The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-11-17
William, E. Chandler
By SAVOYARD


 men, who rendered it at the polls that year. Before midnight that day every 1 intelligent man within hail of teie- i, graph office knew that Samuel J. Tilden had been elected President of the Unit | ed States and Thomas A. Hendricks | Vice President. Mir. Hayes, the Repub- lican candidate for President, admitted
 it, and declared in public speech that | 1t was mo- personal grievance to him,
 but that he was sorry for the poor | negro"
 And so 1t would have gone, unchal- lenged. but for q bit of superfiuous cu- ] riosity. on theSpart of William H. Barn ! um.. chairman of the Democratic Nation | al Committee, who wired The New | York Times to know if that. paper had any news from Louisiana, South Caro- l lima, and Florida. An attache of The | Times, a news editor of the name of
 John c. Reid, argued from that in quiry that the Democrats were not | certain. or confident. and he hunted up Bill Chandler. tnd they concoted the | famous dispatch claiming that Hayes had 1855 votes in the college and was
 elected. But for Barnum's fatal query | no more contest of Tilden's election | than there had been of Grants four years earlier, or Garfield's four years later
 Then the stealing. lying, and buys l ing began. The Democrats kept their | business men away from New Orleans and left the conduct of the case to their | statesmen: the Republicans supplement- | ed their statesmen with business men | of the addition. division, and silence" l school. was re-enforced Mistress Eliza | Pinkston, and they ransomed the high | est office in the world from the banditti wxrK, h xefA &a aAn n tc rAa | owner, the Democratic party.
 | The first act of Mir. Hayes was to rec ognize the Democratic governors of all 1 three States, which history accepts as a plea of guilty to the charge of steal I ing the Presidency. M In the Senate Chandler was public benefactor.} and killed as many jobs as Sam Randall in the House. Ills is 8 keen, acute, incisive mind. He cannot see very far, but he sees all within his mental horizon, sees it sooner than any one else, perhaps; clearer than. any one else. Aggressive and provocative. he was admired as well as hated. Daniel O'ConnelPs fellow--"you persistent, ir- repressible, contentious, splenetfc. fiery ram cat" was Bill Chandler of the Irish bar. srstH s The debate in the Senate of the Will son tariff discovered the c. o. F. in it's great dramatic creation. of Pecksnifft on the political stage. Chandler had the center of the boards, though some of his fellows could beat him playing the leading role of Pecksniff. For some forty years the Democratic party has rarely neglected the opportunity to play the ass. and on this occasicnsit not on ly accepted it. but embraced 1t. The Re publican party is in power to day, and has been for ten years, not for it's own merit. but for the fatuous folly of. the Democratic party in rejecting the coun- sels of Grover Cleveland and refusing to follow his banner. But 1t was Chand- Ter, even more than Aldrich, who put the cotton schedule in the Wilson bIli. and he, more than Quay, made the metal schedule of that measure, both of which Mir. Dinkley, with little change. put In the present law. These compose three fourths of the tariff. and yet tha knaves tell us the Wilson bill was ifree-trade. and the fools believe it.
 Chandler was not a great Senator. but he was 8 valuable Senator. Yet his proper place was the unrestricted editorial head of a great independent political newspaper. He would keep the pot boiling. and it was man like Bill Chandler whom Balzac had in view when he wrote this: ws5f |
 'Whoso has been a newspaper man will ever be cnei that horoscope is as sure and certain as that of drunkards. Whoever has tasted that feverishly busy and relatively lazy and independ- ent life; whoever exercises that sover- eighty which criticises intellect, art, talent fame, virtue, absurdlty, and even truth; whoever has occupied that thib- une, erected by his own hands fulfilled the functions of that magistracy to which he is self-appefnted--in short, whoever has been, for however brief a space, that proxy of public opinion, looks upon himself, when ramanded to private life, as an exile, and the mo- ment a chance is offered to him puts out an eager hand to snatch back his crown"
 Charles II declared that the priests gave to his brother, afterwards James II catherine Sedley. for a mistress by way of penance, she was so homely of feature, so lean of person, and so old of years; but she was as sprightly of wit as he was ugly of presence and the lady, discussing the violence of the pas sion of her royal lover. said she could not understand it; that his majesty could not love her for her beauty. flor I have none, and 1t cannot be for my wit, for he has not enough to discover have any" ~s
 And a like wonder must come to him
 
 mate personal friendship thai exists between Bill Chandler and Ben Tillman When the latter first fetched his pitch fork into the Senate, Chandler was the only member of that august body that appreciated the eudacity of 1t. There tofore Chandler and Lodge had been Damon and Pythias; now Chandler and Tllman were Castor and Pollux.
 The Boston and Maine Railroad put Chandler out of the Senate. and he got to be chairman of the Spanish Claims Commission, an office ;Ie was made for. When the great octopus chase was put on foot Chandler became the interme- diary between Chief Huntsman Roose- welt and Chief Beagle Tillman. Later he was made a royal arch member of the chapter of the Knights of Ananias.
 One night while thef rate bill was pending Chandler andS TilIman had a conference, and after a thorough dis cussion of the woods that were to be drawn and the course the chase was to cover the next day, a general conver- satlon sprang up among the half dog en gentlemen present. Tillman was leader of it, and at loss to establish a date. Turning to Chandler he ap- appealed: "Chandler it was just forty