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."