Zachariah Chandler
Zachariah T. Chandler (December 10, 1813 – November 1, 1879) was a staunch abolitionist and Whig-turned-Republican from Michigan who served as the state's U.S. senator from 1957 to 1975, as well as for a brief period in 1879. During the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, Chandler was appointed Secretary of the Interior. He was the father-in-law and grandfather of later Maine senators Eugene Hale and Frederick Hale respectively.
Chandler was a part of the Radical Republican faction of the party who pressured President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War to take more aggressive war approaches[1] and who advocated a strong Reconstruction policy to secure the rights of newly freed Southern blacks after the war.
Political career
A member of the Whig Party prior to 1854, Chandler was the mayor of Detroit in the early 1850s. He joined the newly formed Republican Party when it formed which stood in firm opposition to slavery and helped found the state GOP in Michigan.[1]
U.S. Senate
As the Southern Democrats plotted secession over the election of Lincoln to the presidency, Chandler refused to compromise, declaring:[1]
| “ | ...without a little bloodletting this Union will not, in my estimate, be worth a rush. | ” |
A strong political conservative who voted with the right on key issues an average of 94% of the time,[2] Chandler backed higher protectionist tariffs[1] and the gold standard.[3] When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency following the assassination of President Lincoln, Chandler would turn against the racist Tennessee Democrat's policies on Reconstruction and voted for the articles of impeachment, though conviction failed due to Kansas RINO Edmund G. Ross's nays.
Chandler lost re-election in the 1874 Midterms to Democrat Isaac P. Christiancy amidst the GOP landslide defeats that year.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Zachariah Chandler. Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved August 10, 2021.
- ↑ FascinatingPolitics (March 17, 2019). Aside From Their Push for Equal Rights, What Was the Ideology of the Radical Republicans?. Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History. Retrieved August 10, 2021.
- ↑ FascinatingPolitics (August 31, 2019). The Oldest Presidential Candidate in American History. Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History. Retrieved August 10, 2021.