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

by Unknown

You have heard the story of the Russians, chased by a hungry pack of wolves, driving at the height of speed over the crisp snow, finding the beasts of prey gaining fast upon them, and throwing out one living child after another to appease the maw of wolfish hunger, while the rest of the family hurried on toward safety.

There are sagacious statesmen that have declared, for a quarter of a century, that State Rights represents the pack of wolves and the Sovereignty of the Union the imperilled household. For scores of years, the encroachments of the South became more and more imperious and alarming.

Concession after concession was made, offering after offering flung to the sacrifice, but only to be followed by a hungrier clamor and demand for more; and, at last, even men of peace said, "We must stop right here and fight these wolves;" and, when it becomes a question of life and death, men become desperate.

I have never supposed myself to be a strong partisan. As a man, a citizen, and a Christian, I have sought to find the true political faith, and, finding it, to hold it, firmly and fearlessly. The question of the unity of our nation and the sovereignty of the national government has ever seemed to me to be of supreme moment, transcending all mere political or party issues; and, as a patriot, I cannot be indifferent to it.

When the long struggle between State Rights and National Sovereignty grew hot and broke out into civil war, it was a matter of tremendous consequence that the Union be preserved. History stood pointing, with solemn finger, to the fate of the republics of Greece and Switzerland, reminding us that confederation alone will not suffice to keep a nation alive. Mexico, at our borders, was a warning against dismemberment or the loss of the supremacy of a republican unity. And men of all parties forgot party issues in patriotic devotion. It may be a question whether State Sovereignty, however fatal to national life, deserved the hideous name of treason, before the war. But, after the matter had been referred to the arbitrament of the sword, and had been settled at such cost of blood and treasure, it can never henceforth be anything but treason, again to raise that issue. Hence, even men that were temperate in their opposition to Southern aggressions before the war, now are impatient. They set their teeth with the resolution of despair, and say, "We make no further effort to escape this issue, and we throw out no more offerings of concession. We shall fight these wolves; and either State Rights or National Sovereignty shall die."

This was Mr. Chandler's position; if it was a mistaken one, it is the unspoken verdict of millions of the best men of all parties in the whole country; and every new concession to this great national heresy is only making new converts to the necessity of a firm and fearless resistance.

Some one has suggested that the old division of the church into militant and triumphant is no longer sufficient; we must add another, namely, the church termagant. In our country both sections were militant, and one was triumphant; the other has been very termagant ever since. General Grant, at his reception in Chicago, declared that the war for the Union had put the republic on a new footing abroad. A quarter of a century ago, by political leaders across the sea, "it was believed we had no nation. It was merely a confederation of States, tied together by a rope of sand, and would give way upon the slightest friction. They have found it was a grand mistake. They know we have now a nation, that we are a nation of strong and intelligent and brave people, capable of judging and knowing our rights, and determined on all occasions to maintain them against either domestic or foreign foes; and that is the reception you, as a nation, have received through me while I was abroad."

On the same day we have a significant voice from the South, General Toombs, in response to a suggestion that Governors of various States and prominent Southern men should unite in congratulations to the ex-President on his return, telegraphs in these words: "I decline to answer except to say, I present my personal congratulations to General Grant on his safe return to his country. He fought for his country honorably and won. I fought for mine and lost. I am ready to try it over! Death to the Union!"

Here we have simply two representative utterances; one is the voice of a solid North; the other is, we fear, the voice of a South that is much more "solid" than we could wish. It is no marvel if, after a war of so many years, that cost so many lives and so much money, and left us to drag through ten years of a financial slough, loyal men are impatient and even angry, when they discover that the question is still an unsettled one, and that we have not even conquered a peace! Even the interpretation now attached to this seditious utterance by General Toombs himself, that "the result of war was death to the Union, and that the present government is a consolidated one, not a confederacy," does not essentially relieve the matter.

Mr. Chandler could not brook what he regarded as sentiments rendered doubly treasonable by the fact that a long, bitter but successful war had burned upon them with a hot iron the brand of treason. He fought those sentiments, and it was as under a black flag that announced "no quarter." But this does not prove malicious or vindictive feeling toward misguided men who hold such views. There is a difference between fighting a principle and fighting a person. In fact the only way to prevent fighting men is often a vigorous and timely opposition to their measures. And if we wish to avoid another war, and that a war of extermination, the ballot must obviate the necessity for the bullet: we must stand together, and by our voice and vote, by tongue and pen, by our laws and our acts, in the use of every keen weapon, exterminate the heresy of State Rights. We need not do this in hate toward the South: a true love even for the South demands it, for to them as to us it is a deadly foe to all true prosperity and national existence. How can a man who candidly looks upon the present attitude of the South as both suicidal and nationally destructive be calm and cool? The philippics of Demosthenes were bitter, but they were the mighty beatings of a heart that pulsed with the patriotism that could not see liberty throttled without sounding a loud and indignant alarm. The North owes a big debt to every man who at this crisis will not suffer an imperilled republic to sleep.