The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1878-01-26
The Chandler Job.
REMARKS OF SENATOR zAcHARIE IN THE
LOUISIANA SENATE.

REMARKS OF SENATOR ZAChAnAE In Tnx
LOUISIANA SENATE
The resolutions of Senator Burch
instructing the Senators and Rep
resentatives of Louisiana to vote
for an investigation upon the
charges advanced in the letter o.
W. E. Chandler being under con.
sideration, and Senator Burch hav'
ing spoken in favor thereof, Sena'
tor Zacharie rose and said
Mr.. President, l do not propose to
follow the honorable Senator from
East Baton Rouge, who has just
taken his seat, through all the details
of his argument. ! shall content my
self with demonstrating that this is
neither the proper time nor the pro
per place for the passage of such res.
Olutions. There was time when
such step would have been emf
nently proper, and the people of this
State and Of the country at large
would have hailed with reclamation
such a proceeding on the part of the
gentleman. More than twelve months
have rolled away since then, and,
sir, the true patriot, as he looks back
upon that period of discOrd and con-
sternation throughout the land, shud-
ders with horror at the thought upon
how slender a thread hung the fate
of the Republic, and how nearly the
country escaped the brink of an in
testine war, which would have sur
passed in its atrocities all those
known to history.
Sir, the Senator from East Baton
Rouge has to-day shown us, as he
said, with the greatest pride of his
life, his commission as an elector OF
the State of Louisiana, and l could
not but reflect, as he spoke, how the
cry of fraud and outrage must have
echoed and re-echOed in his ears
when he was called upon to act in
that capacity, and how thoroughly
convinced he was, as all other men
were, that his position as such rested
on the baldest and boldest outrage
against free government that the
world has ever seen. Sir, then was
the time when the honorable Senator
might have spoken to some purpose;
aye, might have achieved an immor-
tally which coming generations
would have enyied.
? How grand picture would he have
presented had he then molly declared
that he would not be made q party
to the contamination of that f1agitious
wrong. Sir, l remember to have
heard how that life long and devoted
friend of the colored race, Lyman
Trumbull, plead for hours with the
two colored members of the Return
ing Board that they might refuse to
sanction that great outrage; how he
pictured to them that by one grand
act of political virtue on their part
they might raise in mankind's esti-
nation what had been a PROSTATE
and cOnteluned race, more, and high
err, perhaps, than century's patient
plodding; that to these two men,
there lay before them an opportunity
which the worlds history had never
before afforded and would probably
never again afford during the globes
lifetime, to leap from the humblest
plane of life to the most exalted
niche in the temple of fame. and to
elevate by one sublime act of devo-
ton to constitutional liberty that
race which but yesterday emerged
from bondage. But, sir, they too,
like the Senator from East Baton
Rouge, could not rise to the dignity
and grandeur of the occasion, and,
like him they CROPPED and crawled
amidst the vapOrs and clouds of party
passion and race prejudice, too weak
of wing to vault into theCupper air of
light and sunshine. Sir, the most
poignant reflections of an ill-spent
life aIe the vain regrets for lost OPP
portunities, and | might be at q loss
to determine whether the Senator
from East Baton Rouge were suffer
ing under pang of remOrse, for the
single neglected opportunity to
achieve the greatness of his life, OF
whether there lay heavily upon his
conscience his participation in the
crime, and he desired to purge him
self by some confession of what the
world is vet ignorant. If the latter
be tie case, then | advise him to
disburden his soul and that speedily
of the damning secret. But, sir, the
sO-called elector, as well as his pre-
decessors, the Returning Board, in
au evil hour for themselves, but in
one fraught with every blessing for
the country, "builded wiser than they
knew and whatever may have been
their intention, the God of our
fathers SO shaped it to His end that,
by their works they gave to the land
a ruler who has shown himself to be
statesman above the selfish inter-