First in a series of historical lectures on Fort Street's members and their impact on Detroit's history by Tim Moran; funded in part by Detroit 300.

Good Afternoon! It's delightful to be with you today in historic Detroit, and at a spot which has housed so many of the people who helped make Detroit vibrant, lively and important to the lives not just of this city and state, but of the nation as well.

A couple of quick words of explanation are needed to set today's talk into context, both for Detroit 300 and for the history of Fort Street Church. This church celebrated its 150th Anniversary as an organization in 1999 - in fact, this day, Feb. 21, marks the one hundred and fifty-second "birthday" of our congregation's legal existence.

Fort Street has owned this location, the corner of Fort and Third streets, since 1853 and has occupied it since 1855. Literally everything around this church building has changed significantly during this time; but if you go to the corner and look only at the church sanctuary, you will see a small slice of Detroit almost unchanged from halfway back in the city's history. When it was new, this church was the tallest structure for blocks around; this area was a residential mansion district, comparable to Indian Village, the Grosse Pointes or today's suburban drywall palaces.

As part of the work to commemorate 150 years of history, Fort Street and I have been working on an updated and authoritative book about the congregation. The work is a continuation of historical research gathered by Mr. W.E.C. Huthwaite, former clerk of session of this church, builds on the extensive documentation conducted by others including Robert and Virginia Crilley, and on the collection of church archives both here and at the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library

Detroit 300 has given this effort an enormous boost forward, first by giving new relevance to the importance of documenting our past and, second, by funding the work needed to understand what role the members of this church, as individuals, played in Detroit's history.

Let me say at the outset that organizations have myths, and the myths tend to make origins grander (and influence greater) than they actually were. Here, though, many of those myths turn out to be truth - and the stories behind them turn out to be even better, in most cases, than the cherished myths.

This church congregation turns out to have been a radical, politically active hotbed of business in the city. The church itself was full of conflict; its origins came not just from divine guidance and burgeoning need, but from mule-headed millionaires who felt no shame - indeed, only good - in having their own meeting place in their own neighborhood. The modern church recoils from the "taint" of politics, but in its early heyday this church was devoutly Republican, pro-business, anti-slavery and intolerant of diverging viewpoints.

It was the people of Fort Street who made the congregation, and I want to focus today on one of the most influential names important to the city, to the nation and to this congregation. It may seem odd to spend an entire session on one person; next Wednesday we'll go farther afield in the early history of the church, but for today I'd like to focus on the remarkable work of one man who led many others.

Let me set the scene ¬…

Picture an early November day in Detroit, 1879.Morning light comes slowly under a low, scudding layer of storm clouds. Snow squalls whirl along Fort Street, making cloth bunting flap and slap the sides of buildings.

Despite the weather, the street here is crowded. More than three hundred armed soldiers and militia men, veterans of the Civil War, have taken up formation in the street.

Their left flank is anchored on Second Street; their formation, including the 10th U.S. Infantry; Detroit Light Guard; Detroit Light Infantry; the Montgomery Rifles and the Jackson Guards, stretches past the church, rifles twinkling.

Joining them are the African-American faces of rifle companies from two Masonic lodges, the Hiram Lodge number 1 and the Mont Peven Lodge number 2.

Silver swords glitter in the hands of 60 members of the Detroit Commandery of Knights Templar, as well. Their officers have been at some pains to align the formations; now they square the men to face south, towards the river and facing the church.

This is no police action, no armed guard to put down rioters, not even a mustering for national service.

Zachariah Chandler is dead, and the entire city is in mourning.

The Detroit Post and Tribune wrote, with macabre relish: "By tomorrow Jefferson avenue will present the gloomiest aspect in its history. All the other streets on the line of march, especially Fort Street and Woodward avenue, will be heavily draped together with the public buildings and many private residences."

These soldiers and their civilian counterparts are his guard of honor. Assembling at the Russell House are members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives, as well as members and ex-members of the presidential cabinet and governors of states and territories. At the black-draped City Hall building, federal and state officials, the city's common council and board of education have gathered.

Within the church building, Reverend Arthur T. Pierson will presently deliver a moving eulogy. Then the funeral cortege will march up Fort Street, south along Woodward Avenue to Jefferson, and east on Jefferson to Elmwood Avenue. Elmwood Cemetery will be the final resting place for a restless, energetic man.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry B. Brown said: "The history of the State of Michigan for the past 25 years is scarcely more than a biography of Zachariah Chandler ¬… whatever criticisms may hereafter be made of his political career, it will never be forgotten of Mr. Chandler that he was one of a dozen men who saved the Union in the hour of her greatest trial."

So who was this Zachariah Chandler? What relevance does he have to the life of Fort Street Church, and to Detroit?

Chandler was born in 1813 in Bedford, New Hampshire. He came to Detroit in 1833, bringing with him a "common school" education, a grim determination to succeed and a temper that some termed "pugnacious" and others "vituperative." Friends remembered the 20-year-old was exceptionally tall and slim, about 125 pounds, with a shock of blond hair making him easy to pick out in a crowd. As he grew older, his frame filled out and he was noted for exceptional strength and energy.

"He possessed a determination that ¬… was capable of taking him into places where his legs might not have wanted to go," wrote the author of a biographical sketch printed in the 1920's. "During his early years here, he slept in his store, paid $2 a week for his board, and spent nothing excepting for the rent of a half pew in the Presbyterian Church."

Initially, that would have been First Presbyterian Church, located on Woodward between Larned and Congress streets. While a member there, Chandler prospered in business, first in general merchandise, then as a specialist in dry goods only, and finally as a wholesaler and property owner. By 1845, his business interests were branching out; Chandler was one of a cabal of businessmen who formed a corporation that bought the state-chartered Michigan State Bank, with $150,000 in capital.

Historian Silas Farmer said: "So well was the bank managed that it returned dividends of ten per cent per annum, and when its charter expired, in 1855, the capital stock with a surplus of thirteen percent was divided among its shareholders."

Some other of Chandler's organizing attempts were not so successful. He tried to organize a Detroit commodity exchange in 1847, but trade rivalry ended the effort a few years later.

Chandler was active in two of Detroit's most important social and political groups in the 1840's: The Young Men's Benevolent Society and the Fire Department Society. He was a political Whig, and this put him in association with other business leaders who held strong convictions.

Zach Chandler not only held those convictions, but was willing to get physical about them and to commit his whole self to a cause. He seems to have been a fearless man; during a cholera epidemic in the city in 1834, he not only kept his business open when others were shutting their shops and fleeing the city, but volunteered as a nurse and helped bury the dead. In twenty days, 122 people died of the disease; the outbreak would claim 7 percent of the city's population before it had run its two-month course.

Another example of his fearlessness involved balloting for state elections. You know, we live mild lives today, when people can say they "felt threatened" because a police officer stood outside a polling place. Chandler heard of a plan by Democrats to form a crowd around the actual ballot box itself, and to prevent members of any other party from voting. Carrying a cudgel, Chandler showed up at the polls and pushed, shoved and forced his way to the ballot box. He spent the entire election patrolling a corridor through the crowd, keeping it open for all voters by relentlessly threatening those who tried to close it.

This was no compromising, consensus-building Presbyterian. At the time of Chandler's funeral, future President James A. Garfield remembered that, for Chandler, "A thing was either right or wrong," and: "Middle ground, in the mind of Mr. Chandler, was very narrow."

Chandler's real political involvement, though, began with his election as Mayor of Detroit in 1851. The mayor, in those days, held office for only one year. Running against popular General John R. Williams, who had already served as mayor repeatedly , Chandler ran a grass-roots campaign that brought together brash, Whiggish business associates and trade leaders. Chandler's campaign was dogged, but for its time remarkably ethical. It was also clear that the man who a friend recalled as "a wealthy, ambitious candidate for place" had his appetite for future political power whetted.

Even before the voting took place, Chandler told his friends: "Boys, I want you to remember every place we have been to electioneering, and I want to go with you there again when election is over, whether successful or not. And I want every promise made fulfilled. There is a future in this," Chandler was remembered as saying.

Shortly after the election, Chandler offered a three-hour open house to all voters "without distinction of party" at his Jefferson Avenue home. Of an estimated 3,500 voters in the entire election, journalists noted that about two-thirds showed up for the party.

But if Chandler was a loyal friend and open-handed host, he could also be petty and vindictive. It was in the year Chandler was mayor that a then-Army Lieutenant named Ulysses S. Grant sued Chandler for leaving snow and ice the sidewalk outside his house, which at the time was at on Jefferson at St. Antoine. An officer under Grant's command had slipped and suffered a severe sprain; Chandler, presented with the complaint, insisted on a trial by jury, and acted as his own lawyer.

Grant biographer Albert D. Richardson wrote, in 1868: "The chief witnesses against him were the young officers, and he assailed them with a power of vituperation on which the United States senator has hardly improved, notwithstanding his great success in that direction. He denounced them as idle loafers, living on the community, and turning to Grant, Gore and Sibley (two officers of the Detroit garrison), said: If you soldiers would keep sober, perhaps you would not fall on people's pavements and hurt your legs."

Other testimony about the case, which was infamous in Detroit and humorous to the nation at a later date, had Chandler personally questioning Grant and saying:

"Where were you when you saw my sidewalk covered with snow?"

"In my cutter," replied Grant.

"Ain't you mistaken?" Chandler is said to have sneered. "Was you not in the gutter?"

Chandler lost the case, but was fined only six cents and court costs of about $8. According to popular record, he later had Grant ticketed for driving too fast in a carriage.

Chandler was also peculiar when it came to personal relationships - "clueless" might be the more modern term for the way he attempted to apply business acumen to romance. When a courtship went awry, Chandler tried to send the young lady a check for $3,000 to make up. She sent the check back, un-cashed, and Chandler slipped into a profound depression. He thought seriously of leaving Detroit, perhaps to go to the frontier town of St. Louis, but his best friend - James Joy - convinced him to stay. His eventual marriage to Letitia Grace Douglass, daughter of a New York family, drew him to that state for "a few years," but the couple moved back to Detroit, where they became well-known as host and hostess to the political elite. So Zachariah Chandler was a complex character, accustomed to getting things done by unorthodox ways and often by brute force and sheer persistence.

When he, his brother-in-law Franklin Moore and close friend Edward C. Walker , decided in 1853 that there was need for a church building on Fort Street in what was becoming a rich residential neighborhood, they moved forward powerfully and without asking any particular permission. They simply formed a building society and began enrolling people.

As most of you know, Presbyterians do things "decently and in good order." To have a Presbyterian church, one must have permission from the Presbytery - and the Fort Street Society (sometimes called the "Fort Street movement" and the "Fort Street Building Society") didn't have that approval. A young and poor congregation nearby did, though - the Second Presbyterian Church, which had just finished building a modest meeting hall at Lafayette and Wayne. Chandler and friends made them a tough, businesslike offer; the new church was going to be built, regardless, but if Second Presbyterian would join, all the members of the Fort Street Society would immediately rent pews in the existing church, and keep them rented during the new building's construction. When the new building was done, Second Presbyterian would be sold.

It was hard bargaining, but with Chandler pushing, it worked. Founding pastor Rev. Robert Kellogg resigned from Second Presbyterian in July, 1853, to avoid conflict with the new congregation; Rev. Henry Neill was called from Lenox, Massachusetts, to be the combined congregation's new pastor while construction went forward. And on Nov. 9, 1855, Zachariah Chandler auctioned the pews for the new church building, which was formally dedicated Nov. 18.

Chandler's church presence was robust, if unusual. It was his habit when hymns were sung to stand facing the back of the church, book in hand, and to bellow out the lyrics in the direction of the choir loft; friends said this habit came from his New Hampshire upbringing, where the congregation "faced the music" this way.

Despite being a man of property and one of Detroit's first to make $50,000 a year from his businesses, Chandler was unassuming in manner and far from the dour, temperance-oriented Presbyterian image of later years. He loved to chew tobacco, or smoke from a long pipe. He played cards with friends. He served as a Sunday School teacher, at times leading a class of African-American young men; challenged on this by acquaintances, Chandler was said to have remarked that "He would just as soon teach them as any other."

Chandler seems to have been a supporter of emancipation, and of the Underground Railroad's efforts to free slaves. The abolitionist writer Julia A. Penniman, in a bitter editorial against the praise offered for Chandler after his death, scorned Chandler for his failure to publicly avow true abolitionism.

She wrote that Chandler "held an honest dread of all abolitionists," and complained that he: "was never a Free Soiler, never let it be known he was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Law, was at Jackson (the meeting to form the Republican party) but chiefly distinguished himself by holding in check the Abolition elements of the convention."

Chandler may not have been willing to support the extremes of the Abolition movement, and as a legislator may have been wary of being seen violating the federal law. Penniman herself grudgingly reports that Chandler helped extract an Underground Railroad "agent" from Marshall, Michigan, when the man was forced to pay a heavy fine. But she said he did it too quietly, "without any sentiment in the matter, or sympathy for the cause."

But at Fort Street, Chandler was numbered a friend among members of the congregation dedicated to the effort to win freedom for escaping slaves; men such as Shubael Conant, Captain Eber B. Ward, Franklin Moore, Hovey K. Clarke and Samuel Zug agreed that Chandler funded and supported many of the efforts of the Underground Railroad.

Perhaps Chandler couldn't afford to associate his political future with the most extreme elements of the Abolition movement, whose members approached the same frenzied dedication to a cause shown by Southern secessionists. For while Fort Street was building, Chandler was wading deeper into politics. He became one of the key organizing members of the new "Republican" party, and an outspoken representative at the famous "meeting under the oaks" at Jackson on July 6, 1854.

In 1857, he was elected to the United States Senate to succeed Lewis Cass, with whom Chandler disagreed and whom he cordially disliked. The two men came from opposite poles, Cass believing that gentlemanly breeding and knowledge were the basis of greatness, Chandler holding that action and righteousness sufficed.

In the senate, Chandler quickly allied himself with the radical, pro-abolition portion of the Republican Party, and worked tirelessly against compromise with Southern secession. His stubborn support for preserving the Union against what Chandler felt was emerging treason on the part of the South led to hard feelings between Chandler and the Rev. Neill, who favored harmony and compromise.

Neill viewed himself as a peacemaker; Chandler felt Neill was slipping the congregation into dangerous waters and was simply wrong.

The result was a bitter congregational split in June, 1857, when Neill resigned and at least 18 Fort Street families withdrew their membership in his support.

This action, ironically, seeded the growth of a new Presbyterian church; today, Westminster Presbyterian Church is prominent in housing the offices of the Presbytery of Detroit and hosting area-wide gatherings, as well as carrying out social programs in northwest Detroit.

Chandler had settled down to stay near his church home, meanwhile, building his mansion at 174 West Fort Street in 1858; (today, the Detroit News building and parking lot occupies the spot). When he was in Detroit, he would regularly attend the church, and when in Washington would receive visiting congregation members with extreme kindness, even bedding them down in his own rooms.

Kindness was not the impression much of the nation received of him, though. Chandler's combative eagerness to fight the South led him to say hurtful things, and bluntly. A famous, or infamous, Chandler-ism was the "blood" statement of 1860, when he faced Southern fire-eaters with the words "Without a little bloodletting, this Union, in my opinion, would not be worth a rush."

During the war, Chandler was among the "Republican Radicals" who were sharply critical of Lincoln, and who suspected dishonest dealings or simple incompetence in defeats suffered by the Union armies in the field. He organized what eventually became the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, a watchdog investigative group that began its work by looking into the defeat at Bull Run. The committee was widely reviled by army officers, who loathed the intrusion into their affairs.

It was Chandler who backed Abraham Lincoln in removing the showy, but ineffectual, General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. Chandler often spoke of it as one of his hardest fights, and the one where the stakes were highest; leaders in Washington and in the army, itself, had great affection for McClellan and the General was a political threat - but Chandler was willing to sacrifice his friendships, even at home in Detroit, for a greater national gain.

He was also dogged in his attempts after the Civil War to drag down President Andrew Johnson, whom he viewed as an incompetent willing to sacrifice all the gains made during the war through "soft" reconstruction. Chandler led and supported impeachment efforts against Johnson, as well as resisting Johnson's attempts to rid himself of remaining members of the Lincoln cabinet.

Here's an example of Chandler's problem-solving methods: When Johnson tried to remove Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War, it was Chandler who stationed 100 armed men in the basement of the War Department to prevent Stanton from being moved. If Chandler felt it was time to take action, woe betide the person who stood in his way!

Chandler served as Senator until 1875, when he was appointed Secretary of the Interior under none other than his previous courtroom foe, Ulysses Grant. The Interior Department included the almost incredibly corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs. Chandler cleaned house with amazing energy. He fired whole departments, called administrators to account and "winnowed" the Land and Pension offices. When the next administration came to power, Chandler's was one of the few departments to receive compliments and a clean bill of health from the incoming staff.

Mary Clemmer, a political wife in Washington, D.C., wrote of Chandler: "One must have lived through the dishonesty of an administration like Grant's to realize how remarkable was the public man who could not, and did not, steal."

Chandler also was one of the most influential members of the Republican Congressional Committee, serving as its campaign chairman in 1868 and 1879.

Some Chandler incidents showed a dry humor and an ability to add whimsy to almost any event, no matter how dire the circumstances.

Take the case of Ohio senator Benjamin Wade, whose speeches so enraged a southern legislator that Wade found himself challenged to a duel by an expert marksman who had killed other opponents. Wade went to Chandler for advice; the latter's solution was for the tall, muscular Wade to accept the duel, choose broadswords as the weapons and set a distance of one yard between the opponents. The southern legislator, not a big man, looked at the beefy Wade and concluded "Broadswords were no civilized weapons with which to vindicate a gentleman's honor." The duel fell through.

Chandler's own words, from one of his last speeches, also show the character and innate humor of the man.

Addressing his large audience, he rasped: "I say that my own experience proves that the mass of mankind are honest and honorable, yet I do not blame you for deciding that the great mass of mankind are rascals. You judge others by yourselves ¬… (laughter and applause) ¬… AND IT IS A FAIR JUDGMENT (renewed laughter and applause)."

Michigan Congressman Edwin Willits, of Monroe, visited with Chandler in his room at the Grand Pacific Hotel in Chicago after his final speech, and found him tired and weak-voiced, but enthusiastic. He had been re-appointed to the Senate in February that year, and Republican leaders were calling for a Presidential campaign, but Chandler wanted to get home to Detroit to consolidate what he had accomplished.

Willits urged Chandler to travel home with him by way of the Lake Shore railroad; Chandler almost agreed, but then sank back in his chair, saying he "recollected that he had ordered his carriage to meet him at the Michigan Central Depot at Detroit, and therefore declined."

His route home from the depot would have passed the church along Third Street, but that carriage never met Chandler. He died in the night, leaving the papers to marvel over the man who built a $2 million fortune, a national political career and who helped build a church - this church.

You can almost see him now; tall, powerful, defiant, standing in the sanctuary with his hymn book in hand, facing backwards to sing with the choir.

© 2001, Tim Moran

Comments about this web site should be directed to Fort Street WebMaster

For further information contact:

Fort Street Information