Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-four was a year of unusual political disaster. The prevalent commercial depression both naturally and seriously injured the party in power, and this and other causes combined to produce a general relaxation of Republican vigor, which bore its inevitable fruit in a series of damaging reverses in the fall elections throughout the Union. The contest in Michigan was complicated by an organized movement on the part of the opponents of Prohibition to secure a repeal of that State's stringent law against the liquor traffic, and to more surely reach that end its License League formed an alliance with the Democracy, by which the latter was greatly aided. The result was that the Republican plurality upon the State ticket was reduced to 5,969 in a total vote of 221,006, that three of the nine Congressional districts were carried by the Opposition, and that a Legislature was chosen in which the Republican majority upon joint ballot was but ten. Upon this body, so closely divided, devolved the choice of an United States Senator. To a man of Mr. Chandler's positive qualities and aggressive methods an active public life was impossible without creating strong enmities, and the attention which, had he been more subtle, he would have given to conciliating hostility his direct nature preferred to devote to showing appreciation of friendship. The equality of parties in the Legislature, and the passing disposition among Republicans to look with disfavor upon what has been since termed "stalwart leadership," supplied the local opposition to Mr. Chandler with the looked-for opportunity for successfully resisting his re-election. Michigan Republicanism as a whole gave him its usual hearty support, and, so far as the contest was waged within the recognized lines of partisan warfare, his personal triumph was flattering and signal. In the regular caucus he received fifty-two votes against five ballots cast for three other candidates, and his nomination was made unanimous with but one dissenting voice. A small Republican minority refused to participate in the caucus, and after a prolonged and exciting struggle a combination was formed between six of these men and the solid Democratic and Liberal Opposition, which (on the second ballot in the legislative joint convention) gave precisely the necessary majority of all the votes cast to Isaac P. Christiancy, then one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of Michigan. Mr. Christiancy was an original Republican, but had in some instances in the past so far satisfied the Democrats by his public course that he had been once re-elected to the Supreme Bench without opposition, his name having been placed at the head of the Democratic State ticket after his nomination by his own party. This fact materially facilitated the coalition which secured Mr. Chandler's defeat. Like results in pending Senatorial contests in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Nebraska showed that more than merely local influences had contributed to bring about this event.
Mr. Chandler, with that strong faith in his own position which was so useful a characteristic of the man, did not believe that his defeat was possible until it was accomplished. His disappointment was keen, but he bore it manfully, and, assuring his friends that he should be "a candidate for that seat when Judge Christiancy's term ended," he started for Washington to close up his eighteen years of continuous Senatorial service. Many and sincere were the expressions of grief among earnest Republicans everywhere at what seemed to be the abrupt termination of the public career of so influential a man. Mr. Chandler himself was as strongly affected by his fear that Republicanism might have received a severe blow from the method by which his re-election had been prevented as by any sense of mere personal failure. In a letter written in the following March, in response to an invitation from the great majority of the Republican legislators of Michigan to address them on political topics, he said:
Thanking you cordially for your continued confidence, I assure you most sincerely that when I enlisted in the Republican ranks it was for the whole war, which, I trust, is to be continued until the complete and final triumph of Republican principles, the pacification of the whole people, and the establishment of equal and exact justice for all men in every section of our common country. It will be my pride to prove to my friends, and to my enemies, if there are such, that I can be useful as a private soldier. In all the future contests of the Republican party with its opponents you may order me into the ranks with full confidence that I will respond with all my time, if need be, and with such ability as I can command.... We shall not yield in the forum the great principles which have triumphed in the field, nor shall we further waste in internal strife the strength which should be organized against our opponents. I have faith in the future of our country, because of my confidence in the continued success of the Republican party.
Ultimately it became evident that his defeat in 1875 was not a personal calamity, he himself afterward saw that it had opened the way for him to broader fields of public usefulness, and that in what then seemed to be a fall he had in fact only "stumbled up stairs."
After the termination of Mr. Chandler's third Senatorial term (on March 3, 1875), his name was connected, both in current rumor and in the deliberations of influential men, with several prominent positions. It was at one time predicted that he would be nominated for the St. Petersburg embassy, and at another that he would succeed Mr. Bristow as Secretary of the Treasury. Ground was not lacking for both reports, but the appointment which was actually made involved a far more complete test of his faculty of administration than would have attended either of the others. The Interior Department is the most complex division of the executive branch of the government. A great diversity of interests are under its charge, and its duties are dissimilar, widely ramified, and encumbered with a perplexing multiplicity of details. During President Grant's second term this Department, notwithstanding the personal honesty of Secretary Columbus Delano, had fallen into bad repute. It sheltered abuses and frauds which tainted the atmosphere, but were not hunted down and removed by its chiefs. From the scandals which this state of affairs created, Mr. Delano finally sought escape by a resignation, which took effect on Oct. 1, 1875. General Grant, who was determined to appoint to the place a man whose integrity, sagacity and vigor should make it certain that he would not tolerate incompetence and rascality among his subordinates, tendered the position to Mr. Chandler. After some hesitation, and no little urging by his friends, that gentleman accepted, and on Oct. 19, 1875, his commission as Secretary of the Interior was executed and sent to him. (His nomination was, on the meeting of Congress in December, promptly confirmed by the Senate, all of the Republican and three of the Democratic Senators voting affirmatively, with only six Democrats recorded in the negative). Mr. Chandler entered at once upon the discharge of his new and difficult duties. No man could have had less of the professional "reformer" about him—in fact he was not chary of expressing the most contemptuous skepticism concerning much that paraded itself as "reform"—but the exemplification which he gave of practical reform was at once thorough and brilliant. Without ostentation, without the faintest savor of cant, he went at his work in unpretentious, business-like, manful, and clear-sighted fashion. A firm believer himself that "corruption wins not more than honesty," he gave durable lessons on that theme in every bureau of the Interior Department.
THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT.[36]
The first step of Mr. Chandler's administration was the infusion of new blood. He applied to James M. Edmunds for aid in the selection of a Chief Clerk, and was by him advised to tender that important position to Alonzo Bell, then holding a place in the Treasury. What followed illustrates some of Mr. Chandler's methods of transacting business: