THE OUTBREAK OF THE REBELLION--NO COMPROMISE OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.
The news of the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the
United States--through strictly constitutional methods, by a large
majority of the electoral vote and by a plurality of over half a
million in the popular vote--was received with cheering and expressions
of joy in many of the Southern cities. The men who exulted there were
those who believed that with this pretext sectional passion could
be kindled into instant rebellion, and they at once set about the
work of consummating disunion before the close of the term of the
traitorous and imbecile administration of James Buchanan. On Nov. 12,
1860, South Carolina ordered the election of a convention to take
the formal step of secession, and the other cotton States promptly
followed its example. Congress met on the 3d of December, and listened
to a message from President Buchanan, in which he said: "After much
serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no power to
coerce into submission a State which is attempting to withdraw, or
has actually withdrawn, from the confederacy, has been delegated to
Congress or to any other department of the Federal government. It is
manifest upon an inspection of the constitution that this is not among
the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress; and it is
equally apparent that its exercise is not 'necessary and proper for
carrying into execution' any one of these powers." On December 20 South
Carolina adopted its ordinance of secession. Mississippi did likewise
on Jan. 9, 1861, Florida on January 10, Alabama on January 11, Georgia
on January 18, Louisiana on January 26, and Texas on February 1. On
Feb. 4, 1861, a convention of delegates from the seceding States met in
the city of Montgomery and proceeded to form and organize the "Southern
Confederacy." These events were attended by popular demonstrations
throughout the South, in which the Union was denounced with unstinted
bitterness and its power defied with the utmost audacity, and by the
active drilling of the local militia and the organization of large
bodies of armed men. More than all this, the officers of the United
States in that section abandoned their positions, and sub-treasuries,
post-offices, large sums of money, arsenals, arms, ammunition,
fortifications, and vessels of the United States were seized in all the
leading cities of the South, and used to prepare for war upon the power
from which they had been stolen. The value of the government property
thus confiscated by the rebels before the nation fired a shot was not
less than $30,000,000. On Jan. 5, 1861, the United States steamer Star
of the West was fired upon in the harbor of Charleston and driven
out to sea, and within that month a bloodless siege of Fort McRae at
Pensacola compelled its surrender to rebel forces by a United States
garrison. Amid these events the traitors in Buchanan's Cabinet boldly
resigned their portfolios, and Southern Congressmen with insolent words
left their seats at the capitol "to join their States." The President
himself was fitly described by Henry Winter Davis as "standing
paralyzed and stupefied amid the crash of the falling republic, still
muttering, 'Not in my time; not in my time; after me the deluge.'"
There were three ways of meeting these overt acts of high treason,
namely: (1.) Submitting, either by sympathy and connivance, by frank
surrender, or by an equally effective supineness. (2.) Meekly offering
to rampant rebellion the bribe of fresh concessions to slavery. (3.)
Treating armed secession as treason and its promoters as traitors,
and dealing with it and them as such. The first method did not lack
for supporters outside of the South. Thousands of Northern Democrats
justified secession and promised the cotton States support. Their
papers predicted that in case of war "it would be fought in the
North,"[A] that "no Democrat would be found to raise an arm against his
brethren of the South,"[16] and that "if troops should be raised in
the North to march against the people of the South, a fire in the rear
would be opened upon such troops which would either stop their march
altogether or wonderfully accelerate it."[17] The Mayor of the great
city of New York suggested in his annual message that that metropolis
might well consider if the time did not seem to be at hand when it
could profitably throw off allegiance to the United States and erect
itself into "a free city." In public meetings and in party conventions
like utterances were heard and applauded, all justifying the
declaration of Lawrence M. Keitt in the city of Charleston that "there
are a million of Democrats in the North who, when the Black Republicans
attempt to march upon the South, will be found a wall of fire in their
front." These sympathizers with rebellion were reinforced by the
holders of anti-coercion theories, by commercial timidity, and--most
unexpectedly--by some Republican sentiment in favor of permitting
peaceful separation rather than facing civil war. This sentiment was
fortunately short-lived and not cowardly in its origin, but it found an
advocate in, and was given public expression by, the most influential
Republican journalist of that period, Horace Greeley, and it did much
to encourage rebel arrogance and to distract the national councils.
But that was the most numerous class which comprised the men who
proposed to meet actual civil war with servile tenders to traitors in
arms of new guarantees for slavery and with humble petitions for their
acceptance. With the meeting of Congress in December, 1860, these
gentlemen became the conspicuous figures at Washington, and for three
months labored industriously upon compromise schemes, every one of
which was, in its essence, a proposition that Freedom should do homage
to Slavery, and that the verdict of the people at the polls should
be shamefully reversed to placate men who had deliberately plotted
treason, and who again and again rejected with frank contempt offers
of "conciliation." There were some who co-operated in these movements
for the sake of gaining time and keeping the border States out of
rebellion until Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, but the great source
of the compromise clamor of that winter was either some feeling of
friendliness to the slave power or moral flaccidity.
It need not be said that Mr. Chandler was not found in either of these
classes. For three years he had regarded this crisis as imminent. He
did not believe that the South would now abandon its cherished dream
of independent empire for any compromise. He did not propose to shrink
back one inch before armed rebellion or to surrender one iota of
principle to traitorous threats. He went to Washington determined to
maintain the supremacy of the government at every cost, to listen to no
plans of concession, to offer to disunionists only the alternative of
obedience to the constitution or the penalties of treason, and to labor
incessantly to stir into indignant action the slumbering sentiment of
nationality in the hearts of the Northern people. It is in such hours
that men of his indomitable stamp step to the front, and he became at
once a pioneer leader of that uncompromising and tireless spirit which
was the citadel of the Union cause. He spoke but rarely on political
questions during the last session of the Thirty-sixth Congress, but was
active in all the Republican consultations of that eventful period. In
them he steadfastly opposed any policy that savored of bending to or
temporizing with rebellion, and in the face of not a little Republican
demoralization urged that the crisis should be met with the spirit
of Jackson and of Cromwell. Speaking of this session he afterward
said: "If I could have had my way, when treason was proclaimed on the
floor of the Senate the traitor would never have gone free from the
capitol." With the Southern leaders he was frank in his denunciations
of their course and plans. In a chance conversation at this time with
the craftiest of their number, Slidell of Louisiana, he asked how the
pending struggle would end, and Slidell replied, "Oh, we will all go
out, and the Union will be broken up."
"And what are you going to do with the mouth of the Mississippi?" said
Mr. Chandler.
"We will, of course, have to seize and hold that," was the answer, "but
we will not tax your commerce."
To this, Mr. Chandler's indignant response was, "We own that river, Mr.
Slidell; we bought and paid for it; and, by the Eternal, we are going
to keep it. It was a desert when we bought it, and we will make it a
desert again before we will let you steal it from us."
Mr. Chandler labored assiduously to thwart the plots of the rebel
leaders, and to make such preparation as was possible for the coming
strife. It was at this time that he formed that close intimacy with
Edwin M. Stanton, which continued until the death of "the Carnot of the
United States." Mr. Stanton, as the Attorney-General of the Buchanan
Cabinet in its closing months, rendered service of the largest value
to the nation by urging vigorous measures on his imbecile chief, by
boldly confronting the traitors who were among his colleagues, and
by secretly and promptly informing the Republican leaders of each
new development of the disunion conspiracy as revealed in Cabinet
consultations. His information and counsels furnished sure guidance at
a time of the greatest peril, and this it was that led to the early
appointment by Mr. Lincoln to the Secretaryship of War of a man whom
the public then chiefly knew as a minor Cabinet officer in a detested
administration. Mr. Chandler always rated Mr. Stanton's services to the
Union cause in the early months of 1861 as second only in value to his
herculean labors in the War Department; placed the highest estimate
upon his ability, vigor, and patriotism; aided greatly in securing
his appointment and confirmation as one of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet;
remained his firm friend and counselor, and was largely instrumental
in obtaining from President Grant the nomination to the justiceship of
the Supreme Court which so shortly preceded his death. It was also at
this time that Mr. Chandler began to distrust the political fidelity of
Mr. Seward, whose spoken suggestions of compromise and whose persistent
negotiations with rebel emissaries, however diplomatic in origin and
intent, were fruitful sources of Southern hope and Northern weakness.
Time increased rather than diminished this dislike, and Mr. Chandler
was always an impatient critic of Mr. Seward's influence upon the
Lincoln administration, and saw in the course of the Secretary of State
of Andrew Johnson's Cabinet only the fulfillment of his own suspicions
and predictions.
The secret history of these exciting days, teeming with incident and
concealing many startling revelations, has yet been but sparingly
written; it is doubtful if the veil will ever be more than slightly
lifted. Mr. Chandler himself guarded scrupulously from public knowledge
much that was well known to him and a few associates and would have
shed light on the hidden springs of actions of vast moment. This class
of information he treated as state secrets, whose perishing with
the actors in the great drama was desirable for public reasons. A
well-known Washington journalist, who dined one day with Mr. Chandler
and Mr. Wade, and listened with interest to their reminiscences of "war
times," suggested to these gentlemen that their recollections should be
recorded while they were still fresh for the benefit of history, and
did succeed at first in obtaining their consent to an arrangement by
which the two "war Senators" were to devote one evening in each week
to the relation of the inside history of the period between the fall
of 1860 and the end of Johnson's administration. These narratives were
to be taken down by a stenographer, whose notes were to be written
out, carefully compiled, and subjected to the revision of Messrs.
Chandler and Wade. The manuscript was then to be sealed and placed in
such keeping as should make it certain that it would not be published
until the lapse of many years. On the following Saturday night the
literary gentleman was promptly at Mr. Chandler's residence with the
stenographer. Mr. Wade shortly afterward came in, and at once said:
"I have been thinking this matter over, Chandler, and you must allow
me to decline. There is no use in telling what we know unless we tell
_the whole truth_, and if I tell the whole truth I shall blast too
many reputations. These things would be interesting and valuable if
they were preserved in a book, but they would not be as valuable as
the reputations that would be destroyed. The days we were going to
talk about were exciting days, when good men made mistakes, and their
mistakes ought to be forgotten." Mr. Chandler promptly assented, and
the reminiscences were never written.
In the Senate at this time Mr. Chandler's course was bold and
straightforward. On Feb. 19, 1861, he denounced on its floor "traitors
in the Cabinet and imbeciles in the Presidential chair." He steadfastly
opposed the Crittenden Compromise, well described by Charles Sumner
as "the great surrender to slavery," and the circumstances of his
opposition to "the Peace Congress" attracted national attention then
and afterward. The Legislature of Virginia in January, 1861, adopted
resolutions inviting a conference of delegates from the various States
to meet at Washington on February 4, and consider how the pending
"unhappy controversy" could be adjusted by (of course) some plan giving
"to the people of the slaveholding States adequate guarantees for the
security of their rights." Twenty-two States answered this invitation,
and their representatives, presided over by John Tyler, deliberated in
Washington for nineteen days, and in the end recommended to Congress a
so-called "compromise measure," which was thus justly characterized at
the time: "Forbearing all details, it will be enough to say that they
undertook to give to slavery positive protection in the constitution,
with new sanction and immunity--making it, notwithstanding the
determination of the fathers, national instead of sectional; and, even
more than this, making it one of the essential and permanent parts of
our republican system." Its origin and its avowed object made this body
distrusted from the outset by the sincere anti-slavery men, who did
not believe that it could accomplish anything except to still farther
debauch the public mind of the North. The result proved that it was
called in the interest of slavery, and was designed to strengthen
that system. Mr. Chandler from the outset opposed all Republican
participation in this Congress, and, through the urgent recommendations
of its Senators, Michigan was one of the five Northern States which did
not send delegates. But after the Congress had met and was at work, it
was thought that the friends of freedom on its floor might be able to
accomplish something if they were increased in numbers, and accordingly
application was made to Mr. Chandler and Mr. Bingham to procure the
appointment by their State of delegates who could take their seats
before final action was reached. Under such circumstances those
gentlemen telegraphed to Lansing a request for the appointment of a
delegation, and followed the message up with letters of the same tenor,
which, although in the nature of private communications to Governor
Blair, were shown at Lansing, and soon appeared in the newspapers; they
were as follows:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 11, 1861.
MY DEAR GOVERNOR: Governor Bingham and myself telegraphed you on
Saturday, at the request of Massachusetts and New York, to send
delegates to the Peace or Compromise Congress. They admit that we
were right and that they were wrong; that no Republican States
should have sent delegates but they are here, and cannot get away.
Ohio, Indiana and Rhode Island are caving in, and there is danger
of Illinois; and now they beg of us for God's sake to come to their
rescue, and save the Republican party from rupture. I hope you will
send _stiff-backed_ men or none. The whole thing was gotten up
against my judgment and advice, and will end in thin smoke. Still I
hope as a matter of courtesy to some of our erring brethren, that
you will send the delegates. Truly your friend,
Z. CHANDLER.
_His Excellency Austin Blair._
P. S. Some of the manufacturing States think a fight would be
awful. Without a little blood-letting, this Union will not, in my
estimation, be worth a rush.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 1861.
DEAR SIR: When Virginia proposed a convention in Washington, in
reference to the disturbed condition of the country, I regarded
it as another effort to debauch the public mind and a step toward
obtaining that concession which the imperious slave power so
insolently demands. I have no doubt, at present, but that was the
design. I was therefore pleased that the Legislature of Michigan
was not disposed to put herself in a position to be controlled
by such influences. The convention has met here, and within a
few days the aspect of things has materially changed. Every free
State, I think, except Michigan and Wisconsin, is represented, and
we have been assured by friends upon whom we can rely, that, if
those two States should send delegations of true, unflinching men,
there would probably be a majority in favor of the constitution
as it is, who would frown down the rebellion by the enforcement
of laws. These friends have urged us to recommend the appointment
of delegates from our State, and in compliance with their
request, Mr. Chandler and myself telegraphed to you last night.
It cannot be doubted that the recommendations of this convention
will have a very considerable influence upon the public mind and
upon the action of Congress. I have a great disinclination to
any interference with what should properly be submitted to the
wisdom and discretion of the Legislature, in which I place great
reliance. But I hope I shall be pardoned for suggesting that it
may be justifiable and proper by any honorable means to avert the
lasting disgrace which will attach to a free people who, by the
peaceful exercise of the ballot, have just released themselves from
the tyranny of slavery, if they should now succumb to treasonable
threats, and again submit to a degrading thraldom. If it should be
deemed proper to send delegates, I think if they could be here by
the 20th it would be in time. I have the honor, with much respect,
to be, Yours truly,
K. S. BINGHAM.
The Legislature of Michigan refused to follow even these
recommendations (although an effort to make the two Senators
themselves delegates received a strong support), and that State was
not represented at any stage of the abortive Peace Congress. On the
27th of February Senator Powell of Kentucky presented to the Senate
newspaper copies of these letters, and then moved to lay aside the
army appropriation bill which was pending, in order that the Senate
could proceed at once to amend the constitution. He added that it
might "better be at that than be appropriating money to support an
army that is to be engaged, it seems, in the work of blood-letting."
Mr. Chandler followed by stating that the letter was a private one of
which no copy had been preserved, but that whether the printed copy was
accurate or not he adopted it as his, and would at another time speak
on the questions it involved. He added: "The people of Michigan are
opposed to all compromises. They do not believe that any compromise is
necessary; nor do I. They are prepared to stand by the constitution of
the United States as it is, to stand by the government as it is; aye,
sir, to stand by it to blood if necessary." On the 2d of March Mr.
Chandler made his promised speech in reply to Mr. Powell. He commenced:
"I desire to ask the Senator whether, after we have adopted this or
any other compromise, he is prepared to go with me, and with the
Union-loving men of this nation, for enforcing the laws of the United
States in the thirty-four States of this Union." Powell's response was:
"I am for enforcing the laws in all the States that are within the
Union, but I am opposed to making war on the States that are without
the Union. I am opposed to coercing the seceded States.... We have no
right, under the constitution, to make war on those States." Upon this
frank admission from one of its most ardent advocates of the utter
fruitlessness of compromise, this confession that it would be a sale
without consideration, Mr. Chandler's comment was: "That is just what
I expected; it is just what I want the North to know; that those men
who profess to be for the Union with an 'if' are against it under all
circumstances." He then quoted the letter of Thomas Jefferson written
at Paris on Nov. 13, 1787, to Colonel Smith, and closing as follows:
And what country can preserve its liberties if the rulers are not
warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take up arms! The remedy is to set them right
as to facts; pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from
time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its
natural manure.
And with this authority of Thomas Jefferson on "a little blood-letting"
as his text, Mr. Chandler spoke nearly an hour, denouncing the
treason about him with unsparing vigor and branding the Democracy
as responsible for the impending crime against the nation. In the
face of such distempers he did not hesitate to pronounce war for the
suppression of rebellion the only adequate remedy. The tone and style
of this speech will appear from these extracts:
This is not a question of compromise. It is a question whether
we have or have not a government. If we have a government it is
capable of making itself respected abroad and at home. If we
have not a government, let this miserable rope of sand which
purports to be a government perish, and I will shed no tears
over its destruction. Sir, General Washington reasoned not so
when the whisky rebellion broke out in Pennsylvania; he called
out the _posse comitatus_ and enforced the laws. General Jackson
reasoned not so when South Carolina in 1832 raised the black flag
of rebellion; he said: "By the Eternal, I will hang them;" and he
would have done it.
After these illustrious examples, we are told that six States
have seceded, and the Union is broken up, and all we can do is
to send commissioners to treat with traitors with arms in their
hands; treat with men who have fired upon your flag; treat with
men who have seized your custom-houses, who have erected batteries
upon your great navigable waters, and who now stand defying your
authority! What will be the result of such a treaty? You would
stand disgraced before the nations of the earth, your naval
officers would be insulted by the Algerines, your bonds would not
be worth the paper on which they are written, to-morrow. If you
submitted to this degradation your government would stand upon a
par with the governments of South America and the Central American
States.
Sir, I will never submit to this degradation. If the right is
conceded to any State to secede from the Union, without the consent
of the other States, I am for immediate dissolution; and if the
State which I have the honor in part to represent will not follow
that advice, I, for one, upon my own responsibility and alone,
will resign my seat in this body, and leave this government, so
soon as I can prepare the small matters I shall have to arrange,
_for emigration to some country where they have a government_.
I would rather join the Comanches; _I will never live under a
government that has not the power to enforce its laws_.... I see
before me some of those men who have been fighting this corrupt
organization (the Democratic party) for the last twenty years,
who now turn about in dismay at the threatened disruption of the
government. Why are they terror-stricken? Why do they not stand
firm and denounce you as infamously connected with a plundered
treasury instead of cowering before your threats? This thing has
gone far enough.... Sir, this Union is to stand; it will stand
when your great-grandchildren and mine shall have grown gray--aye,
when they shall have gone to their last account, and their
great-grandchildren shall have grown gray. But the traitors who
are to-day plotting against this Union are to die. I do not say,
literally, that they are all to die personally and absolutely; but
they are soon to pass from the stage, and better and purer men
are to take their places. God grant that that consummation, "so
devoutly to be wished," may be early accomplished!...
For the Union-loving men of this nation, for the true patriots of
the land, there is no reasonable concession that I would not most
cheerfully make; but for those men who profess to be Union men and
who are Union men with an "if"; who will take all the concessions
we will give them--all that they demand--and then turn about and
say "your Union is dissolved," I have no respect; and for them I
will do nothing. For the men who love this Union, who are prepared
to march to the support of the Union, who will stand up in defense
of the old flag under which their fathers fought and gloriously
triumphed, I have not only the most profound respect, but to their
demands I can scarce conceive anything that I would not yield. But,
sir, when traitorous States come here and say, unless you yield
this or that established principle or right, we will dissolve the
Union, I would answer in brief words--no concession, no compromise;
aye, give us strife even to blood before yielding to the demands of
traitorous insolence.
This "blood letter" (as it was commonly termed) Mr. Chandler was often
called upon to meet in the course of his subsequent public life, and
he never failed to justify its writing or to stand by its language. In
the extra session of the Senate in March, 1861, John C. Breckenridge
alluded to "Senatorial threats of blood-letting," and Mr. Chandler
retorted by re-reading Jefferson's letter and re-asserting the purpose
to meet attempted treason with force. In the last session of the
Thirty-seventh Congress (on Feb. 13, 1863) William A. Richardson of
Illinois said in a debate upon a war loan measure:
The Senator from Michigan, at the outset of this controversy,
declared in a letter to the Governor of the State of Michigan, that
this government was not worth a rush without some blood-letting.
Standing in array against all our history for seventy years,
standing in array against the peace of the country for seventy
years, the constitution itself in every proceeding from that time
to this being but compromise, he declared at the outset against any
compromise for the peace of the country, and he is responsible to a
very large extent for the arbitrament of war that is now upon us.
He is responsible for those consequences that are now flowing to
us from the position assumed then strongly by him at the head of a
dominant party in the country.
Mr. Chandler was prompt in meeting this attack, and said:
Mr. President: I do not propose to-day to go over my record. It has
been made before the country and the world. There let it stand.
So far as my loyalty and devotion to the country are concerned,
I doubt if any man ever seriously attempted to cast suspicion on
them. But, as I said before, my record is made. I stand upon it
and am proud of it in all its entirety. The Senator alluded to the
blood-letting letter, as it is called in Michigan. That letter
has been discussed before the people of that State. Thousands and
tens of thousands, and, for aught I know, hundreds of thousands
of copies of it, were scattered broadcast throughout that State.
What were the circumstances under which that letter was written?
We had traitors in this body proclaiming from day to-day that this
government was then destroyed, and there was no rebuke from the
Senator of Illinois or his friends. There was no rebuke from the
administration then in power, whom he aided in placing there. They
proclaimed that the government was entirely destroyed; and that it
should never be restored. Senators proclaimed on this floor that
you might give them a blank sheet of paper and allow them to fill
it as they pleased, and still they would not live with us under the
same government.... Here in this hall and in the other chamber,
and on the streets wherever you went, you heard traitors declare
that the government was ended, declare that if you attempted to
coerce the rebel States it would lead to war. I believed then, as I
believe now, that they intended to break up this government; that
they intended a disruption of the nation. And I believed then, as
I believe now, that without the intervention of armed force to put
down armed rebels and traitors, your government was destroyed.
Believing it, I so wrote to the governor of a sovereign State--a
confidential note, it is true, but that is of no account. I stand
by that letter precisely as it was written. A majority of the
people of this nation believe to-day, as I believed then, that
there was and could be but one way to save the nation, and that
was by putting down armed rebels by force. That is what I believed
then, what I believe now.
Another thing the Senator says: Nobody is more responsible for this
bloody and wicked war than myself. Mr. President, let us look a
little into the matter of responsibility. There is a responsibility
somewhere, and a fearful responsibility, for this rebellion and
this dreadful war, but that responsibility is not upon my soul....
You may go through all the ranks of rebeldom, aye, sir, you may
take all the officers of your regular army, who have deserted by
hundreds and violated their oath, and gone into the ranks of the
enemy, and are fighting to overturn the government; go and poll the
whole of them, and you cannot find one that ever co-operated with
me politically. They are all Democrats, every man. Yes, sir, and go
among the officers of the navy who have deserted and gone over to
the enemy, and are now fighting against their flag and attempting
to overturn this government; poll them, and among all the hundreds
of them you cannot find a single Republican--not one. No, sir, they
are all Democrats, every man. You may go and poll the whole four or
five hundred thousand men the rebels have now in arms against this
government, and you cannot find a man who was ever a Republican or
who even sympathized with the Republicans. They are all Democrats
or "Union men" such as we had here two years ago, men who had
professed to be for the Union when their hearts were with the
enemies of the government. Sir, go among the Northern sympathizers
with the rebellion, the men who are proclaiming to-day that this
government is overturned, and that it will never be restored, who
are to-day denouncing your currency and saying that your money is
not worth the paper upon which it is written; search through all
the sympathizers with this rebellion, and you cannot find a man who
ever co-operated with me politically--not one. They are Democrats,
but yet, forsooth, I am responsible for this war.... I have no
responsibility for this rebellion, nor have the party with which
I act. We have with perfect unanimity, in every instance, come up
to the support of the government. When the government demanded
400,000 men, every single individual on this side of the house
voted to give them 500,000 men. And when they demanded $400,000,000
to support the government, every man on this side of the house
voted to give them $500,000,000 to save the nation. Sir, we have
been ready under all circumstances to make any and every sacrifice
so that this nation might be saved. Our armies are in large force
and ably commanded; they are ready to advance and crush the
hydra-headed monster of rebellion. Aye, sir, but we have an enemy
insidious and dangerous. The seat of the rebellion is to-day not in
Richmond, it is among the copper-headed traitors of the North, and
if this government is overturned, if we should fail in saving the
government, it will be, not from the force of rebels in our front,
but because of the accursed traitors in our rear.
In the course of a debate in the Senate on Feb. 16, 1866, upon
reconstruction topics, Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana said:
When the good and the patriotic, North and South, representing the
yearning hearts of the people at home, came here in the winter
and spring of 1861, in a peace congress, if possible to avoid
this dreadful war, then the Senator from Michigan announced to
his Governor and the country that this Union was scarcely worth
preserving without some blood-letting. His cry before the war
was for blood. Allow me to say that when the Senator's name is
forgotten because of anything he says or does in this body, in
future times it will be borne down upon the pages of history as the
author of the terrible sentiment that the Union of the people that
our fathers had cemented by the blood of the Revolution and by the
love of the people; that that Union, resting upon compromise and
concession, resting upon the doctrine of equality to all sections
of the country; that that Union which brought us so much greatness
and power in the three-quarters of a century of our life; that
that Union which had brought us so much prosperity and greatness
until we were the mightiest and proudest nation on God's footstool;
that that grand Union was not worth preserving unless we had some
blood-letting. Mr. President, it is not the sentiment of the
Senator's own heart; it is the expression of a bitter political
hostility; but it will carry him down to immortality; he is sure of
living in history; he has gained that much by it.
To this Mr. Chandler's response was instant. He said:
The Senator from Indiana has arraigned me upon an old indictment
for having written a certain letter in 1861. It is not the first
time I have been arraigned on that indictment of "blood-letting."
I was arraigned for it upon this floor by the traitor John C.
Breckenridge, and I answered the traitor John C. Breckenridge,
and after I gave him his answer he went out to the rebel ranks
and fought against our flag. I was arraigned by another Senator
from Kentucky, and by other traitors upon this floor; I expect to
be arraigned again. I wrote the letter, and I stand by the letter
and what is in it. What was the position of the country when the
letter was written? The Democratic party as an organization had
arrayed itself against this government--a Democratic traitor in the
Presidential chair, and Democratic traitors in every department
of this government, Democratic traitors preaching treason upon
this floor and preaching treason in the hall of the other House,
Democratic traitors in your army and in your navy, Democratic
traitors controlling every branch of this government. Your flag
was fired upon and there was no response. The Democratic party
had ordained that this government should be overthrown, and I, a
Senator from the State of Michigan, wrote to the Governor of that
State "unless you are prepared to shed blood for the preservation
of this great government the government is overthrown." That is
all there was in that letter. That I said, and that I say again.
And I tell that Senator, if he is prepared to go down in history
with the Democratic traitors who then co-operated with him, I am
prepared to go down on that "blood-letting" letter, and I stand by
the record as made.
Because I wrote to the Governor of my State that unless he was
prepared to shed blood for the preservation of this government
it was overthrown, now I aim to be arraigned as going down to be
remembered in history! Yes, sir, I shall be remembered, and I
am proud of the record. May it stand, and stand as long as this
government stands! When that Senator and the men who co-operated
with him shall have gone down to eternal infamy my record will be
brilliant.
In the closing session of Mr. Chandler's Congressional service Senator
Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia, in the course of a reply (on May 10, 1879)
to a declaration of his on the previous day that "there were twelve
Senators on the other side whose seats were obtained and are held by
fraud and violence," again read and commented upon "the blood letter."
Mr. Chandler promptly answered as follows:
Mr. President, this is the fourth time since 1861 that allusion
has been made to a letter written by me to the Governor of the
State of Michigan; first it appeared in a newspaper published in
Detroit; a copy was sent to me and a copy was likewise sent to
the late Senator Powell. The letter was a private note written to
the Governor and no copy retained. Senator Powell approached me
with his copy of the letter and asked if it was correct. I told
him I did not know; I had written to the Governor of Michigan a
private note and had kept no copy and could not say whether this
was correct or not. He told me that if it was a correct copy he
would wish to make use of it, and if it was not he did not propose
to make use of it. I said, "Sir, I will adopt it, and you may make
any use of it you please." So to-day that is my letter. If not
originally written by me, it is mine by adoption.
And, Mr. President, what were the circumstances under which that
letter was written? I had been in this body then nearly four years
listening to treason day by day and hour by hour. The threat, the
universal threat daily, hourly, was, "Do this or we will dissolve
the Union; if you do not do that we will dissolve the Union."
Treason was in the White House, treason in the Cabinet, treason
in the Senate, and treason in the House of Representatives; bold,
outspoken, rampant treason was daily and hourly uttered. The threat
was made upon this floor in my presence by a Senator, "You may
give us a blank sheet of paper and let us fill it up as we please,
and then we will not live with you." And another Senator stood
here beside that Senator from Texas and said, "I stand by the
Senator from Texas." Treason was applauded in the galleries of this
body, and treason was talked on the streets, in the street cars,
in private circles; everywhere it was treason--treason in your
departments, traitors in the White House, traitors around these
galleries, traitors everywhere!
The flag of rebellion had been raised; the Union was already
dissolved, we were told; the rebel government was already
established with its capital in Alabama; "and now we will negotiate
with you," was said to us. Upon what basis would you negotiate?
Upon what basis did you call your peace convention? With rampant
rebellion staring us in the face! Sir, it was no time to negotiate.
The time for negotiation was past.
Sir, this was the condition of affairs when that letter was
written; and after Mr. Powell had made his assault upon me in this
body for it I responded, relating what I have related here now with
regard to it, and I said, "I stand by that letter," and I stand by
it now. What was there in it then, and what is there in it now? The
State of Michigan was known to be in favor of the constitution and
the Union and the enforcement of the laws, even to the letting of
blood if need be, and that was all there was and all there is in
that letter. Make the most of it!
The Senator from Georgia says that I did not shed any blood. How
much blood did he shed?[18] [Laughter.] Will somebody inform us the
exact quantity of blood that the Senator from Georgia shed?
Mr. HILL, of Georgia: The difference between us is that I was not
in favor of shedding anybody's blood.
Mr. CHANDLER: Nor I, except to punish treason and traitors. Sir,
the Senator is not the man to stand up on this floor and talk
about other men saving their own blood. He took good care to put
his blood in Fort Lafayette where he was out of the way of rebel
bullets as well as Union bullets. He is the last man to stand up
here and talk to me about letting the blood of others be shed.
Mr. President, I was then, as I am now, in favor of the government
of the United States. Then, as now, I abhorred the idea of State
sovereignty over National sovereignty. Then, as now, I was prepared
even to shed blood to save this glorious government. Then, as now,
I stood up for the constitution and the Union. Then, as now, I was
in favor of the perpetuity of this glorious government. But the
Senator from Georgia, was, as he testified before a committee, "a
Union secessionist." I have the testimony here before me. Will
somebody explain what that means--"a Union secessionist?" Mr.
President, I should like to see the dictionary wherein a definition
can be found of "a Union secessionist!" I do not understand the
term. He says they have the right to have a solid South, but a
solid North will destroy the government. Why, Mr. President, the
South is no more solid to-day than it was in 1857.... It has been
solid ever since, and it was no quarrel with the North that made
it solid. It was solid because it was determined either to "rule or
ruin" this nation. It tried the "ruin" scheme with arms; and now,
having failed to ruin this government with arms, it comes back to
ruin it by withholding supplies to carry on the government. Sir,
the men have changed since 1857. There is now but one member on
this floor who stood here with me on the 4th of March, 1857. The
men have changed, the measures not at all. You then fought for the
overthrow of this government, and now you vote and talk for the
same purpose. You are to-day, as you were then, determined either
to rule or ruin this government, and you cannot do either.
This letter was also for years constantly quoted and denounced by the
Democratic press of Michigan with the hope of by this means breaking
the Senator's hold upon the confidence of the people of his State. He
uniformly met these attacks, not only without the shadow of apology,
but with the most emphatic defiance. On the stump he repeatedly
declared that "that letter was a good one," that he would not qualify
a sentence nor retract a word of it, that he "stood by it" without
reservation, and that he believed when he wrote it and knew afterward
that it pointed out the only path in which the nation could then walk
with honor and with safety. Time has shown that Mr. Chandler was right
and that the men who deprecated his boldness were wrong, and that the
real statesmanship of the winter of 1860-61 was that which proposed not
to parley with, but to draw the sword upon, "foul treason." The paper
which at that time first printed "the blood letter" and made it the
text for unsparing and constant denunciation of its author was edited
by a man who grew to be one of the foremost of American journalists,
and--always hostile to Republicanism--published in 1879 the chief
Northwestern organ of Independent opinion, which said, in announcing
Mr. Chandler's sudden death in its city: "To superior intellectual
endowments he united a force of will and resolution of purpose that
hesitated at no obstacle. Few men ever displayed in a more remarkable
degree the courage of opinions. No dread of unpopularity, no fear of
consequences, ever troubled him. His famous 'blood-letting letter,'
written near the opening of the Southern rebellion, was a faithful
manifestation of the man. When frightened party chiefs of the North
were running up and down with peace propositions to placate Southern
fire-eaters and patch up a new truce between free civilization and
slave barbarism, Zach. Chandler stood up in his place in the Senate
and in terms of intense, bitter scorn, denounced all such efforts as
the pitiful manifestations of political cowardice and folly. He had no
word of regret to utter upon the departure of the Southern Senators;
but told them that the North would whip them back, and that in their
humiliation the bond of nationality would be strengthened. He had no
dread of the threatened blood-letting, but believed it to be the only
way of curing the Southern ulcer, and that the nation would afterward
be the healthier for it." And
"Thus the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges."
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Bangor, Me., "Union."
[17] Detroit, Mich. "Free Press."
[18] An allusion to the common report that, during a secret session
o£ the Confederate Senate, William. L. Yancey received injuries in a
personal encounter with H. H. Hill from which he finally died.