that more than merely local influences had contributed to bring about this event. Mr. Chandler, with that strong faith in his own position which was so useful a characteristic of the man, did not believe that his defeat was possible until it was accomplished. His disappointment was keen, but he bore it manfully, and, assuring his friends that he should be "a candidate for _that seat_ when Judge Christiancy's term ended," he started for Washington to close up his eighteen years of continuous Senatorial service. Many and sincere were the expressions of grief among earnest Republicans everywhere at what seemed to be the abrupt termination of the public career of so influential a man. Mr. Chandler himself was as strongly affected by his fear that Republicanism might have received a severe blow from the method by which his re-election had been prevented as by any sense of mere personal failure. In a letter written in the following March, in response to an invitation from the great majority of the Republican legislators of Michigan to address them on political topics, he said: Thanking you cordially for your continued confidence, I assure you most sincerely that when I enlisted in the Republican ranks it was for the whole war, which, I trust, is to be continued until the complete and final triumph of Republican principles, the pacification of the whole people, and the establishment of equal and exact justice for all men in every section of our common country. It will be my pride to prove to my friends, and to my enemies, if there are such, that I can be useful as a private soldier. In all the future contests of the Republican party with its opponents you may order me into the ranks with full confidence that I will respond with all my time, if need be, and with such ability as I can command.... We shall not yield in the forum the great principles which have triumphed in the field, nor shall we further waste in internal strife the strength which should be organized against our opponents. I have faith in the future of our country, because of my confidence in the continued success of the Republican party. Ultimately it became evident that his defeat in 1875 was not a personal calamity, he himself afterward saw that it had opened the way for him to broader fields of public usefulness, and that in what then seemed to be a fall he had in fact only "stumbled up stairs."