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. CHAPTER XII. THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CIVIL WAR.