At the special session of the Thirty-seventh Congress (in March, 1861) the Senate committees were radically reorganized, and the new Committee on Commerce, the first appointed by the Republican party, consisted of Zachariah Chandler, chairman, Preston King, Lot M. Morrill, Henry Wilson, Thomas L. Clingman, Willard Saulsbury, and Andrew Johnson. Mr. Chandler continued in the chairmanship until he ceased to be a member of the Senate in 1875. Mr. Clingman soon joined the rebels, and his place on the committee was filled by Mr. Ten Eyck of New Jersey. From session to session changes were made in its membership, and among the names on its rolls during the fourteen years that Mr. Chandler sat at the head of its table were Edwin D. Morgan, James H. Lane, Solomon Foot, Timothy O. Howe, James W. Nesmith, Justin S. Morrill, John A. J. Creswell, George F. Edmunds, James R. Doolittle, William P. Kellogg, George E. Spencer, Roscoe Conkling, William A. Buckingham, J. R. West, John H. Mitchell, John B. Gordon, George R. Dennis, and George S. Boutwell. Mr. Chandler was succeeded in the chairmanship when he left the Senate by Roscoe Conkling of New York; soon after he was re-elected in 1879 the Democrats regained control, and the Committee on Commerce of the Forty-sixth Senate was organized by them. Mr. Chandler was made a member of it, and at the time of his death it consisted of Senator Gordon of Georgia, chairman, Ransom of North Carolina, Randolph of New Jersey, Hereford of West Virginia, Coke of Texas, Conkling of New York, McMillan of Minnesota, Jones of Nevada, and Chandler of Michigan.