DEAR SIR: I telegraphed you to-night to send heavy guns and ammunition to the lakes. The reason was this: Upon examination I found that we could improvise a navy in about two hours which could cope with any rebel armament which could be placed upon the lakes, _if we had big guns_. But my investigation furnished one 68-pounder, condemned, and four 32-pounders, without powder, at Erie; and this was our whole armament on the lakes, except one 32-pounder upon the Michigan, and a few 6, 10 and 12-pounders. We must have guns of large calibre at each of the principal ports. If you cannot spare eleven-inch guns immediately send us some eight-inch or some old 68-pounders, with ammunition. A tug, costing not over $30,000, with one eleven-inch gun on board and a crew of twenty men, could destroy a million dollars' worth of property on the lakes every twenty-four hours, and we would be powerless. She would sink the Michigan with one judiciously-placed shell. We are not alarmed, but we want big guns and _must have them_. The lake marine is scarcely second to the ocean in tonnage and value, and it must be protected. We had no idea of our defenses until the late scare. Truly yours, Z. CHANDLER. Mr. Chandler's influence with public men and in the private councils of the nation's leaders at Washington was throughout the war always invigorating. From the very outset, and while the patriotic instinct of the North was "still, as it were, in the gristle and not yet hardened into the bone," he urged upon the executive authorities summary measures, and the striking of hard and quick blows. He advised them to arrest traitors while their treason was still in the bud. He urged them to make early and incessant attacks on the enemy, and counseled implicit reliance on the devotion and loyalty of the North. The Union cause saw no hour so dark that the eye of his courage could not penetrate its gloom; the rebellion won no victory that shook his absolutely "dauntless resolution." Every suggestion of peace except on the basis of Freedom and the national supremacy he denounced. Every hint of conciliating armed traitors he scouted as, in Hosea Biglow's phrase, mere "tryin' squirt-guns on the infernal Pit." To the real statesmanship of that period he thus gave expression in a public dinner at Washington early in 1863: "We must accept no compromise; a patched-up peace will be followed by continued war and anarchy." He chafed like a caged lion before half-heartedness, imbecility and delay. His sincerity and his earnestness revived the discouraged and aroused hope, and his strong convictions inspired men of weaker moral fibre with something of his own inflexibility. He never hesitated to use plain words in dealing with the nation's enemies, he never lost faith, and he never admitted the possibility of defeat. At the White House