came to the House armed with a volume of the rebel statutes and with important extracts from documents contained in the rebel archives. With this evidence he demonstrated in ten minutes' time, beyond question, that the rebel government had assumed the payment of this class of claims, that it confiscated United States money and applied it to that purpose, that the men so paid agreed to refund to the rebel treasury any money subsequently given them on this account by the United States, and that the joint resolution was but an attempt to pay a second time contracts already paid and also properly declared forfeited through treason. The scene attendant upon this expose was a dramatic one, and it resulted in the virtual abandonment then of the measure by those who were responsible for it. This result would not have been possible, had not the rebel archives thus opportunely yielded up their secrets. Their possession by the government is undoubtedly worth millions to the Treasury.

In 1871, the second term of Jacob M. Howard, as Senator from Michigan, expired, and Thomas W. Ferry, then a member of the House of Representatives, was chosen as his successor. With his new colleague Mr. Chandler's relations were always close and cordial, and upon the questions of reconstruction, equal rights, and the national supremacy their accord was complete. Mr. Ferry rapidly attained distinction in the upper branch of Congress, and was for several successive years the President pro tempore of the Senate. The death of Vice-President Wilson in 1875 made him Acting Vice-President of the United States, and he held that responsible position throughout the trying weeks of the electoral dispute of 1876-'7, when his good sense, the perfect discretion of his course, and the dignity and impartiality with which he discharged duties of the gravest character amid vast and dangerous excitement, both deserved and received universal praise. Mr. Ferry was re-elected during this critical period, and, as Mr. Chandler's term as Secretary of the Interior was then about to close, it was suggested in some quarters that Michigan should send him back to the Senate in Mr. Ferry's stead. The quality of Mr. Chandler's fidelity as a friend and of his estimate of Mr. Ferry's public usefulness were shown in the fact that, anxious as he avowedly was to become again a Senator, these suggestions obtained from him only peremptory negatives, and his advice and influence contributed to Mr. Ferry's unopposed re-election. Mr. Howard died suddenly at Detroit from apoplexy shortly after the close of his Senatorial service. As further illustrating the nature of the friendship existing between him and his colleague from Michigan, and the estimation in which he was held by the eminent men with whom he came in contact, this private letter from Mr. Chandler to President Grant, with an endorsement made thereon by the latter, is here given:

Washington, Sept. 21, 1870.

My Dear Sir: Secretary Cox has done my colleague an unintentional but a serious injury.

In 1869 the whole Michigan delegation united in recommending the Rev. W. H. Brockway, one of the most popular Methodist clergymen in the State, for Indian Agent.

He was nominated and confirmed, but acquiesced in the transfer of Indian affairs to the military. Since the adjournment of Congress, my colleague made a personal request to the Secretary of the Interior, that the Rev. Mr. Brockway be commissioned as Indian Agent for Michigan. Instead of sending the commission, he has sent a man from New Jersey to attend to our Indian affairs. This has given offense to the most numerous and powerful religious denomination in the State and seriously injured my colleague. I ask for my colleague that the New Jersey commission may be immediately revoked, and Mr. Brockway may be at once commissioned....

It is really important that this be done at once. Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

Z. CHANDLER.

To President U. S. Grant.

AUTOGRAPHIC ENDORSEMENT BY PRESIDENT GRANT.

Referred to the Secretary of the Interior.

I think Mr. Brockway might with great propriety be assigned to the Indian agency in his own State, to which he has once been appointed and confirmed.

He is a minister, and therefore the new rule adopted will not be violated by his appointment.

I want, besides, to accommodate Senator Howard, whom I regard as an able supporter of the Republican party and of the Administration.

Sept. 22, 1870.

U. S. GRANT.

Mr. Chandler was a member of one or two of the special Congressional committees appointed to investigate those atrocious political murders which made infamous the return of the disloyal classes to power in the South. This general subject received no small share of his attention; the facts which investigation disclosed deepened his conviction of the essential barbarity of much that passes for civilization in that section, and added to the inflexibility of his opposition to a political system, which was responsible for the atrocious crimes of the Ku-Klux-Klan, "the Mississippi plan," the White League, and the "rifle clubs," and for the horrible massacres of Colfax and Coushatta, of Hamburg and Ellenton.

Two of his speeches in the Senate in 1871 and 1872 attracted general attention and were widely republished. One of them was delivered on January 18, 1871, in reply to Mr. Casserly of California, who had challenged a comparison between the records of the Republican and Democratic parties. In the course of twenty minutes Mr. Chandler rapidly sketched the services of the Republican party in defeating the Democratic plot to surrender the territories to slavery, in crushing a Democratic rebellion, in emancipating four million slaves, in building a trans-continental railway to the Pacific coast, in inviting the settlement of the Great West by a homestead law, in establishing the national banking system, in maintaining the public credit against Democratic attack, and in reconstructing the South on the basis of freedom and loyalty. He closed as follows:

These measures were carried, not with the Democratic party, but in spite of the Democratic party. Sir, we are not to be arraigned here and put on the defensive, certainly not by that old Democratic party.

And now, Mr. President, they ask us to do what? To forgive the past and let by-gones be by-gones. You hear on the right hand and on the left, from every quarter, "Let by-gones be by-gones; let us forget the past and rub it out." Sir, we have no disposition to forget the past. We have a record of which we are proud. We have a record that has gone into history. There we propose to let it stand. We never propose to blot out that record. There are no thousand years in the world's history in which so much has been accomplished for human liberty and human progress as has been accomplished by this great Republican party in the short space of ten years. Blot out that record? Never, sir, never! It is a record that will go down in history through all times as the proudest ever made by any political party that ever existed on earth. But, sir, do gentlemen of the Democratic party want to blot out their record? I do not blame them for wanting to, for that record is a record of treason. It, too, has gone into history, and there it must stand through all ages. Sir, the young men of this country are looking at these two records, and they are making up their minds as to which they desire their names to go down to history upon; and I am happy to say that of the young men now coming upon the stage of action, nine out of every ten are joining this great Republican party. They desire that their record shall be associated with those who saved this great nation, and not with those who attempted its overthrow. The day is far distant when that old Democratic party that attempted to overthrow this government will again be entrusted with power by the people of this nation.... Mr. President, if this record of the two parties does not please my Democratic friends, I have only to say to them that they made it deliberately and they have got to stand by it.

On June 6, 1872, Mr. Chandler replied in the Senate to that part of Mr. Sumner's elaborate attack upon General Grant in which he declared that Edwin M. Stanton had said, in his last days, "General Grant cannot govern this country." The excessive egotism, which marred Mr. Sumner's character and which inspired that unfortunate speech, was always a cause of impatience with Mr. Chandler, and this display of it aroused his anger. In his reply, he challenged squarely the credibility of Mr. Sumner's statement. He first read from Mr. Stanton's reported speeches, to show that their enthusiastic and repeated commendation of General Grant by name proved that Mr. Sumner's assertion that Mr. Stanton had also said, "In my speeches I never introduced the name of General Grant; I spoke for the Republican cause and the Republican party," was exactly contrary to the fact. He then proceeded:

Mr. President, I had occasion with Mr. Wade, formerly Senator from Ohio, as member of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, to see Mr. Stanton, I think once a day on an average, during the whole war, and I was in the habit of visiting him up to the time of his death, and never, under any circumstances, did he express in my presence any but the highest opinion of General Grant, both as to his military capacity and as to his civil capacity.

Mr. President, on the Friday before the death of E. M. Stanton, I had occasion to visit him in company with two friends, members of the other House, one Hon. Judge Beaman, then a member for Michigan, the other Judge Conger, now a member from Michigan. We had that day a long interview of not less than an hour and a half, wherein Mr. Stanton expressed the highest opinion of President Grant, both as to his military and civil capacity. I awaited an interview with these parties before making this statement, and their recollection is the same as my own. I have likewise held two or three interviews with Senator Wade since then, and his recollection of the expressions of the late E. M. Stanton is equally strong as my own to-day. Mr. Stanton said, in the presence of two witnesses, "The country knows General Grant to be a great warrior; I know he will prove a great civilian." ...

Mr. President, the relations between the President of the United States and the late Secretary Stanton were of remarkable kindliness. Never did I hear either express any but the highest esteem and regard for the other.... I think the last interview he ever had was the interview with me in the presence of these two living witnesses.... Surgeon-General Barnes was his attending physician at the hour of his death. According to his testimony, from the hour I last saw him up to the time of his death, there was no change, so far as can be known.

In another part of this speech the President is arraigned as a great gift-taker. Sir, General Grant was a great taker. Few men have ever been as eminent as takers. He took Fort Donelson with some twenty or thirty thousand soldiers; and he took Shiloh, and took Vicksburg, and took the Wilderness, and took Murfreesboro' and Appomattox and all the rebel material of war. He, with his army, took the shackles from 4,000,000 slaves. And, sir, after he had taken the vitals out of the rebellion, he was urged by his friends to accept a small donation to take himself out of the hands of poverty, a thing that has been done by all nations and by all grateful peoples in all ages of the world. Sir, he is to be arraigned as a great gift-taker because he accepted the voluntary contributions of a grateful people!

Why, sir, there were few men of capacity, few men of fitness to occupy positions under this government who did not subscribe, gratefully, anxiously subscribe, to that fund to relieve U. S. Grant from his poverty. And yet, he is to be arraigned here as a gift-taker, as though that was a crime!

Mr. President, there are two classes of people in this world, and we see specimens of them both. We have great o-ra-tors and great men of business. On this floor our o-ra-tors have occupied the time of this session to the exclusion of business, and while these o-ra-tors have been wasting the time of this body to the detriment of the business of the nation, willing to indulge in windy orations at the expense of the government, U. S. Grant, President of the United States, has been managing the affairs of this nation better than they were ever managed before. While your o-ra-tors were here delivering windy words, he was paying the national debt faster than these o-ra-tors could count it. While they were o-ra-ting, he was negotiating treaties and attending to the civil service of the nation. While they were o-ra-ting on this floor during the war, he was winning victories in the bloodiest part of the fight. And now, while they are o-ra-ting on this floor, he is endearing himself to the hearts of the whole people of this land as no other man ever did. Stanton was prophetic; he is not only great in war, but he is greater as a civilian.