Salmon
Portland Chase was
born in New Hampshire on 13th January, 1808. After his father died
in 1817, he lived with his uncle, Philander
Chase, the Bishop of Ohio. After graduating from Dartmouth College
in 1826 he worked briefly as a school teacher in Washington.
In 1830 Chase moved to Cincinnati where he established himself as
a lawyer. A member of the Anti-Slavery
Society, Chase defended so many re-captured
slaves and became
known as the "attorney general for runaway negroes". He
also provided free legal advice for those caught working for the Underground
Railroad.
Chase was originally a member of the Whig Party
but joined the Liberty Party in 1841.
However, in August 1848, Chase and other members of the party
joined with anti-slavery members of the Whig
Party to form the Free-Soil Party.
The following year Chase was elected to the United States Senate.
Together with Joshua
Giddings, Chase was seen as the leader of the anti-slavery
group in Congress and played an important role in the campaign against
the Kansas-Nebraska
Act.
In 1855 Chase was elected as the governor of Ohio. A founder member
of the Republican Party he sought
the party presidential nomination in 1860 but on the third ballot
asked his supporters to vote for Abraham
Lincoln. When Lincoln became president he appointed Chase as his
Secretary of the Treasury and had responsibility for organizing the
finance of the Union war effort. He also helped to establish a national
banking system and another innovation was the employment of women
clerks.
Chase was the most progressive member of Lincoln's Cabinet and shared
many of the views being expressed by the Radical
Republican group. He constantly clashed with the more conservative
William Seward and on several occasions
came close to resigning.
Chase was highly critical of those officers in the Union
Army such as Irvin McDowell, George
McClellan and Henry Halleck who
appeared unwilling to attack the Confederate
Army in 1862. He himself wanted the war to be a crusade against
slavery and told Lincoln: "Proslavery sentiment inspires rebellion,
let anti-slavery sentiment inspire suppression."
In the summer of 1862 Chase and Abraham Lincoln
clashed over the treatment of General David
Hunter. In May, Hunter began enlisting black soldiers in the occupied
districts of South Carolina and soon afterwards issued a statement
that all slaves owned by Confederates in the area were free. Lincoln
was furious and instructed him to disband the 1st South Carolina (African
Descent) regiment and to retract his proclamation. Chase agreed with
Hunter's actions and once again came close to resigning.
The main argument that Chase had with Lincoln was that the president
refused to state that emancipation of the slaves was an object of
the war. In Cabinet meetings Chase was the only member to argue for
black suffrage. Chase eventually resigned in June, 1864. Lincoln wrote
a letter accepting Chase's resignation agreeing that their relationship
had "reached a point of mutual embarrassment that could not be
overcome".
In December, 1864, Abraham Lincoln appointed
Chase as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Like other Radical Republican, Chase
was highly critical of Lincoln's Reconstruction
Plans. He was even more critical of those followed by Andrew
Johnson and as Chief Justice presided over the Senate impeachment
proceedings against Andrew Johnson.
Over the next few years Chase interpreted the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution
in ways that helped to protect the rights of blacks from infringement
by state action. Salmon
Portland Chase
died on 7th May, 1873.
(1)
Salmon
P. Chase, letter to
Frederick
Douglass
(4th May, 1850)
I should be glad to learn your views as to the probable destiny of
the Afro-American race in this country. My own opinion has been that
the black and white races, adapted to different latitudes and countries
by the influences of climate and other circumstances, operating through
many generations, would never have been brought together in one community,
except under the constraint of force, such as that of slavery. While,
therefore, I have been utterly opposed to any discrimination in legislation
against our coloured population, and have uniformly maintained the
equal rights of all men to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I have always looked forward to the separation of the races.
(2)
Carl
Schurz
first visited Washington
in 1854. He described seeing Salmon P. Chase in the Senate in his
autobiography published in 1906.
Salmon
P. Chase, the anti-slavery Senator from Ohio, was one of the stateliest
figures in the Senate. Tall, broad-shouldered, and proudly erect,
his features strong and regular and his forehead broad, high and clear,
he was a picture of intelligence, strength, courage and dignity. He
looked as you would wish a statesman to look. His speech did not borrow
any charm from rhetorical decoration, but was clear and strong in
argument, vigorous and determined in tone, elevated in sentiment,
and of that frank ingenuousness which commands respect and inspires
confidence.
(3)
Abraham Lincoln, speech in Washington
(11th April, 1865)
It
is unsatisfactory to some to know that the elective franchise is not
given to the coloured man. I would myself prefer that it were now
conferred on intelligent coloured men, and on those who serve our
cause as soldiers.
(4)
Salmon P. Chase, letter to
Abraham Lincoln in response to his speech
made in Washington two days earlier (13th April, 1865)
Once
I should have been, if not satisfied, partially, at least, contented
with suffrage for the intelligent and those who have been soldiers;
now I am convinced that universal suffrage is demanded by sound policy
and impartial justice. I shall return to Washington in a day or two,
and perhaps it will not be disagreeable to you to have the whole subject
talked over.
(5)
Report
on the work of the Freemen's Bureau
that was signed by Salmon P. Chase and General Oliver
Howard
(August, 1867)
The
abolition of slavery and the establishment of freedom are not the
one and the same thing. The emancipated negroes were not yet really
freemen. Their chains had indeed been sundered by the sword, but the
broken links still hung upon their limbs. The question, "What
shall be done with the negro? agitated the whole country. Some were
in favour of an immediate recognition of their equal and political
rights, and of conceding to them at once all the prerogatives of citizenship.
But only a few advocated a policy so radical, and, at the same time,
generally considered revolutionary, while many, even of those who
really wished well to the negro, doubted his capacity for citizenship,
his willingness to labour for his own support, and the possibility
of his forming, as a freeman, an integral part of the Republic.
The idea of admitting the freedmen to an equal participation in civil
and political rights was not entertained in any part of the South.
In most of the States they were not allowed to sit on juries, or even
to testify in any case in which white men were parties. They were
forbidden to own or bear firearms, and thus were rendered defenceless
against assault. Vagrant laws were passed, often relating only to
the negro, or, where applicable in terms of both white and black,
seldom or never enforced except against the latter.
In some States any court - that is, any local Justice of the Peace
- could bind out to a white person any negro under age, without his
own consent or that of his parents? The freedmen were subjected to
the punishments formerly inflicted upon slaves. Whipping especially,
when in some States disfranchised the party subjected to it, and rendered
him for ever infamous before the law, was made the penalty for the
most trifling misdemeanor.
These legal disabilities were not the only obstacles placed in the
path of the freed people. Their attempts at education provoked the
most intense and bitter hostility, as evincing a desire to render
themselves equal to the whites. Their churches and schoolhouses were
in many places destroyed by mobs. In parts of the country remote from
observation, the violence and cruelty engendered by slavery found
free scope for exercise upon the defenceless negro. In a single district,
in a single month, forty-nine cases of violence, ranging from assault
and battery to murder, in which whites were the aggressors and blacks
the sufferers, were reported.
General Howard issued his first order defining the general policy
of the Bureau on the 19th day of May 1865, at once appointed his Assistant
Commissioners, and entered upon the work assigned to him. In this
work he was greatly embarrassed by the lack of any governmental appropriations
for his Bureau, by the opposition in the South to any measures looking
towards the elevation of the freed people, and by the very widespread
distrust in the North of their capacity for improvement.
What is to be the effect of emancipation upon the industry of the
community at large, upon the amount of production, upon the intelligence
and morals of the people, upon commerce, trade, manufactures, agriculture
and population, can as yet be only a matter of conjecture; and yet
such and so marked even in these respects have been the results already,
that probably few, if any, of the intelligent portion of the Southern
people would desire to see slavery re-established. Wherever the planter
has honestly and intelligently accommodated himself to the system
of free-labour, freedom has reaped a larger harvest than ever was
garnered by slavery.
But the effect upon the freed people is no longer a matter of question.
They have refuted slavery's accusation of idleness and incapacity.
They have not only worked faithfully and well under white employers,
but, when facilities have been accorded them, have proved themselves
capable of independent and even self-organized labour. They are not
generally extravagant or wasteful. The church and the schoolhouse
are alike crowded with eager, expectant people, the rapidity of whose
development under these fostering influences has amazed both foes
and friends, and contributed more, perhaps, than any other cause to
mitigate the prejudice which survived slavery, and make the work of
enfranchisement complete.
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