But Mr. Chandler did more than strenuously oppose the payment of the "war claims" of Southern disloyalists; his farsightedness placed in their path a serious practical obstacle. In 1873, a Colonel Pickett, who had been confidentially connected with the War Department of the "Confederacy," came to Washington and offered to sell to the authorities a vast quantity of the archives of the rebel government, which he had secreted before the capture of Richmond. Congress was not in session, and the Secretary of War, having no authority in law, refused to buy the documents. Mr. Chandler was in that city at the time, and Pickett was referred to him as a man of means and as one who would be apt to appreciate the importance of such a purchase. After one or two calls, Mr. Chandler determined that the matter deserved investigation at least. He asked for a schedule of the documents and for a statement of their prices. Pickett promptly furnished the former and offered to sell them for $250,000. Mr. Chandler, after a careful examination of the schedule, replied with a proposition that, if the papers corresponded with the list furnished, he would pay $75,000 for them. This offer was at last accepted, and Mr. Chandler deposited that sum in a Washington bank, subject to Pickett's order after a thorough examination of the documents had been made. Confidential clerks were at once set at work upon them, and it was found that they even surpassed their owner's representations as to value. The purchase was therefore completed, and the documents became the private property of Mr. Chandler, who had them locked up in a vault. When Congress met, a bill was passed authorizing the Secretary of War in general terms to purchase the archives of the Confederate government if it was ever possible, and appropriating $75,000 for this purpose. As soon as the bill became a law Mr. Chandler transferred the documents to the Secretary of War, and they are now in the possession of that department and constitute one of the most valuable and useful features of its record of the rebellion. The amount that has been saved to the government by this purchase, in furnishing evidence to defeat rebel claims, already exceeds many-fold the original price. Case after case in the Quartermaster-General's office, before the Southern Claims Commission, and before the Court of Claims has been defeated by evidence found among these papers.[35] One single conspicuous instance in which they saved to the Treasury more than four times their entire cost attracted much deserved attention at the time. On Nov. 16, 1877, an effort was made by leading Southern Democrats in the House of Representatives to pass under a suspension of the rules, and without debate, a joint resolution, ordering the immediate payment of several hundred thousand dollars to mail contractors in the rebel States who forfeited their contracts at the commencement of the rebellion. An objection from the Hon. Omar D.