William Eaton Chandler (December 28, 1835 – November 30, 1917), also known as Bill Chandler, was a lawyer who served as United States Secretary of the Navy and as a U.S. Senator from New Hampshire. In the 1880s, he was a member of the Republican "Half-Breed" faction, the wing of the party which advocated civil service reform. His credentials were established as moderate in comparison to most of the Republican Party, particularly in his opposition towards sound money.
Chandler, who continued to advocate civil rights following the end of Reconstruction, criticized the policies of President Rutherford B. Hayes, whose actions pertaining to the South he viewed as too lenient. Chandler started the U.S. Naval resurgence and the precedent of the U.S. Navy being constructed with modern steel ships.
Early life
thumb|150px|left|A young William E. Chandler with his parents, Nathan S. Chandler and Mary Chandler
William E. Chandler was born in Concord, New Hampshire, to Nathan S. Chandler and Mary Ann (Tucker) Chandler. William's elder brother, John Chandler, was a successful East India merchant, and his younger brother George Chandler, an attorney who served as a major during the Civil War.
William Chandler attended the common schools, Thetford Academy and Pembroke Academy before attending Harvard Law School, where he began a romantic correspondence with Lucy Lambert Hale, daughter of Senator John Parker Hale. He graduated in 1854, was admitted to the bar in 1855, and commenced practice in Concord.
In 1859, Chandler married Ann Gilmore, the daughter of New Hampshire Governor Joseph A. Gilmore. They had one son, Lloyd H. Chandler, who served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, and retired as a rear admiral. Ann died in 1871.
In 1874, Chandler resumed his romance with Lucy Hale, who had been secretly betrothed in 1865 to John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin. Chandler and Hale were married in 1874, and in March 1875, their only son, John Parker Hall Chandler, was born. Lucy died in 1915.
Political career
thumb|left|150px|Photographic portrait of Chandler, taken circa 1865–1880 by the [[Mathew Brady|Brady-Handy studio]]
In 1859, Chandler was appointed reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. He then served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1862 to 1865 and was the Speaker during the last two years.
Civil War and Reconstruction
In 1865, Chandler was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln solicitor and judge advocate general of the Navy Department. Subsequently, he was appointed First Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, until he resigned in 1867.
Amidst controversies that ensued in the wake of the 1876 United States presidential election, Chandler aided Republican efforts to ensure an ultimate victory for Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel J. Tilden. In the state of Florida, the Tallahassee canvassing board tossed out 1,500 Democratic votes under the urging of Chandler, who believed the results tainted by Democratic election fraud and voter suppression, to "manufacture a Hayes victory."
Chandler returned to New Hampshire and became a newspaper publisher and editor during the 1870s and 1880s. Continuing in politics, he was a member of the State constitutional convention in 1876 and a member of the State house of representatives in 1881. The first, on July 8, 1882, led by William Beebe, on the private steamship Neptune, left St. John's, but was trapped by ice and forced to turn around. On June 29, 1883, the second left St. John's, with two ships, the Proteus, commanded by First Lieutenant Ernest Garlington, U.S. 7th Cavalry, and the steam gunboat USS Yantic. The Proteus was crushed by an ice pack, whose stranded crew was rescued by the USS Yantic. Afterward, Garlington abandoned the mission to save Greely and the crew at Fort Conger. Among the solutions Chandler proposed for addressing the "evils which have been made apparent by the vast increase, within recent years, of degraded immigrants from Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Poland and Russia proper" were the addition of an educational requirement and property qualification for all persons or families seeking to emigrate to the United States. The strongest opponents of the bill were the steamship companies, who stood to lose a major portion of their business. A watered-down version of The Chandler Immigration and Contract Labor Bill became law on March 3, 1893. It simply required steamship companies to prepare lists of their passengers containing full information, and thus very likely served as a compromise to get the steamship companies to back down on Immigration Reform at this time.
In 1900, he was one of only two Republicans and the only Senator from the Northeast to vote against the Gold Standard Act, though he emphasized that he did not oppose the gold standard itself.
Later (20th Century)
Chandler was appointed by President William McKinley to the Spanish Treaty Claims Commission in 1901. He was the president of the Commission from its inception until 1907 when its work was nearly complete.
In 1907, Chandler served as the lead counsel during the Next Friends Suit, a legal challenge over the estate of Mary Baker Eddy, the leader of the Christian Science church. The trial was headline news across the country. He would lose the case.
Leaving public office, Chandler resumed the practice of law in Concord and Washington, D.C.
Death and burial
He died at Concord in 1917 and was buried in Blossom Hill Cemetery in Concord.
Legacy
USS Chandler (DD-206) was named for him.
Chandler's grandson Theodore E. Chandler joined the U.S. Navy in 1911 while his grandparents were both still alive, and later distinguished himself as a rear admiral in World War II. While aboard the cruiser USS Louisville, he was killed in action by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft during the Battle of Lingayen Gulf in January 1945.