On Feb. 22, 1879, Mr. Chandler's credentials were presented and read in the Senate, and he was escorted by Senator Ferry to the Vice-President's desk, where the official oath was administered to him by William A. Wheeler. He took the seat upon the outer row of the Republican side, which he had occupied in other Congresses. The circumstances of his return to public life attracted national attention, and his re-appearance in the Senate was everywhere accepted as significant of the growth of Republican courage and resolution. But what followed outstripped all expectation and was dramatic in its accessories. Upon February 28, he first addressed the Forty-fifth Senate, speaking briefly upon a bill providing for pension arrears, and in advocacy of an amendment to make more efficient the methods of detecting pension frauds by taking expert examiners from one part of the country and sending them to another. In this connection he referred to his own experience as Secretary of the Interior, saying that he had declared that with $100,000 to so use he could save $1,000,000 to the Treasury yearly. Upon the same day, he also spoke briefly upon the Sundry Civil Appropriation bill, opposing a proposition in it to re-open a settled claim of the war of 1812, based on expenditures made by some of the older States for military purposes. He spoke from recollection of a discussion in 1857, when this matter came up, and showed that the principal of the claims had been already paid, and that this was an attempt to collect compound interest. This measure, which Mr. Chandler repeatedly opposed during his Senatorial career, was again defeated at this time. On March 1, a proposition to pay Georgia over $72,000 compound interest upon advances alleged to have been made in 1835-'38 in the Creek, Seminole and Cherokee wars was strenuously and successfully opposed by him. On the 28th of February, a bill had been passed by the Senate making appropriations for the arrearages of pensions. To this an amendment was offered and adopted extending to those who served in the war with Mexico the provisions of the law passed in 1878, giving pensions to the surviving soldiers of 1812. This amendment was adopted without full consideration, and on the evening of Sunday, March 2, a motion was made and carried for a reconsideration. Then an amendment was offered excluding persons who served in the Confederate army or held any office under the "Confederacy" from the benefits of this bill. This amendment was defeated by the votes of the Democrats and two Southern Republicans. Another amendment was offered by Senator Hoar excluding Jefferson Davis from the benefits of any pension bill. An astonishing debate followed. For some hours the Senate Chamber rang with fervent eulogies upon the arch-rebel of the South. Senator Garland declared that Davis's record would "equal in history all Grecian fame and all Roman glory." Senator Maxey pronounced him "a battle-scarred, knightly gentleman." Senator Lamar characterized the proposition as a "wanton insult," springing from "hate, bitter, malignant sectional feeling, and a sense of personal impunity;" he added, "The only difference between myself and Jefferson Davis is that his exalted character, his pre-eminent talents, his well-established reputation as a statesman, as a patriot, and as a soldier enabled him to take the lead in a cause to which I consecrated myself;" he further declared that Davis's motives were as "sacred and noble as ever inspired the breast of a Hampden or a Washington." Senator Harris pronounced him "the peer of any Senator on this floor." "I will not," said Senator Coke, "vote to discriminate against Mr. Davis, for I was just as much a rebel as he." Senator Ransom said, "I shall not dwell upon Mr. Davis's public services as an American soldier and statesman. He belongs to history, as does that cause to which he gave all the ability of his great nature." There was no lack of Republican protest against this apotheosis of unrepentant treason, but it was not wholly free from a certain deprecatory tone. The Senators who spoke in support of Mr. Hoar's proposition rather remonstrated against than denounced the assumption that it was their duty to quietly assent to legislation which would place the unamnestied and still defiant representative of the Great Rebellion on the pension-rolls of the nation. After the debate had lasted for over two hours, Mr. W. E. Chandler of New Hampshire, who was watching its progress from the reporters' gallery, said to Senator E. H. Rollins of his State, "Tell Zach. Chandler that he is the man to call Jeff. Davis a traitor." Mr. Rollins delivered the message, which was received with a nod of acquiescence in the direction of the gallery. Senator Morgan of Alabama was speaking at the time, with Senator Mitchell of Oregon in the chair. As Mr. Morgan closed, Senator Chandler rose and said:
Mr. President, twenty-two years ago to-morrow, in the old Hall of the Senate, now occupied by the Supreme Court of the United States, I, in company with Mr. Jefferson Davis, stood up and swore before Almighty God that I would support the Constitution of the United States. Mr. Jefferson Davis came from the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce into the Senate of the United States and took the oath with me to be faithful to this government. During four years I sat in this body with Mr. Jefferson Davis and saw the preparations going on from day to-day for the overthrow of this government. With treason in his heart and perjury upon his lips he took the oath to sustain the government that he meant to overthrow.
Sir, there was method in that madness. He, in co-operation with other men from his section and in the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan, made careful preparation for the event that was to follow. Your armies were scattered all over this broad land where they could not be used in an emergency; your fleets were scattered wherever the winds blew and water was found to float them, where they could not be used to put down rebellion; your Treasury was depleted until your bonds bearing six per cent., principal and interest payable in coin, were sold for 88 cents on the dollar for current expenses, and no buyers. Preparations were carefully made. Your arms were sold under an apparently innocent clause in an army bill providing that the Secretary of War might, at his discretion, sell such arms as he deemed it for the interest of the government to sell.
Sir, eighteen years ago last month I sat in these halls and listened to Jefferson Davis delivering his farewell address, informing us what our constitutional duties to this government were, and then he left and entered into the rebellion to overthrow the government that he had sworn to support! I remained here, sir, during the whole of that terrible rebellion. I saw our brave soldiers by thousands and hundreds of thousands, aye, I might say millions, pass through to the theater of war, and I saw their shattered ranks return; I saw steamboat after steamboat and railroad train after railroad train arrive with the maimed and the wounded; I was with my friend from Rhode Island (Mr. Burnside) when he commanded the Army of the Potomac, and saw piles of legs and arms that made humanity shudder; I saw the widow and the orphan in their homes, and heard the weeping and wailing of those who had lost their dearest and their best. Mr. President, I little thought at that time that I should live to hear in the Senate of the United States eulogies upon Jefferson Davis, living—a living rebel eulogized on the floor of the Senate of the United States! Sir, I am amazed to hear it; and I can tell the gentlemen on the other side that they little know the spirit of the North when they come here at this day, and, with bravado on their lips, utter eulogies upon a man whom every man, woman, and child in the North believes to have been a double-dyed traitor to his government.
SENATOR CHANDLER DENOUNCING THE EULOGIES UPON "JEFF." DAVIS.
[In the Senate Chamber, at 3 A. M., Monday, March 3, 1879.]
This speech was made at about the hour of half-past three in the morning of Monday, March 3, 1879. But few people were in the galleries at that time, and the Senate had lapsed into a listless state. Mr. Chandler's bearing as he arose to speak, and the first sentence that resounded through the Senate Chamber in his strong voice, aroused instant attention. The spectators above listened with new and eager interest, Senators came in from the lobbies and cloakrooms, sleep was shaken off by drowsy attaches, and his closing words "a double-dyed traitor to his government" fell in ringing tones upon an intent audience and were answered by an applause from the galleries which the gavel of the presiding officer could not check. His excited hearers listened eagerly for a reply, but none came. After some silent waiting the presiding officer stated the pending question, and was about to put it to vote. Senator Thurman then rose and began the discussion of another branch of the subject, and no answer was attempted to Mr. Chandler's just denunciation of the eulogizing of the man, whose past history and present attitude unite to make him at once the representative of treason's crimes and the embodiment of its unrepentant spirit. When the vote was taken, one majority was given for Mr. Hoar's amendment, and after that result the original amendment itself was defeated.
This speech was a masterpiece in its way—in its brevity, in its skillful use of the speaker's early official association with Jefferson Davis, in its vivid epitome of the history of American treason, and in the rugged power of its simple language. It most profoundly stirred the people. It may be said without exaggeration that years had passed since any Congressional utterance had received such public attention. Democratic and Southern denunciation of Mr. Chandler followed abundantly, but this was wholly overshadowed by the enthusiasm of the response of the patriotic sentiment of the Union to his indignant refusal to let treason raise its head in insolence without branding it as it deserved. The Northern press reprinted the speech with unstinted praise. Public men hastened in person, by telegraph, and through the mails to tender their congratulations. Letters of fervent thanks poured in by the hundreds; from utter strangers, from the rich and the humble, from veteran soldiers, from mothers whose sons were buried on Southern battle-fields, from the colored men, from the Republicans of the South, from every State and Territory came the expressions of gratitude for the utterance given at so opportune a moment and with such force to the loyal feeling of the republic. It was this spontaneous approval of the masses of the people that Mr. Chandler especially prized.
On March 18, 1879, the extra session of the Forty-sixth Congress commenced, and the Democrats made their abortive attempt to force the repeal of the laws relating to the supervision of national elections by withholding appropriations. Their reactionary programme (the striking of the last vestige of the war measures from the statute books was even threatened) and revolutionary menaces aroused the North, and in the end they quailed before the rising popular wrath. Mr. Chandler denounced their schemes vigorously on the floor of the Senate, even charging explicitly that twelve of the Southern Senators "held their seats by fraud and violence." He also earnestly opposed all propositions to compel the unlimited coinage of the silver dollar of 412½ grains, a measure which would have given to the country a superabundance of silver currency of depreciated value to the exclusion of gold. His last Congressional speech was this carefully prepared and forcible "arraignment of the Democratic party," of which tens of thousands of copies were circulated throughout the Union in the following campaign: