THE GRAND PACIFIC HOTEL AT CHICAGO.
[Where Mr. Chandler died on the night of October 31, 1879.]
Repeatedly, during the arduous labors of the year, did Mr. Chandler's physical powers manifest signs of rebellion against excessive effort. In one of his Ohio speeches his voice suddenly failed, compelling him to cease speaking. He suffered several times from what seemed to be violent attacks of indigestion, and was on one or two occasions dangerously distressed by them. At Janesville he caught a severe cold, but when he reached Chicago, on the last day of his life, he seemed to be in his usual robust health, and showed but slight signs of fatigue. Those who called upon him on that day at the Grand Pacific Hotel noted his fine spirits. His address in that city was delivered before the Young Men's Auxiliary Republican Club in McCormick Hall, and he never spoke with more animation, nor more effectively. The audience applauded almost every sentence, and under that stimulus he rose to even more than his usual fervor of speech. His ringing sentence, "The mission of the Republican party will not end until you and I, Mr. Chairman, can start from the Canada border, travel to the Gulf of Mexico, make Black Republican speeches wherever we please, vote the Black Republican ticket wherever we gain a residence, and do it with exactly the same safety that a rebel can travel throughout the North, stop wherever he has a mind to, and run for judge in any city he chooses," was followed by cheer after cheer, until the entire audience was standing and shouting. After closing his speech, Mr. Chandler returned to the Grand Pacific Hotel; a few friends chatted with him in his rooms for a short time, and at about midnight Representative Edwin Willits of Michigan, who had been one of his hearers, made a short call, and congratulated him upon the power of his closing appeal. After that, no man saw Mr. Chandler alive. At seven o'clock on the following morning, in accordance with orders, one of the employes of the hotel knocked at his door. There was no answer, and a look over the transom showed a figure lying in an unnatural attitude on the edge of the bed with the feet almost touching the floor. In alarm the room was entered with a pass-key, and Mr. Chandler was found in a half reclining posture, with his coat about his shoulders, unconsciousness having apparently seized him while he was attempting to rise and summon help. Medical aid was promptly at hand, but life was extinct. "A Power had passed from earth." Zachariah Chandler was dead!
BUST PROFILE OF ZACHARIAH CHANDLER.
[A sketch from Leonard W. Volk's plaster cast.]