said: "I do not claim my re-election as a personal tribute. It is, rather, a tribute to principle. It indicates that the patriotic sons of Michigan stand firm in support of the government and a vigorous prosecution of the war." Not only did he thus modestly measure the significance of his re-election, but he bent every energy to make that felt which the people meant. Strafford's motto of "Thorough"--although the spirit was that of Hampden and Pym and not of the apostate Earl--expresses the fixity of purpose and the ardor of zeal with which he strove to make irresistible the blows of the Union against its assailants. Before the people, on the floor of the Senate, within the White House, at the private offices of the War Department, in committee-room, and as part of his daily intercourse with men of all ranks and classes, he urged the use of every resource for the defense of the nation and demanded the sternest punishment of those who had dared "to lay their hand upon the ark "Of her magnificent and awful cause." As a Senator his vote was recorded for every important war measure, relating to the revenues, the finances, and the armies of the Union. Upon the great questions of public policy which bore so powerfully on the progress of the struggle he uniformly led his party. At the first Congressional session of the war he urged the employment of confiscation as a legitimate and effective weapon for checking and punishing rebellion; the measure he introduced at that time proved to be too sweeping to receive an immediate enactment, but within a few months Congress did advance on this subject to his ground. When General Butler declared that the slaves who fled to his camp from work upon the rebel intrenchments were "contraband of war," and reported his action to the authorities at Washington and asked for instructions, Mr. Chandler was one of the first to appreciate the adroit wisdom of that epigrammatic construction of military law, and his co-operation with Secretary Cameron in urging the approval of General Butler's action upon the President and General Scott was very valuable and effective. Immediately after the battle of Bull Run he, with Mr. Sumner and Mr. Hamlin, called upon Mr. Lincoln with a proposition to organize and arm the colored people. Mr. Chandler even then favored the full exercise of the President's constitutional war powers, and urged that they should be used, first, to set the slaves free; and, second, to make the slaves themselves aid the work of abolishing slavery and maintaining the Union. He believed that this institution was the backbone of the South, that the war was brought on to save it from the civilizing tendencies of the age, and that among the first steps taken by the Federal government, when thus assailed by slavery, should be the proclaiming of freedom to all bondsmen and the guaranteeing of the protection of the government to the free. He argued that such a policy,