Mr. Chandler was very active in advocating the use of colored troops as soldiers, being months in advance of the Administration in this respect; he urged this policy upon the authorities unsuccessfully for weeks, and then worked earnestly to secure legislation from Congress authorizing the enrollment and enlistment of negroes. This movement was so strenuously resisted at the capitol that in the end a compromise was effected upon a bill, which was approved on July 16, 1862, authorizing the receiving of colored men as laborers in the army to dig trenches and do other work of non-combatants. But after the Emancipation Proclamation black men were accepted as soldiers by order of the President, and regularly enrolled and paid. Mr. Chandler always believed that that proclamation and the enlistment of freedmen in the army were two of the most powerful blows at the rebellion, and often remarked, when talking upon the subject, that they were worth 300,000 men. While the controversy over this important step was unsettled, General Butler, at New Orleans, found himself in need of reinforcements, and was actually compelled to organize and arm several regiments of colored soldiers, whom he knew to be especially well adapted to the performance of a certain class of duties in that region which could not be done by soldiers from the North, who were not acclimated. This step on his part followed his definite refusal, under instructions from Washington, to permit General Phelps to do the same thing (that officer resigning for this very reason.) While the correspondence on this whole topic was in progress with the authorities, General Butler appealed to Senator Chandler, writing him long letters showing the sanitary necessity of having negro garrisons in some localities, and touching upon the other phases of the question. He also asked the Senator's aid in securing arms and equipments for these colored troops, and obtained from him valuable assistance in pushing on the requisitions at the War Department in defiance of official "red tape." On this general question Mr. Chandler said in the Senate, on June 28, 1864: