This Day in Republican History 11/01/05

November 1, 1879 Death of U.S. Senator Zachariah Chandler (R-MI), Underground Railroad conductor and co-founder of the Republican Party

Chandler was opposed to slavery as an institution, both as it existed and to its extension into new American territories. He supported the Underground Railway, helping slaves escape from Democratic slave states. He contributed $10,000 toward the settlement of "free soil" (anti-slavery) settlers in the Kansas Territory. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1857, Chandler attacked the 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which upheld the Fugitive Slave Law. Dred Scott upheld the return of fugitive slaves to slave states; Chandler declared he "would support the constitution as its Fathers had made it, not as the Supreme Court has altered it." In the Lincoln administration, Chandler was the founding member and chairman of the important Senate Committee On The Conduct Of The War. He consistently urged Lincoln to pursue more aggressive actions than Lincoln wanted to take.