Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-four was a year of unusual political disaster. The prevalent commercial depression both naturally and seriously injured the party in power, and this and other causes combined to produce a general relaxation of Republican vigor, which bore its inevitable fruit in a series of damaging reverses in the fall elections throughout the Union. The contest in Michigan was complicated by an organized movement on the part of the opponents of Prohibition to secure a repeal of that State's stringent law against the liquor traffic, and to more surely reach that end its License League formed an alliance with the Democracy, by which the latter was greatly aided. The result was that the Republican plurality upon the State ticket was reduced to 5,969 in a total vote of 221,006, that three of the nine Congressional districts were carried by the Opposition, and that a Legislature was chosen in which the Republican majority upon joint ballot was but ten. Upon this body, so closely divided, devolved the choice of an United States Senator. To a man of Mr. Chandler's positive qualities and aggressive methods an active public life was impossible without creating strong enmities, and the attention which, had he been more subtle, he would have given to conciliating hostility his direct nature preferred to devote to showing appreciation of friendship. The equality of parties in the Legislature, and the passing disposition among Republicans to look with disfavor upon what has been since termed "stalwart leadership," supplied the local opposition to Mr. Chandler with the looked-for opportunity for successfully resisting his re-election. Michigan Republicanism as a whole gave him its usual hearty support, and, so far as the contest was waged within the recognized lines of partisan warfare, his personal triumph was flattering and signal. In the regular caucus he received fifty-two votes against five ballots cast for three other candidates, and his nomination was made unanimous with but one dissenting voice. A small Republican minority refused to participate in the caucus, and after a prolonged and exciting struggle a combination was formed between six of these men and the solid Democratic and Liberal Opposition, which (on the second ballot in the legislative joint convention) gave precisely the necessary majority of all the votes cast to Isaac P. Christiancy, then one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of Michigan. Mr. Christiancy was an original Republican, but had in some instances in the past so far satisfied the Democrats by his public course that he had been once re-elected to the Supreme Bench without opposition, his name having been placed at the head of the Democratic State ticket after his nomination by his own party. This fact materially facilitated the coalition which secured Mr. Chandler's defeat. Like results in pending Senatorial contests in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Nebraska showed