C: Chandler through Creswell

See below for annotated biographies of Radical Republicans. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

CHANDLER, Zachariah, 1813-1879, statesman.  Mayor of Detroit, 1851-1852.  U.S. Senator 1857-1975, 1879.  Secretary of the Interior, 1875-1877. Active in Underground Railroad in Detroit area.  Helped organize the Republican Party in 1854.  Introduced Confiscation Bill in Senate, July 1861.  Was a leading Radical Republican Senator.  Chandler was a vigorous opponent of slavery.  He opposed the Dred Scott U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Fugitive Slave Law.  In 1858, opposed the admission of Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton Constitution.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 574-575; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 618; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 618:

CHANDLER, ZACHARIAH (December 10, 1813- November 1, 1879), senator, Republican boss, was born at Bedford, New Hampshire. His father, Samuel Chandler, was a descendant of William Chandler, who emigrated from England and settled at Roxbury, Massachusetts, about 1637 (George Chandler, The Chandler Family, 1872, p. 818). His mother, Margaret Orr, was the oldest daughter of Colonel John Orr. He received a common school education, and in 1833 removed to Detroit, where he opened a general store, and eventually through trade, banking, and land speculation became one of the richest men in Michigan. On December 10, 1844, he was married to Letitia Grace Douglass of New York. He made campaign speeches for Taylor in 1848, served for a year (1851-52) as mayor of Detroit, and in 1852 offered himself as a Whig candidate for governor and was defeated. He was one of the signers of the call for the meeting at Jackson, Michigan, July 6, 1854, which launched the Republican party, and "the leading spirit" of the Buffalo convention called to aid free state migration to Kansas (George F. Hoar, Autobiography, 1903, II, 75). In 1856 he was a delegate to the Republican national convention at Pittsburgh, and was made a member of the national committee of the party. In January 1857, he was elected to the United States Senate in succession to Lewis Cass [q.v.], and held his seat until March 3, 1875. In the Senate he allied himself with the radical anti-slavery element of the Republicans, although hostile to Charles Sumner, and was later recognized as one of the most outspoken enemies of secession. From March 1861 to 1875 he was chairman of the Committee on Commerce, to whose jurisdiction the appropriations for rivers and harbors, later known as the "pork barrel," were assigned. At the outbreak of the Civil War he exerted himself to raise and equip the first regiment of Michigan volunteers. He was a member of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War; initiated acts for the collection and administration of abandoned property in the South (March 3, 1863) and for the further regulation of intercourse with the insurrectionary states (July 2, 1864); bitterly denounced the incompetence of McClellan in a speech at Jackson, Michigan (July 6, 1862) which he regarded as one of his most important public services; supported the proposal of a national bank; voted for greenbacks as an emergency measure while strongly resisting inflation of the currency; and approved of the Reconstruction acts although criticizing them as in some respects too lax. His aggressive Republicanism was matched by his clamorous jingoism in regard to Great Britain; on January 15, 1866, he offered a resolution, which was tabled, for non-intercourse with Great Britain for its refusal to entertain the Alabama claims, and in 1867, when the question of recognizing Abyssinia as a belligerent in its war with Great Britain was under consideration, he submitted (November 29) a resolution "recognizing to Abyssinia the same rights which the British had recognized to the Confederacy" (Congressional Globe, 40 Congress, 1 Session, p. 810). He was one of the promoters and most influential members of the Republican Congressional Committee, serving as its chairman in the campaigns of 1868 and 1876. From the beginning of his senatorial career he used his Federal patronage to strengthen his political power, and by methods openly partisan and despotic if not actually corrupt obtained control of the Republican machine in Michigan, and was for years the undisputed boss of his party in the state. The Democratic landslide of 1874, however, broke his power, and he was defeated for reelection to the Senate. In October 1875, he became secretary of the interior, retaining the office until the close of Grant's second administration. His reorganization of the department was attended by wholesale dismissals for alleged dishonesty or incompetence. He was again elected to the Senate in February 1879, to fill a vacancy caused by the resignation of Isaac P. Christiancy [q.v.].

[Aside from the Biography Congress Dir. (1913), the Journals of the Senate, the Congressional Globe, and Congressional Record, the chief source is the anonymous Zachariah Chandler: an Outline Sketch of His Life and Public Services (1880), which is supplemented in a number of details by Wilmer C. Harris, Public Life of Zachariah Chandler, 1811-75 (1917), a doctoral dissertation of the University of Chicago.]

W.M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 574-575:

CHANDLER, Zachariah, senator, born in Bedford, New Hampshire, 10 December, 1813; died in Chicago, Illinois, 1 November, 1879. After receiving a common-school education he taught for one winter, at the same time managing his father's farm. He was noted when a youth for physical strength and endurance. It is said that, being offered by his father the choice between a collegiate education and the sum of $1,000, he chose the latter. He removed to Detroit in 1833 and engaged in the dry-goods business, in which he was energetic and successful. He soon became a prominent whig, and was active in support of the so-called “underground railroad,” of which Detroit was an important terminus. His public life began in 1851 by his election as mayor of Detroit. In 1852 he was nominated for governor by the Whigs, and, although his success was hopeless, the large vote he received brought him into public notice. He was active in the organization of the republican party in 1854, and in January, 1857, was elected to the U. S. senate to succeed General Lewis Cass. He made his first important speech on 12 March, 1858, opposing the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution, and continued to take active part in the debates on that and allied questions. In 1858, when Senator Green, of Missouri, had threatened Simon Cameron with an assault for words spoken in debate, Mr. Chandler, with Mr. Cameron and Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, drew up a written agreement, the contents of which were not to be made public till the death of all the signers, but which was believed to be a pledge to resent an attack made on any one of the three. On 11 February, 1861, he wrote the famous so-called “blood letter” to Governor Blair, of Michigan. It received its name from the sentence, “Without a little blood-letting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.” This letter was widely quoted through the country, and was acknowledged and defended by Mr. Chandler on the floor of the senate. Mr. Chandler was a firm friend of President Lincoln, though he was more radical than the latter in his ideas, and often differed with the president as to matters of policy. When the first call for troops was made, he assisted by giving money and by personal exertion. He regretted that 500,000 men had not been called for instead of 75,000, and said that the short-term enlistment was a mistake. At the beginning of the extra session of congress in July, 1861, he introduced a sweeping confiscation-bill, thinking that stern measures would deter wavering persons from taking up arms against the government; but it was not passed in its original form, though congress ultimately adopted his views. On 16 July, 1862, Mr. Chandler vehemently assailed General McClellan in the senate, although he was warned that such a course might be politically fatal. He was, however, returned to the senate in 1863, and in 1864 actively aided in the re-election of President Lincoln. He was again elected to the senate in 1869. During all of his terms he was chairman of the committee on commerce and a member of other important committees, including that on the conduct of the war. In October, 1874, President Grant tendered him the post of secretary of the interior, to fill the place made vacant by the resignation of Columbus Delano, and he held this office until President Grant's retirement, doing much to reform abuses in the department. He was chairman of the Republican national committee in 1876, and took an active part in the presidential campaign of that year. He was again elected to the senate in February, 1879, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Isaac P. Christiancy, who had succeeded him four years before. On 2 March, 1879, he made a speech in the senate denouncing Jefferson Davis, which brought him into public notice again, and he was regarded in his own state as a possible presidential candidate. He went to Chicago on 31 October, 1879, to deliver a political speech, and was found dead in his room on the following morning. During the greater portion of his life Mr. Chandler was engaged in large business enterprises, from which he realized a handsome fortune. He was a man of commanding appearance, and possessed an excellent practical judgment, great energy, and indomitable perseverance. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 574-575.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 81.

ZACHARIAH CHANDLER is a native of Bedford, N. H., and was born Dec. 10, 1813. He received an academical Her education in addition to the usual school training given to New England boys.

As is common with such boys, he worked upon the farm until sixteen or seventeen years old. In the course of his youth he taught school two or three winters; and in 1833, when twenty-two years of age, he emigrated to Michigan, and engaged in mercantile business in Detroit. The country was then new, and Detroit was a town of but about 4,000 inhabitants.

Mr. Chandler is one of those fortunate men of the West who have grown up with the country. He commenced, at first, a small retail dry-goods store, but was soon enabled by a prosperous trade to enlarge his business to a wholesale trade, and extended, in course of time, his operations to all parts of the surrounding country, so that there were few of all the retail dealers in Northern and Western Michigan, Northern Ohio and Indiana, and in Western Canada, who were not numbered among his customers.

Mr. Chandler was a Whig in politics, but seems never to have sought for political honor, choosing, rather, to set the example of accepting office as an incident of the success of his party, than to strive for it as a primary object. His first official position was that of Mayor of Detroit, to which office he was elected in 1851. Here he served acceptably, and the following year was nominated for Governor of the State. His strong anti-slavery convictions, however, were brought into the canvass, and he preferred to be what he deemed right, than to be Governor. In denouncing the institution of slavery as the great curse of the nation, he lost the election. The progress of anti-slavery sentiment in Michigan was such that in 1856 he was elected to the Senate of the United States for six years, and took his seat on the 4th of March of that year.

During the important period of his first term in the United States Senate, Mr. Chandler was identified with all the leading measures of Congress for a general system of internal improvements—for preventing a further increase of slave territory, and for the overthrow of the powerful domination of the slave power, which had usurped the control of the nation. He was one of the few Northern men in the Senate at that time who foresaw the tendency of events, and that the country was drifting onward to a terrible war.

Mr. Chandler opposed all the so-called compromise measures of the South, as the virtual surrender of the liberties of the people. In all the Senatorial contests of that period, he stands on record as the unflinching defender of liberty, and the fearless advocate of the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence. These great doctrines he maintained by speech and vote in the Senate and before the people ; and if an appeal to arms should be necessary, he welcomed the arbitration of war.

“ The country," writes one of Mr. Chandler's admirers, “ does not now appreciate how much it owes to his Roman firmness. The people have become too much accustomed to regard him as one of the great fortresses of their liberties, which no artillery could breach, and whose parapet no storming column could ever reach, that they have never given themselves a thought as to the disastrous consequences which might have followed on many occasions had he spoken or voted otherwise than he did. When did he ever pander to position or complain of being overslaughed by his party? Yet no man ever did braver work for a party, and got less consideration than he.”

As the war came on, and seemed for a time to be prosecuted with indifferent success, particularly in the East, Mr. Chandler, with a multitude of other good men, chafed under what he considered the dilatory and unskillful management of army operations. He was prompt to discern and denounce the want of generalship in McClellan. His speech on this subject, made in the Senate, July 7, 1862—soon after the defeat of the army of the Potomac—was bold and incisive. “The country,” he exclaimed," is in peril; and from whom-by whom? And who is responsible? As I have said, there are two men to-day who are responsible for the present position of the army of the Potomac. The one is the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, whom I believe to be a patriot—whom I believe to be honest, and honestly earnest to crush out and put down this rebellion; the other is George B. McClellan, General of the Army of the Potomac, of whom I will not express a belief. * * Either denounce Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, whom I believe to be a pure and honest man, or George B. McClellan, who has defeated your army. He took it to Fortress Monroe, used it guarding rebel property, sacrificed the half of it in the swamps and marshes before Yorktown and the Chickahominy, and finally brought up the right wing with only thirty thousand men, and held it there till it whipped the overwhelming forces of the enemy, repulsed them three times, and then it was ordered to retreat, and after that, the enemy fought like demons, as you and I knew they would, a retreating, defeated army. Tell me where were the left and center of our army? Tell me, where were the forces in front of our left and center? Sir, twenty thousand men from the left and the center to reinforce Porter on the morning after his savage and awful fight, would have sent the enemy in disgrace and disaster into Richmond.”

Mr. Chandler, as we have seen, had no patience with any half-heartedness, or dilatory efforts in the prosecution of the war against the rebellion. He was for striking decided and heavy blows in order to crush the power of the enemy, and it was under the influence of such sentiments that he, in his place in the Senate, proposed a special “ Committee on the Conduct of the War.” This Committee was at once ordered. Mr. Chandler declined the chairmanship of the Committee, but was one of its most energetic members; and his zealous and faithful efforts, in connection with his associates, soon resulted in the removal of McClellan from his command. Equally active was he throughout the war in promoting its efficacy, looking after the interests of the soldiers, and encouraging all measures tending to a successful issue of the great struggle; a struggle he knew it would prove to be, in the very commencement of the revolt; and he then, in a letter addressed to the Governor of Michigan, intimated that blood must flow if the Government was to be preserved. Several years afterwards, when taunted in the Senate by a Democratic Senator in reference to this letter on “blood-letting,” Mr. Chandler responded as follows: “It is not the first time that I have been arraigned on that indictment of blood-letting.' I was first arraigned for it upon this floor by the traitor John C. Breckenridge; and after I gave him his answer, he went out into the rebel ranks and fought against our flag. I was arraigned by another Senator from Kentucky, and by other traitors on this floor. I expect to be arraigned again. I wrote the letter, and I stand by the letter, and what was in it. What was the position of the country when that letter was written? The Democratic party, as an organization, had arrayed itself against this Government; a Democratic traitor in the Presidential chair, and a Democratic traitor in every department of this Government; Democratic traitors preaching treason upon this floor, and preaching treason in the hall of the other House; Democratic traitors in your army and navy; Democratic traitors controlling every branch of this Government; your flag was fired upon, and there was no response; the Democratic party had ordained that this Government should be overthrown; and I, a Senator from the State of Michigan, wrote to the Governor of that State,' unless you are prepared to shed blood for the preservation of this great Government, the Government is overthrown. That is all there was to that letter. That I said, and that I say again; and I tell that Senator, if he is prepared to go down in history with the Democratic traitors who then co-operated with him, I am prepared to go down on that blood-letting 'letter, and I stand by the record as then made.”



CHASE, Salmon Portland, 1808-1873, statesman, Governor of Ohio, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, abolitionist, member, Liberty Party, Free Soil Party, Anti-Slavery Republican Party.  “A slave is a person held, as property, by legalized force, against natural right.” – Chase.

“The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character.  It did not make it a national institution… Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you?...Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery?  It is, fellow citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government.  We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.”

“Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated.  Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability… It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.”

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 19, 30, 34, 61, 70-73, 76-78, 84, 123, 124, 177, 178, 209, 220, 225, 226, 228, 247, 248, 259; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 142, 176, 187, 197-198, 229, 246; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 4-5, 8-9, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 33-36, 61-64, 67, 68, 70-72, 76, 87, 89, 94, 118, 129, 136, 156, 165, 166, 168-169, 177, 187, 191, 193, 195-196, 224, 228, 248; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 384-394; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 46, 56, 58, 136, 173, 298, 353-354, 421, 655-656; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 585-588; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 34; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 4, p. 739; Hart, Albert Bushnell, Salmon Portland Chase, 1899).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 34:

CHASE, SALMON PORTLAND (January 13, 1808-May 7, 1873), statesman, secretary of the treasury under Lincoln, and chief justice during Reconstruction, was born at Cornish, New Hampshire. His line can be traced through nine generations to Thomas Chase of Chesham, England, and through six generations to the American emigrant, Aquila Chase, who settled at Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640. From Newbury the Chases moved to Sutton, Massachusetts, and later to Cornish, a frontier community on the Connecticut River. The Cornish farmer, Ithamar Chase, father of Salmon, held various state and local offices and was in politics a Federalist; the mother, Janette Ralston, was a woman of vigorous Scotch ancestry. Salmon was the eighth of eleven children. In his childhood the family moved to Keene, New Hampshire, where Ithamar became a tavern keeper. The boy received his early training in the Keene district school and in a private school kept by a Mr. Dunham at Windsor, Vermont.

The death of his father occurred when the boy was nine years old, and shortly after this he was placed under the stern guidance of his uncle, Philander Chase [q.v.], bishop of Ohio, a vigorous pioneer leader in the Protestant Episcopal Church. For two years, the boy lived with the bishop at Worthington, near Columbus, Ohio, entering the church school which the bishop conducted. His days at Worthington were devoted to classical studies, and he was at this time confirmed in the Episcopal Church; but his uncle's hope of making him an Episcopal clergyman was not realized. When Bishop Chase became president of Cincinnati College in the fall of 1821 Salmon entered the college; and a very serious student he seems to have been, to judge by his own statement that he had little to do with college pranks but spent much time "in reading, either under the bishop's direction, or at my own will." "I used to meditate a great deal," he added, "on religious topics; for my sentiments of religious obligation and . . . responsibility were profound" (Schuckers, p. 16). Leaving Cincinnati after less than a year, he spent some months in preparatory study, and then entered as a junior in Dartmouth College, from which he graduated without marked distinction in 1826. He then solicited the influence of another uncle, Dudley Chase, United States senator from Vermont, for a government clerkship; but, this being refused, he conducted a school for boys in Washington, having at one time under his charge sons of all but one of the members of John Quincy Adams's cabinet. In Washington and Baltimore he frequently visited in the cultured home of William Wirt [q.v.]; and his otherwise somber diary glows with youthful romance and sprightliness as it records the evenings spent in the company of the charming Wirt daughters.

Having determined upon his career, he read law under the nominal supervision of Wirt; and with scant legal preparation he was admitted to the bar on December 14, 1829. The following year he settled in Cincinnati, where in addition to legal duties he was soon occupied with anti-slavery activities and with various literary ventures. In 1830 he assisted in organizing the Cincinnati Lyceum which presented a series of lectures, and became himself a lecturer and magazine contributor. In his lecture-essay on the "Life and Character of Henry Brougham" (North American Review, July 1831) his reforming instinct was manifest in his pointed comments on legal abuses of the time. While waiting for clients the lawyer-author sought unsuccessfully to establish a literary magazine for the West, and then turned his energies into the compilation of the Statutes of Ohio (3 volumes, Cinn., 1833-35), a standard work which required heavy labor in the preparation and proved most serviceable to lawyers.

The events of Chase's private life are intimately related in his diary and family memoranda. Three marriages are recorded: the first to Katherine Jane Garniss (March 4, 1834), who died December 1, 1835; the second to Eliza Ann Smith (September 26, 1839), who died September 29, 1845; and the third to Sarah Bella Dunlop Ludlow (November 6, 1846), who died January 13, 1852. Six daughters were born to him, of whom four died when very young. The births and deaths of his children, and the loss of his wives, are recorded in his diary with a revealing tenderness and a grief which takes refuge in religion. Two children reached maturity: the brilliant Katherine, daughter of his second wife, who became the wife of Governor William Sprague of Rhode Island, and Janette, daughter of his third wife, who became Mrs. William S. Hoyt of New York City.

Despite scornful opposition, Chase prominently defended escaping slaves, and was called the "attorney-general for runaway negroes." He labored unsuccessfully to obtain the release of Matilda, a slave woman befriended by J. G. Birney; and when Birney himself was indicted for harboring a fugitive, Chase carried the case to the supreme court of Ohio, where he made a vigorous argument, contending that Matilda, having been voluntarily brought into a free state by her master, became free (Birney vs. Ohio, 8 Ohio, 230). Unwilling to commit itself to the Chase doctrine with which it was evidently impressed, the court directed the dismissal of the indictment against Birney on merely technical grounds. On another occasion Chase defended Vanzandt (the original of John Van Trompe in Uncle Tom's Cabin), prosecuted for aiding the escape of slaves from Kentucky. This case was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and in its argument Chase was associated with William H. Seward, both giving their services without compensation. Chase contended that the federal government under the Constitution had "nothing whatever to do, directly, with slavery"; that "no claim to persons as property can be maintained under any ... law of the United States"; and that the fugitive-slave act of 1793 was unconstitutional. The case was lost for his client; but it did much to bring Chase into prominence.

In politics Chase subordinated party interests to the central issue of slavery. Though formerly a Whig, he joined the Liberty party after the nomination of Birney in 1840; and in various of the conventions of this party, state and national, he was an outstanding leader. The resolutions of the Buffalo convention of August 1843 came chiefly from his pen; and the Southern and Western Liberty Convention at Cincinnati in 1845 (designed as a rallying point for anti-slavery sentiment in the Middle West) was mainly his work. He was active in the Free Soil movement of 1848, presiding at the Buffalo convention, and drafting in part the platform which declared for "no more slave states and no more slave territory." The power of the new party in the nation at large was shown by the defeat of Cass, whose choice had angered the anti-slavery Democrats; and in the Ohio legislature the Free Soilers used their balance of power in alliance with the Democrats to elect Chase to the United States Senate (February 22, 1849). By this time he had come to realize the weakness of a party grounded on a purely antislavery basis, and was turning his attention to the possibility of capturing the Democratic party for the anti-slavery cause.

Chase entered upon his senatorial career at the time of the mid-century crisis over the slavery question. Unwilling to temporize on this issue, and resenting the Southern leanings of the Democratic party, he opposed the compromise measures of 1850; and in 1854 he issued his "Appeal of the Independent Democrats," denouncing Douglas 's Nebraska bill as a "criminal betrayal of precious rights," warning the people that the "dearest interests of freedom and the Union" were in "imminent peril," and imploring all Christians to protest against "this enormous crime." In this "Appeal" we have the key-note of Chase's senatorial policy-a policy of writing slavery restrictions into national law wherever possible, and of paving the way for a new Democratic party that would be free from pro-slavery "domination." He introduced an amendment to Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska bill affirming the right of the people of a territory to prohibit slavery if they wished (as seemed to be implied in Douglas's "popular sovereignty" doctrine); but the amendment was emphatically rejected.

In the altered political horizon produced by the dissolution of the Whig organization and the rise of the Republican party, Chase naturally cast his lot with the Republicans. Meeting in Columbus in July 1855 the new party (perhaps best designated as an "anti-Nebraska" party) nominated Chase as governor; and in a triangular contest in which he had to combat the old Whigs and the old-line Democrats, while suffering embarrassment from his Know-Nothing friends, he was victorious. In 1857 he was reelected as Republican governor; and by this time he had become committed to the new party. As governor his administration was embarrassed by interstate conflicts over the fugitive-slave question, by a threat of Governor Wise of Virginia to invade Ohio in order to suppress alleged attempts to rescue John Brown (to which Chase sent a vigorous reply), and by corruption in the office of state treasurer. One of his achievements as governor was a reorganization of the militia system which added greatly to the state's military preparedness in 1861.

In 1856 Chase was an avowed aspirant for the Republican presidential nomination; but he did not even command the support of the full Ohio delegation, and his position at Philadelphia was much weaker than that of Fremont. Again in 1860 his wide prestige and his consistent record of anti-slavery leadership caused him to be prominently mentioned for the presidency; but his expected strength did not materialize in the convention at Chicago, since the Ohio delegation was again divided, and the firmness of his outspoken opinions caused him to be rejected from the standpoint of "availability." With only 49 votes out of 465 on the first ballot, and with dwindling support as the voting proceeded, his friends gave up the struggle in his behalf; and when the break for Lincoln became apparent, they threw their votes to the Illinois candidate, thus putting Chase in favor with the incoming administration.

When Virginia, in an effort to avert impending war, called the Peace Convention at Washington in February 1861 Chase attended as one of the Ohio commissioners; but he refused to compromise as to slavery extension, and his speeches in the convention, though disclaiming any intention to invade state rights, probably tended to confirm the Southerners' worst fears.

Chase was again chosen United States senator in 1860, but resigned to become Lincoln's secretary of the treasury, which office he held from March 1861 until July 1864. As director of the country's finances during the Civil War it was his task to borrow money from reluctant bankers and investors; to labor with congressional committees in the formulation of financial legislation; to devise remedial measures for a deranged currency; to make forecasts and prepare estimates in days when financial responsibility was diffused and scientific budgets were unknown; to trim the sails of fiscal policy to political winds; to market the huge loans which constituted the chief reliance of an improvident government; and to supervise the enforcement of unusual laws, such as that which provided for the seizure of captured and abandoned property in the South. The low state of public credit was reflected in the suspension of specie payments at the close of the year 1861; the high interest rate (over seven per cent) on government loans; the marketing of the bonds at a discount; the difficulty of obtaining loans even on these unfavorable terms and the height and instability of the premium on gold. Chase was fortunate in having the valuable assistance of Jay Cooke who, as "financier of the Civil War," performed the same kind of service in marketing bonds that Robert Morris and Benjamin Franklin did for the Revolutionary War. When the bill to provide for immense issues of paper money with the legal tender feature was under consideration in Congress, Chase at first disapproved, endeavoring to obtain support among bankers for his national banking system; but when this support failed he grew non-committal and later gave a reluctant approval. The country was thus saddled with the "greenback" problem without such active opposition as his judgment would have dictated. The national banking system, first established by law on February 25, 1863, was originated by Chase, who formally submitted his proposal in December 1862 in order to increase the sale of government bonds, improve the currency by providing reliable bank notes backed by government security, and suppress the notorious evils of state bank notes. This was perhaps his most important piece of constructive statesmanship.

On the major questions of the war Chase was called upon, as a member of the President's official family, to assist in the formulation of policies. He favored, in a qualified manner, the provisioning of Fort Sumter; urged the confiscation of "rebel" property; approved the admission of West Virginia (the legality and wisdom of which was doubted by certain members of the cabinet); gave reluctant consent to the surrender of Mason and Slidell; urged McClellan's dismissal; approved Lincoln's suspension of the habeas corpus privilege, and, in general gave support to those measures which were directed toward a vigorous prosecution of the war. The closing paragraph in Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, invoking the "gracious favor of Almighty God," was penned by him; but he considered the President's policy of liberation weak, and did not approve the exceptions of whole states and large districts from the proclamation as issued. Chase never had that easy comradeship with Lincoln which Seward had; and the President never got on well with his minister of finance. To Chase Lincoln seemed to lack force; and he frequently complained of the chief's lax administration. He spoke with disparagement of the "so-called cabinet," considered its meetings "useless," and privately expressed distrust of the President's whole manner of conducting the public business. Often he was at odds with his colleagues, and many difficulties arose because of the presence of both Seward and Chase in the President's household-Seward the easy-going opportunist, and Chase the unbending apostle of righteousness and reform. In December 1862 the most serious cabinet crisis of Lincoln's administration arose when, in a Republican caucus of the upper House, certain radical senators, partisans of Chase, expressed lack of confidence in the President and demanded a "reconstruction" of the cabinet, by which was intended primarily the resignation of Seward. One of the senators thus wrote of the designs of the Chase men: "Their game was to drive all the cabinet out then force upon him [the President] the recall of Mr. Chase as Premier, and form a cabinet of ultra men around him" (Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, 1925, I, 604). Lincoln handled the situation by arranging a meeting in which the intriguing senators were asked to give open expression to their complaints in the presence of the cabinet. In this meeting Chase was placed in a very embarrassing position. With Lincoln and his colleagues in the room he felt impelled to speak favorably of cabinet harmony in the presence of senators to whom he is said to have remarked that "Seward exercised a back stair and malign influence upon the President, and thwarted all the measures of the Cabinet" (Ibid., p. 603). As a result of these bickerings both Seward and Chase resigned; Lincoln promptly refused to accept either resignation, and matters proceeded as before, except that, as the months passed, Chase's official position became more and more difficult. He honestly differed with Lincoln on essential matters; chafed at the President's inaction and "looseness"; became increasingly impatient at the slow progress of the war, and probably came to believe in his own superior ability to guide the ship of state. Though not quite disloyal to the President, he nevertheless became the center of an anti-Lincoln movement while retaining his position in the cabinet.

Early in 1864 many zealous Unionists, including Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, William Cullen Bryant, and Theodore Tilton, had reached the conclusion that Lincoln's administration was a failure; and a congressional committee of which Senator Pomeroy of Kansas was chairman sounded the call for Chase in a paper known as the "Pomeroy Circular," which was at first distributed confidentially but soon found its way into the press. The paper declared that it was practically impossible to reelect Lincoln; that his "manifest tendency toward temporary expedients" would become stronger during a second term, and that Chase united more of the needful qualities than any other available candidate. Chase, it appears, did not know of the circular until he saw it in a Washington paper; but his criticisms of the administration, as well as his willingness to rely upon the good judgment of those who thought that "the public good" would be promoted by the use of his name, were well known. An element of bitterness was injected into the Chase boom when General Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, delivered an abusive speech against Chase in Congress in April 1864; and the friendliness of the President toward Blair was misconstrued, adding a further strain to the relations between Chase and Lincoln.

When the publication of the Pomeroy circular required an explanation, Chase wrote Lincoln of his entirely passive attitude toward the movement in his behalf, assured the President of his respect and affection, and offered to resign his secretaryship if the President should desire it. Lincoln's reply indicated that he had not been offended and that he desired no change in the treasury department. The Chase movement soon collapsed, partly from mismanagement, and partly for the lack of any solid foundation. The President's party managers played a trump card by setting an early date (June 7) for the Republican or "Union" nominating convention at Baltimore; and when a caucus professing to speak for the Union members of the Ohio legislature indorsed the President, Chase withdrew his candidacy.

He did not long remain in the cabinet. After various differences over appointments, he submitted for the office of assistant treasurer at New York the name of M. B. Field whom Lincoln found unacceptable because of influential opposition in the state. When Lincoln suggested that the appointment would subject him to "still greater strain," Chase replied that he had thought only of fitness in his suggested appointments, referred to the "embarrassment and difficulty" of his position, and, as on various other occasions, presented his resignation. Chase's diary indicates that he could have been induced to remain in the cabinet (Warden, post, p. 618); but, somewhat to his chagrin, Lincoln accepted the resignation, and he unexpectedly found himself out of office. "Of all I have said in commendation of your ability and fidelity," wrote the President, "I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in our official relations which it seems cannot be overcome or longer sustained consistently with the public service."

In the depressing summer of 1864 certain factors seemed to be working for a revival of the Chase candidacy. Distrust of the President, combined with anger at his veto of the Wade-Davis reconstruction bill and depression due to the unfavorable military situation, caused certain anti-Lincoln men to launch a movement for another nominating convention "to concentrate the Union strength on some one candidate who commands the confidence of the country" (New York Sun, June 30, 1889, p. 3). The plan contemplated that Lincoln, renominated in June, should be induced to withdraw. On August 18, 1864, Horace Greeley wrote: "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. He cannot be elected. And we must have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow" (Ibid.). Charles Sumner approved the movement; and various men who had been active in the earlier effort toward Chase's candidacy, notably Henry Winter Davis, gave it support. Whitelaw Reid, who was very close to Chase, induced the Cincinnati Gazette to come out for Lincoln's withdrawal. Chase's own attitude was at first receptive and non-committal. In September, however, the entire political situation changed with the fall of Atlanta and Republican success in Vermont and Maine. The proposed convention was not held; the whole "radical" movement was abandoned; its sponsors came out for the Baltimore candidates, and Chase himself participated in the campaign for Lincoln, making various speeches in the West.

When Chief Justice Taney died, October 12, 1864, Lincoln's choice fell upon Chase in spite of misgivings as to the former secretary's presidential ambitions-or, as some thought, the President may have felt that he was putting a perpetual candidate in an office where presumably his ambition would be silenced. The years of Chase's chief justiceship fell during the turbulent period of Reconstruction. Occupied with problems of unusual complexity in his judicial capacity, he by no means held aloof from political controversies; and the most determined efforts to put him in the presidency came while he wore the toga of judicial office. Though these years witnessed the fruition of cherished hopes in the eradication of slavery and the restoration of the Union, the satisfaction he might have felt in the accomplishment of these objects was clouded by post-war excesses and corruption which put him out of tune with the party of his later choice, while in his own person he suffered disappointment, affront, and injured dignity. He was probably the least happy of our chief justices. At the time of Lincoln's assassination his life was considered in danger and he was protected by military guard. On April 15, 1865, he administered the presidential oath to Johnson; and it seemed for a time that he might become a sort of mentor to the new president. On various occasions he approached Johnson with advice on Reconstruction policies, at times even drafting public statements to be delivered or issued by the President. Warmly advocating negro suffrage, and favoring the radical policy of Reconstruction, he started in May 1865 on an extended Southern tour which occupied two months and was devoted to confidential investigations concerning conditions in the states lately in "rebellion." At Charleston, South Carolina, and elsewhere he addressed colored audiences, advocating the enfranchisement of their race.

After the war Chase was confronted with the question of reopening federal courts in the South; but he delayed because of the conviction that subordination to the military authorities would be inconsistent with judicial independence; and when at length he did open the United States circuit court at Raleigh, North Carolina, on June 6, 1867, he carefully explained in his address to the bar that this was done only after the habeas corpus privilege had been restored and assurances given that the "military authority [ did] not extend in any respect to the courts of the United States." When planning to reopen the circuit court at Richmond, Virginia, he declined military protection for himself and the court, with the comment: "If I go to Richmond at all, I intend to have no relations with the military, except those which spring from the good-will which subsists between myself and some of the officers" (Warden, post, p. 659).

A painful duty confronting Chase in his capacity as circuit justice was that of presiding at the proposed trial of Jefferson Davis, who, after two years in military custody, was released to the civil authorities in May 1867 and placed under indictment for treason against the United States. The earlier stages of the case cannot be traced here; but on March 26, 1868, in the United States circuit court at Richmond, a grand jury brought in an elaborate indictment against Davis, charging treason under the federal law of 1790, which prescribed the penalty of death. Chase's reluctance to preside at the Davis prosecution may well have explained his repeated postponements in coming to Richmond to hold court. When he did appear he was annoyed by association on the bench with John C. Underwood [q.v.], federal district judge in Virginia, a man whose pronounced anti-Southern prejudices destroyed his judicial impartiality. In December 1868 a motion to quash the indictment was argued before Justices Chase and Underwood, Davis's counsel contending that any prosecution of the Confederate leader for treason would be inconsistent with the fourteenth amendment of the Federal Constitution, in which disability from office-holding, not death, was prescribed for those in Davis's position. Favoring the quashing of the indictment, Chase disagreed with Underwood; the disagreement was certified to the United States Supreme Court; and the Davis case was pending there when, on December 25, 1868, President Johnson issued an unconditional and universal pardon to all who had participated in the "rebellion." The consequent termination of the case, both at Richmond and at Washington, gave genuine relief to Chase (R. F. Nichols, "United States vs. Jefferson Davis,'' American Historical Review, XXXI, 266 ff.).

When the peak of radical fury was reached in the attempt to remove President Johnson, it fell to Chase as chief justice to preside over the Senate sitting as a court of impeachment. The flimsiness of the charges betrayed the whole movement as a partisan attack upon the President because of his opposition to the Stevens-Sumner-Wade policy of Reconstruction; and the great danger was that the judicial character of the whole proceeding would be a mere pretense. Denying that the Senate was a court, the anti-Johnson group sought to subordinate the chief justice as a figurehead, to exclude ordinary rules of evidence, to suppress essential testimony, to deny adequate opportunities for defense, to intimidate individual senators, and to rush the whole proceeding through with railroad speed. Chase, however, refused to accept the role of puppet and effectively asserted his prerogatives as presiding judge. Characteristically, he began by lecturing the Senate for receiving articles of impeachment and framing rules of procedure before being organized as a court. For this he was criticized; and even Warden states that his "hero" erred in this respect; but the question was essentially a judicial one to which the Chief Justice had given earnest study, and his unwillingness to surrender his own functions is more to be admired than censured. He considered himself a part of the court, with the presiding judge's function of seeing that its proceedings from the outset were properly conducted. The Senate radicals were minded to deny him the casting vote; but he successfully defended this right, taking the opportunity, on the occasion of the first tie on a question of adjournment, to announce his vote and declare the tribunal adjourned. He was attacked as a partisan of the President, accused of seeking converts for acquittal, and assailed for playing politics in allowing his name to be used as a candidate for the presidency during the impeachment proceedings. As to the "stories" of rides in which he advised senators on their duty, he himself said that there was a "grain of fact sunk in gallons of falsehood" (Warden, post, p. 696). He did profoundly disapprove of the whole impeachment movement and did not entirely suppress his views; but there is no reason to reject his own statement that he did not seek to influence or convert any one (not even Sprague, his son-in-law), and that until the final vote he had no idea what the result would be.

Chase's incurable ambition for the presidency found its most striking manifestation in 1868, when, after obtaining no notice in the Republican convention, he became the center of a determined boom among the Democrats. Though certain papers, such as the New York Tribune, put forth his name, he made no effort for the Republican nomination. One should perhaps discount his statements in private letters that he would not take the nomination; for he had no chance whatever in that party, whose radical leaders had repudiated him, and whose emotional swing to Grant was irresistible. From the standpoint of party regularity it seemed to many a shocking thing that so prominent a Republican should not only fail to support his party's candidate, but should seek the leadership of the opposing party. For Chase, however, party regularity had never been an imperative motive; he had often described himself as an independent Democrat, and his attitude toward Grant was that of thorough disapproval and lack of confidence. Newspapers and influential leaders began to work for him; and he decided to allow his name to be used. In correspondence and interview he again showed a receptive attitude, and when asked for a public statement he defined his policy, emphasizing universal amnesty and universal suffrage, though realizing that such an attitude would injure his prospects (Schuckers, post, pp. 584-86). In the Democratic convention at New York an active group of Chase managers labored early and late ("Kate" Sprague turning politician and exerting her personal and social influence); and a "Chase platform" was circulated among the delegates. When it came to the voting, however, his platform was rejected; Ohio declared for Seymour of New York; and in an atmosphere of pandemonium Seymour was unanimously chosen for the presidential candidacy, with Chase's factious enemy, Blair, as running mate. In his disappointment Chase bore himself in silence and dignity and gave no countenance to efforts of his friends to obtain Seymour's withdrawal or launch a third-party movement.

Meanwhile the court over which Chase presided was faced by a menacing Congress and subjected to unusual strain in deciding a series of perplexing cases. In the Milligan case (4 Wallace, 2), it was held that military commissions for the trial of citizens are illegal, except where invasion or war actually deposes the civil courts. On the main point of this decision Chase concurred; but he dissented from that portion which held that Congress could not have provided for such trials if it had wished. At various times it seemed that the court would have to decide on the constitutionality of the Reconstruction Acts; but such a result, which would have precipitated an unseemly contest with Congress, was avoided. In Mississippi vs. Johnson (4 Wallace, 475) and Georgia vs. Stanton (6 Wallace, 50), the court refused to enjoin the President or a member of the cabinet from enforcing the Reconstruction Acts. This was in keeping with the court's practise of avoiding political questions. In the McCardle case (6 Wallace, 318), which again involved the legality of Reconstruction legislation, a decision was avoided by an act of Congress which deprived the court of jurisdiction; and the court permitted its functions thus to be limited. Further questions concerning reconstruction were considered in Texas vs. White (7 Wallace, 700), Cummings vs. Missouri (4 Wallace, 277) and Ex parte Garland (4 Wallace, 333). In these controversies the court held the Union to be indissoluble, declared secession a nullity, and denied the validity of test oaths intended to exclude ex-Confederates from officeholding. The application of the Fourteenth Amendment to certain state legislation was considered in the Slaughterhouse Cases (16 Wallace, 36), in which the court refused to set itself up as a censor of state laws or invade the domain of civil rights theretofore belonging to the states. Preferring a broader application of the amendment, Chase dissented from this opinion, whose main doctrine has since been abandoned by the court.

In 1870 Chase delivered the opinion declaring unconstitutional that part of the Legal Tender Act of 1862 which made the "greenbacks" legal tender as to contracts existing at the time the act was passed (Hepburn vs. Griswold, 8 Wallace, 603). As secretary of the treasury he had issued these government notes; and he was now roundly abused for holding them illegal. When the Hepburn decision was reversed in 1871 (Legal Tender Cases, 12 Wallace, 457), Chase dissented.

It appears that Chase would have accepted a presidential nomination by the Liberal Republicans in 1872; but, aside from other factors, the state of his health would have prevented such a nomination. His vote this year was given to Greeley (Schuckers, post, p. 593). On May 7, 1873, he died of a paralytic stroke in New York.

Chase was tall, massive, handsome in feature, and distinguished in figure and bearing. His portraits show a large head, with deep-set, blue-gray eyes, prominent brow, spirited nostrils, and firm lips. He was near-sighted and may have lacked magnetism and approachableness; but there was something in his mien that bespoke a determined will. His religious convictions were genuine and earnest. Reading his diaries we find how he chided himself on his sinfulness; how at times he declined communion from self-distrust; how he was equally disturbed if at other times his unworthiness failed to oppress him; how he repeated psalms while bathing or dressing; how he pursued his Scripture reading and prayer as a pure matter of conscience. He considered it sinful to waste time. Though fond of chess, he foreswore cards and avoided fashionable society. He once described a charming young lady as one with whom he would have fallen in love had she not been "fond of the gay world" and "disinclined to religion," which he valued "more than any earthly possession" (Warden, post, 190). Though he was socially at ease, a sense of humor was denied him; and when telling a story he would usually spoil it. Schuckers speaks of his "modesty"; but others considered him conceited and accessible to flattery. Though hardly the scholar in politics, he was of a literary turn; and in early life he sometimes expressed himself in verse. There are purple patches in his usually grave diaries to which the historian turns with real delight.

Having the "defects of his virtues," he was self-righteous, opinionated, and difficult to work with. Ambition colored all the more prominent phases of his career. That it diminished his usefulness, impaired his dignity, and blinded his judgment as to currents of public opinion, may be conceded; but it did not prompt unworthy bargains nor excessive electioneering. His moral courage was manifest in his opposition in the Cincinnati council to saloon licenses, his defiance of threatened violence, his advocacy of unpopular causes, and his refusal to truckle for the presidency. As war-time minister of finance he resisted alluring opportunities for private gain. Though puritanical, he was not a fanatic. His anti-slavery activities were held within bounds; and he never affiliated with the Garrison or Phillips type of abolitionist. The antagonism between him and Wade was of long standing; and he disliked the excesses of the radical school of Reconstruction while partly approving its program. His mental operations were steady rather than rapid; his public statements precise and devoid of verbiage. As a speaker he commanded attention rather by conviction and intellectual force than by the orator's art. His opinions as chief justice were characterized by a practical emphasis upon main principles rather than by brilliance or fondness for legal lore.

[Portions of Chase's elaborate diaries and letters have been published in Robert B. Warden, Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (1874), in J. W. Schuckers, Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (1874), and in the Annual Report, American Historical Association, 1902, volume II. The last mentioned volume includes some interesting letters from Chase to Sumner and a large number of letters from George S. Denison, who, as treasury official at New Orleans during the Civil War, wrote in full concerning conditions in Louisiana. The bulk of the original manuscript of the diary, together with letters and miscellaneous material, is to be found in the library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society at Philadelphia; and another large collection of Chase manuscripts (over one hundred volumes) is deposited in the division of manuscripts of the Library of Congress The biographical work by Warden is garrulous, extravagantly eulogistic, and of negligible importance, except as a source book; that of Schuckers, though of somewhat more value, is far from satisfactory. The short volume by A. B. Hart in the American Statesmen series (1899), though not free from error, is the best biography. The amusing campaign biography by J. T. Trowbridge, The Ferry Boy and the Financier (1864), is based in part upon a series of autobiographical letters written by Chase himself; but Chase's recollections were often dim, and Trowbridge drew freely upon his own fancy. A series of letters bearing upon the movement in 1864 to displace Lincoln in favor of Chase appeared under the title "Unwritten History" in the New York Sun, June 30, 1889. The following titles may also be noted: Donn Piatt, Memories of the Men Who Saved the Union (1887); Arthur M. Schlesinger, "Salmon Portland Chase, Undergraduate and Pedagogue," in Ohio Archaeology. and Historical Quarterly, volume XXVIII, no. 2 (1910); Norton S. Townshend, "Salmon P. Chase" (Ibid., volume I, 1887); Elbridge G. Spaulding, A Resource of War: History of the Legal Tender Paper Money Issued During the Great Rebellion (1869); Chas. Warren, The Supreme Court in U. S. History (1922); Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Century (1888).]

J.G.R.

Mr. Chase published a compilation of the statutes of Ohio, with annotations and an historical sketch (3 volumes, Cincinnati, 1832). See “Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase,” by J. W. Schuckers (New York, 1874). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 585-588.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 585-588:

CHASE, Salmon Portland, statesman, born in Cornish, New Hampshire, 13 January, 1808; died in New York city, 7 May, 1873. He was named for his uncle, Salmon, who died in Portland, and he used to say that he was his uncle's monument. He was a descendant in the ninth generation of Thomas Chase, of Chesham, England, and in the sixth of Aquila Chase, who came from England and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640. Salmon Portland was the eighth of the eleven children of Ithamar Chase and his wife Jannette Ralston, who was of Scottish blood. He was born in the house built by his grandfather, which still stands overlooking Connecticut river and in the afternoon shadow of Ascutney mountain. Of his father's seven brothers, three were lawyers, Dudley becoming a U. S. senator; two were physicians; Philander became a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal church; and one, like his father, was a farmer. His earliest teacher was Daniel Breck, afterward a jurist in Kentucky. When the boy was eight years old his parents removed to Keene, where his mother had inherited a little property. This was invested in a glass-factory; but a revision of the tariff, by which the duty on glass was lowered, ruined the business, and soon afterward the father died. Salmon was sent to school at Windsor, and made considerable progress in Latin and Greek. In 1820 his uncle, the bishop of Ohio, offered to take him into his family, and the boy set out in the spring, with his brother and the afterward famous Henry R. Schoolcraft, to make the journey to what was then considered the distant west. They were taken from Buffalo to Cleveland by the “Walk-in-the-Water,” the first steamboat on the great lakes. He spent three years in Worthington and Cincinnati with his uncle, who attended to his education personally till he went to England in 1823, when the boy returned home, the next year entered Dartmouth as a junior, and was graduated in 1826. He at once established a classical school for boys in Washington, D. C., which he conducted with success, at the same time studying law with William Wirt. Mr. Chase gave much of his leisure to light literature, and a poem that was addressed by him to Mr. Wirt's daughters was printed and is still extant. In 1830, having completed his studies, he closed the school, was admitted to the bar in Washington, and settled in Cincinnati, where he soon obtained a large practice. In politics he did not identify himself with either of the great parties; but on one point he was clear from the first: he was unalterably opposed to slavery, and in this sentiment he was confirmed by witnessing the destruction of the “Philanthropist” office by a pro-slavery mob in 1836. In 1837 he defended a fugitive slave woman, claimed under the law of 1793, and took the highest ground against the constitutionality of that law. One of the oldest lawyers in the court-room was heard to remark concerning him: “There is a promising young man who has just ruined himself.” In 1837 Mr. Chase also defended his friend James G. Birney in a suit for harboring a negro slave, and in 1838 he reviewed with great severity a report of the judiciary committee of the state senate, refusing trial by jury to slaves, and in a second suit defended Mr. Birney. When it became evident, after the brief administration of Harrison was over and that of Tyler begun, that no more effective opposition to the encroachments of slavery was to be expected from the Whig than from the Democratic party, a Liberty party was organized in Ohio in December, 1841, and Mr. Chase was foremost among its founders. The address, which was written by Mr. Chase, contained these passages, clearly setting forth the issues of a mighty struggle that was to continue for twenty-five years and be closed only by a bloody war: “The constitution found slavery, and left it, a state institution—the creature and dependant of state law—wholly local in its existence and character. It did not make it a national institution. . . . Why, then, fellow-citizens, are we now appealing to you? . . . Why is it that the whole nation is moved, as with a mighty wind, by the discussion of the questions involved in the great issue now made up between liberty and slavery? It is, fellow-citizens—and we beg you to mark this—it is because slavery has overleaped its prescribed limits and usurped the control of the national government. We ask you to acquaint yourselves fully with the details and particulars belonging to the topics which we have briefly touched, and we do not doubt that you will concur with us in believing that the honor, the welfare, the safety of our country imperiously require the absolute and unqualified divorce of the government from slavery.” Writing of this late in life Mr. Chase said: “Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles and building up the organization of the party of constitutional freedom then inaugurated. Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, and the demands upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed severely all my ability. . . . It seems to me now, on looking back, that I could not help working if I would, and that I was just as really called in the course of Providence to my labors for human freedom as ever any other laborer in the great field of the world was called to his appointed work.” Mr. Chase acted as counsel for so many blacks who were claimed as fugitives that he was at length called by Kentuckians the “attorney-general for runaway negroes,” and the colored people of Cincinnati presented him with a silver pitcher “for his various public services in behalf of the oppressed.” One of his most noted cases was the defence of John Van Zandt (the original of John Van Trompe in “Uncle Tom's Cabin”) in 1842, who was prosecuted for harboring fugitive slaves because he had overtaken a party of them on the road and given them a ride in his wagon. In the final hearing, 1846, William H. Seward was associated with Mr. Chase, neither of them receiving any compensation. 

When the Liberty party, in a national convention held in Buffalo, New York, in 1843, nominated James G. Birney for president, the platform was almost entirely the composition of Mr. Chase. But he vigorously opposed the resolution, offered by John Pierpont, declaring that the fugitive-slave-law clause of the constitution was not binding in conscience, but might be mentally excepted in any oath to support the constitution. In 1840 the Liberty party had cast but one in 360 of the entire popular vote of the country. In 1844 it cast one in forty, and caused the defeat of Mr. Clay. The free-soil convention that met in Buffalo in 1848 and nominated Martin Van Buren for president, with Charles Francis Adams for vice-president, was presided over by Mr. Chase. This time the party cast one in nine of the whole number of votes. In February, 1849, the Democrats and the free-soilers in the Ohio legislature formed a coalition, one result of which was the election of Mr. Chase to the U. S. senate. Agreeing with the Democracy of Ohio, which, by resolution in convention, had declared slavery to be an evil, he supported its state policy and nominees, but declared that he would desert it if it deserted the anti-slavery position. In the senate, 26 and 27 March, 1850, he made a notable speech against the so-called “compromise measures,” which included the fugitive-slave law, and offered several amendments, all of which were voted down. When the Democratic convention at Baltimore nominated Franklin Pierce for president in 1852, and approved of the compromise acts of 1850, Senator Chase dissolved his connection with the Democratic party in Ohio. At this time he addressed a letter to Hon. Benjamin F. Butler, of New York, suggesting and vindicating the idea of an independent democracy. He made a platform, which was substantially that adopted at the Pittsburg convention, in the same year. He continued his support to the independent democrats until the Kansas-Nebraska bill came up, when he vigorously opposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, wrote an appeal to the people against it, and made the first elaborate exposure of its character. His persistent attacks upon it in the senate thoroughly roused the north, and are admitted to have influenced in a remarkable degree the subsequent struggle. During his senatorial career Mr. Chase also advocated economy in the national finances, a Pacific railroad by the shortest and best route, the homestead law (which was intended to develop the northern territories), and cheap postage, and held that the national treasury should defray the expense of providing for safe navigation of the lakes, as well as of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 

In 1855 he was elected governor of Ohio by the opponents of the Pierce administration. His inaugural address recommended single districts for legislative representation, annual instead of biennial sessions of the legislature, and an extended educational system. Soon after his inauguration occurred the Garner tragedy, so called, in which a fugitive slave mother, near Cincinnati, attempted to kill all of her children, and did kill one, to prevent them from being borne back to slave-life in Kentucky. This and other slave-hunts in Ohio so roused and increased the anti-slavery sentiment in that place that Governor Chase was re-nominated by acclamation, and was re-elected by a small majority, though the American or know-nothing party had a candidate in the field. In the national Republican convention, held at Chicago in 1860, the vote on the first ballot stood: Seward, 173½; Lincoln, 102; Cameron, 50½; Chase, 49. On the third ballot Mr. Lincoln lacked but four of the number necessary to nominate, and these were given by Mr. Chase's friends before the result was declared. When Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated president, 4 March, 1861, he made Governor Chase secretary of the treasury. The difficulty that he was immediately called upon to grapple with is thus described by Mr. Greeley: “When he accepted the office of secretary of the treasury the finances were already in chaos; the current revenue being inadequate, even in the absence of all expenditure or preparation for war, his predecessor (Cobb, of Georgia) having attempted to borrow $10,000,000, in October, 1860, and obtained only $7,022,000—the bidders to whom the balance was awarded choosing to forfeit their initial deposit rather than take and pay for their bonds. Thenceforth he had tided over, till his resignation, by selling treasury notes, payable a year from date, at 6 to 12 per cent. discount; and when, after he had retired from the scene, General Dix, who succeeded him in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, attempted (February, 1861) to borrow a small sum on twenty-year bonds at 6 per cent., he was obliged to sell those bonds at an average discount of 9½ per cent. Hence, of Mr. Chase's first loan of $8,000,000, for which bids were opened (2 April) ten days before Beauregard first fired on Fort Sumter, the offerings ranged from 5 to 10 per cent. discount; and only $3,099,000 were tendered at or under 6 per cent. discount—he, in the face of a vehement clamor, declining all bids at higher rates of discount than 6 per cent., and placing soon afterward the balance of the $8,000,000 in two-year treasury notes at par or a fraction over.” When the secretary went to New York for his first loan, the London “Times” declared that he had “coerced $50,000,000 from the banks, but would not fare so well at the London Exchange.” Three years later it said “the hundredth part of Mr. Chase's embarrassments would tax Mr. Gladstone's ingenuity to the utmost, and set the [British] public mind in a ferment of excitement.” In his conference with the bankers the secretary said he hoped they would be able to take the loans on such terms as could be admitted. “If you can not,” said he, “I shall go back to Washington and issue notes for circulation; for it is certain that the war must go on until the rebellion is put down, if we have to put out paper until it takes a thousand dollars to buy a breakfast.” At this time the amount of coin in circulation in the country was estimated at $210,000,000; and it soon became evident that this was insufficient for carrying on the war. The banks could not sell the bonds for coin, and could not meet their obligations in coin, and on 27 December, 1861, they agreed to suspend specie payment at the close of the year. In his first report, submitted on the 9th of that month, Sec. Chase recommended retrenchment of expenses wherever possible, confiscation of the property of those in arms against the government, an increase of duties and of the tax on spirits, and a national currency, with a system of national banking associations. This last recommendation was carried out in the issue of “greenbacks,” which were made a legal tender for everything but customs duties, and the establishment of the national banking law. His management of the finances of the government during the first three years of the great war has received nothing but the highest praise. He resigned the secretaryship on 30 June, 1864, and was succeeded a few days later by William P. Fessenden. On 6 December, 1864, President Lincoln nominated him to be chief justice of the United States, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Roger B. Taney, and the nomination was immediately confirmed by the senate. In this office he presided at the impeachment trial of President Johnson in 1868. In that year his name was frequently mentioned in connection with the Democratic nomination for the presidency, and in answer to a letter from the chairman of the democratic national committee he wrote: 

“For more than a quarter of a century I have been, in my political views and sentiments, a Democrat, and I still think that upon questions of finance, commerce, and administration generally, the old Democratic principles afford the best guidance. What separated me in former times from both parties was the depth and positiveness of my convictions on the slavery question. On that question I thought the Democratic party failed to make a just application of Democratic principles, and regarded myself as more democratic than the Democrats. In 1849 I was elected to the senate by the united votes of the old-line Democrats and independent Democrats, and subsequently made earnest efforts to bring about a union of all Democrats on the ground of the limitation of slavery to the states in which it then existed, and non-intervention in these states by congress. Had that union been effected, it is my firm belief that the country would have escaped the late civil war and all its evils. I never favored interference by congress with slavery, but as a war measure Mr. Lincoln's proclamation of emancipation had my hearty assent, and I united, as a member of his administration, in the pledge made to maintain the freedom of the enfranchised people. I have been, and am, in favor of so much of the reconstruction policy of congress as based the re-organization of the state governments of the south upon universal suffrage. I think that President Johnson was right in regarding the southern states, except Virginia and Tennessee, as being, at the close of the war, without governments which the U.S. government could properly recognize—without governors, judges, legislators, or other state functionaries; but wrong in limiting, by his reconstruction proclamations, the right of suffrage to whites, and only such whites as had the qualification he required. On the other hand, it seemed to me, congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to the whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens, and of all unable to take a prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of arbitrary military governments for the states, and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions, no classes excluded from suffrage, and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the constitution and laws, and sincere attachment to the constitutional government of the United States. I am glad to know that many intelligent southern Democrats agree with me in these views, and are willing to accept universal suffrage and universal amnesty as the basis of reconstruction and restoration. They see that the shortest way to revive prosperity, possible only with contented industry, is universal suffrage now, and universal amnesty, with removal of all disabilities, as speedily as possible through the action of the state and national governments. I have long been a believer in the wisdom and justice of securing the right of suffrage to all citizens by state constitutions and legislation. It is the best guarantee of the stability of institutions, and the prosperity of communities. My views on this subject were well known when the Democrats elected me to the senate in 1849. I have now answered your letter as I think I ought to answer it. I beg you to believe me—for I say it in all sincerity—that I do not desire the office of president, nor a nomination for it. Nor do I know that, with my views and convictions, I am a suitable candidate for any party. Of that my countrymen must judge.” 

Judge Chase subsequently prepared a declaration of principles, embodying the ideas of his letter, and submitted it to those Democrats who desired his nomination, as a platform in that event. But this was not adopted by the convention, and the plan to nominate him, if there was such a plan, failed. In June, 1870, he suffered an attack of paralysis, and from that time till his death he was an invalid. As in the case of President Lincoln and Sec. Stanton, his integrity was shown by the fact that, though he had been a member of the administration when the government was spending millions of dollars a day, he died comparatively poor. His remains were buried in Washington; but in October, 1886, were removed, with appropriate ceremony, to Cincinnati, Ohio, and deposited in Spring Grove cemetery near that city. Besides his reports and decisions, Mr. Chase published a compilation of the statutes of Ohio, with annotations and an historical sketch (3 vols., Cincinnati, 1832). See “Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase,” by J. W. Schuckers (New York, 1874). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 585-588.

Chapter: “John Quincy Adams. - William H. Seward. - Salmon P. Chase,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

In the formation of the Liberty party Mr. Chase had taken an active part. From his pen were issued its platform and address, which have been regarded as the clearest and most discriminating papers of the struggle, upon the constitutional limits, provisions, and obligations concerning slavery and the slave States. This party, basing its action on moral grounds, the pioneer of all subsequent organizations which have been formed for the purpose of resisting slavery by political action, received nowhere else a more enthusiastic support: The nonresistant and non-voting policy found few adherents in Ohio; and the principle of meeting a political evil by political action encountered few who denied its soundness and necessity. 

Under these circumstances, and with the fruits of those years of earnest toil, the election of 1848 resulted in a vote of thirty-five thousand for the Free Soil candidate for the Presidency, and in the choice of a legislature in which the friends of freedom held the balance of power. The Senate was equally divided between the Whigs and the Democrats. In the House there were thirty-four Whigs and thirty-four Democrats, and two members elected, in opposition to both parties, as Free Soilers. Several Democrats and Whigs were elected, however, by the aid of Free Soil votes, or by the union of Free Soilers with Whigs or Democrats. The legislature, thus chosen, had nearly the whole appointing power of the State. A United States Senator was to be elected, two judges of the Supreme Court were to be chosen, and a large number of less important offices were to be filled. The existence of what were familiarly termed the “black laws” had been made the subject of discussion during the canvass; the Democrats generally defending them, a majority perhaps of the Whigs desiring a modification, and the Free-Soilers demanding their unconditional repeal. Such was the composition of that legislature, and such was the work to be accomplished. It was the purpose of the friends of human rights to use their power in such a manner as would best inure to the interests of freedom. The results amply vindicated the fidelity and sagacity of their course. Without ignoring the overruling hand of Providence in what secured such large results by numbers so insignificant, from means so seemingly inadequate, and in spite of agencies which threatened defeat, instead of triumph, there are revealed in, this election and its immediate results striking illustrations of what may be achieved by a brave and persistent adherence to principle and a wise use of even the most inconsiderable means.

Soon after the organization of the legislature, the Free Soil members, including Townsend and Morse, the two independent members, and eleven who had been elected by the union of Free Soil and Whig votes, held a caucus. At that meeting a motion was made that each member should attend all the subsequent meetings of the Free Soil caucus, and pledge himself to support its decisions in regard to all matters likely to come up for legislative action. The eleven supported the motion;  but the two, recognizing their paramount obligations to use their legislative powers only as fealty to freedom and their constituents demanded, refused to support the motion or to give the pledge. This refusal incensed their associates, who declared them to be no longer members of the Free Soil party of the House.

The meeting broke up without accomplishing the purpose for which it was called, and to the evident discomfiture of the Free Soil Whigs. The two independent members thereupon informed their Whig associates that, if they were not permitted to attend their meetings, they should constitute themselves the Independent Free Soil party of the legislature. This position gave them great power with both parties, and no doubt furnishes the key to the extraordinary results which two men, in a legislative body of one hundred and six members, were enabled to accomplish.

Holding the balance of power, they naturally became objects of solitude and electioneering effort with both Whigs and Democrats; the Whigs having the advantage, in that several of their members had been elected by the aid of Free Soil votes. The political objects of special interest and effort at that time were the election of a United States Senator, the proposed action in respect to the "black laws," and the election of judges of the Supreme Court. Of these objects the Democrats were specially solicitous concerning the election of judges, as there existed an impression that the question concerning election districts, in which they were particularly interested, might be brought before them for adjudication; the Free Soil members making it a condition precedent of their co-operation with any party that the “black laws " should be repealed.
The greatest triumph, however, of that remarkable election was found in the repeal of the “black laws," which disgraced the statute-book of the State, and which had been the objects of the special hostility of antislavery men, though they had found earnest Democratic defenders in the previous canvass.  

These laws required the colored people to give bonds for good behavior as a condition of residence, excluded them from the schools, denied them the right of testifying in courts of justice when a white man was party on either side, and subjected them to other unjust and degrading disabilities. As Mr. Chase had been an avowed opposer of these inhuman statutes, they very properly selected him as their adviser, and requested him to draught a proper bill. This he did by preparing one that would secure substantially their object, but at the same time excite as little as possible the hostility of members who had at heart small sympathy with the purpose in view. Aiming to make the most of the favorable conjunction of circumstances, he incorporated into the proposed bill provisions which the most hopeful hardly expected to be enacted. He was sanguine, however, the Free Soil members were resolute, and the circumstances propitious. It was submitted to the examination and criticism of the Democrats, who unexpectedly accepted it and agreed to support it. How much the considerations they were expecting or had exacted from the Free Soil members had to do with their decision, and how much their indignation at the recent election of General Taylor, a Southern slaveholder, over their Democratic candidate, and their consequent relief from the responsibility for a national administration may never be known. It is sufficient for this purpose to record their assent to its provisions, and its adoption in the House by a large majority. In the Senate it was referred to a committee, who modified it somewhat, and it was then passed. The House concurred, and the bill became a law. Thus, by this wise use of the power their position gave them, was a humane and just law enacted, somewhat, indeed, in advance of the popular sentiment and moral convictions of the people, and yet, being enacted, it was not likely to be reversed, while the very struggle needful to enact it and its presence on the statute-book tended to educate the popular mind and to lift it up to the plane on which it rested. It relieved the colored people from all their most onerous disabilities, gave them entrance into schools, and awakened hopes of the future which have been far more than realized. 

No question, however, of all that occupied and agitated public attention at that time excited deeper interest than that of the United States senatorship. The antislavery men were specially anxious to have a representative in the Senate, where the Slave Power had so long wielded an almost unquestioned sway, and where so few voices had ever been raised for freedom. Thomas Morris had spoken ably. In him Ohio had found a voice potential in behalf of human rights. Otherwise she had shared in the general recreancy, and had been either silent or had spoken at the behest of slavery. There was, indeed, John P. Hale, the Abolition Senator from New Hampshire, --strangely as those words sounded, -- that long-time stronghold of the Northern slavery-bestrode Democracy. But he was treated with contumely, and maintained his ground only by his talent and tact, by his unfailing wit and his unbounded good-humor.

Most earnestly, therefore, did the antislavery men, not only of Ohio but of the North, desire that advantage should be taken of this fortunate conjunction of affairs to select and send to the Senate some worthy coadjutor of the eloquent representative of the Granite State. The thoughts of many, perhaps most, of the friends of humanity and equal rights were instinctively turned to Joshua R. Giddings, who had for years maintained an unequal contest with the champions of aggression in the lower house of Congress. His incorruptible integrity, his stern and sturdy independence, his unflinching advocacy of the unpopular cause, pointed to him as the proper person to be selected for that high office, not only for the service to be performed, but for the honor richly deserved.

There were four candidates. The Democrats had selected William Allen; the Whigs, Thomas Ewing; and the two Free Soilers were divided in their choice between Mr. Giddings and Mr. Chase. Mr. Allen was not only proslavery in sentiment, but his views were extreme and violent. Mr. Ewing was of Southern birth, and though not antislavery in his opinions he was opposed to the extension of the peculiar institution. Mr. Giddings was an antislavery Whig. Mr. Chase, though Democratic in principle and sympathy, was not a member of the Democratic Party. He was decidedly antislavery in sentiment and action, and had rendered essential service to the cause of human rights.

In this state of the principal parties, it being understood that the Free Soil members would not give them their votes, it became evident that neither the Whigs nor the Democrats could elect their candidates. Nor could both of the Free Soil members be gratified with the choice of theirs. Some compromise must be effected. The Whigs, in order to defeat the election of the Democratic candidate, and, on the part of the antislavery portion, for the purpose of carrying out their views, were ready to substitute for Mr. Ewing some person of more pronounced antislavery sentiments. The two Free Soil members had agreed that either should vote for the candidate of the other whenever there should be a prospect of his election. The Whigs were ready, and most of them were anxious, with the exception of two members, to vote for Mr. Giddings. As, however, none of the Democrats would vote for him, and as the two recusant members obstinately refused to yield, after three unsuccessful ballotings his name was withdrawn. The Democrats, for the purpose of defeating the Whig candidate, and with the understanding that the Free Soil members would support their candidates for judges of the Supreme Court, having substituted the name of Hon. Rufus P. Spaulding, afterward Republican Representative in Congress, for that of Judge Read, whom they could not consistently support, expressed a willingness to cast their votes for Mr. Chase. By this arrangement he was elected on the fourth ballot. When the vote was announced, an enthusiastic antislavery man in the galleries exclaimed, "Thank God!"  to which were many answering responses wherever Mr. Chase was known, not only on account of the service he had already rendered, but for the confident expectation cherished of  the large additions of strength and prestige he would bring to the struggling cause on the wider and more conspicuous theatre of the United States Senate.

Many, however, were greatly disappointed that the choice did not fall on Mr. Giddings. Indeed, some of his friends felt that he had been deprived of a position to which, by his longer and more self-sacrificing service, he was fairly entitled. The cause, however, was evidently the gainer by the decision which was finally reached; for, from that time onward, freedom had two potent advocates in the councils of the nation, instead of one; both, too, occupying in their respective spheres positions to which each seemed best adapted, and in which each rendered yeoman's service, for which the slave and the slave's friends should ever hold them in grateful remembrance.

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 167-173.



CLAYTON, POWELL, a Senator from Arkansas; born in Bethel, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, August 7, 1833; attended the common schools and Partridge Military Academy, Bristol, Pennsylvania; studied civil engineering in Wilmington, Delaware; moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, where he practiced his profession; appointed city engineer in 1857; at the outbreak of the Civil War entered the Union Army and served until 1865, attaining the rank of brigadier general; moved to Arkansas and became a planter; elected Governor of Arkansas in 1868; elected as a Republican to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1871, to March 3, 1877; chairman, Committee on Enrolled Bills (Forty-third Congress), Committee on Civil Service Retrenchment (Forty-fourth Congress); moved to Little Rock, Arkansas; member of the Republican National Committee; ambassador to Mexico 1897-1905; lived in retirement until his death in Washington, D.C., on August 25, 1914; interment in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia



COLFAX, Schuyler, 1823-1885, Vice President of the United States, statesman, newspaper editor.  Member of Congress, 1854-1869.  Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana.  Secretary of State.  Opposed slavery as a Republican Member of Congress. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 687-688; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 297; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 97 See “Life of Colfax” by O. J. Hollister (New York, 1886).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 297:

COLFAX, SCHUYLER (March 23, 1823-January 13, 1885), vice-president of the United States, was born in New York City. His paternal grandfather, William Colfax, was commander of Washington's body-guard during the Revolutionary War (William Nelson, in the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 2 series, IV, 145-52). His maternal grandmother, Hester Schuyler, was a cousin of General Philip Schuyler [q.v.]. His father, Schuyler Colfax, who married (April 15, 1820) Hannah Stryker of New York, died October 30, 1822, and in 1834 his mother married George W. Matthews of Baltimore. In 1836 the family removed to New Carlisle, Ind., where Matthews, who became auditor of St. Joseph County in 1841, appointed his stepson deputy auditor at South Bend, an office which he held for eight years. Colfax found time to serve as assistant enrolling clerk of the state Senate (1842-44) and as correspondent of the Indiana State Journal (Indianapolis), and also studied law, but was never admitted to the bar. Having bought an interest in the South Bend Free Press in 1845, he changed the name of the paper to St. Joseph Valley Register, made it the Whig organ of northern Indiana, and retained his interest in it until shortly after he became speaker of the House of Representatives. His political activities began early. He made campaign speeches for Clay in 1844, was secretary of the Chicago Rivers and Harbors Convention in 1847, delegate to the Whig national convention of 1848, and sat in the state constitutional convention of 1850. In 1851 he was defeated as a Whig candidate for Congress, notwithstanding a unanimous nomination, but was a delegate to the Whig national convention of 1852. When the Republican party was formed he joined it, and took an active part in organizing the new party in Indiana. In December 1855, he entered the House of Representatives of the Thirty-fourth Congress (1855-57) as a Republican, and served continuously until the end of the Fortieth Congress (March 3, 1869). From the Thirty-eighth to the Fortieth Congress, inclusive (1863-69), he was speaker of the House. On June 21, 1856, he made a speech, of which more than a million copies were said to have been circulated, opposing the use of the army in Kansas until the laws of the Territory should have received congressional approval. His longest and most important service, prior to the speakership, was as chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, in which capacity he directed the reorganization and extension of the overland mail service to California. He was strongly urged for postmaster-general under Lincoln, but was passed over on the ground, as Lincoln wrote, that he was "a young man, is already in position, is running a brilliant career, and is sure of a bright future in any event" (Hollister, post, p. 175). On April 8, 1864, he left the speaker's chair to move the expulsion of Alexander Long of Ohio, who had spoken in favor of recognizing the Confederacy. The resolution was later changed to one of censure.

His position as speaker, together with his "advanced ideas on Negro suffrage" (W. A. Dunning, Reconstruction Political and Economic, 1907, p. 129), commended Colfax as a candidate for vice-president in 1868, and at the Chicago convention, after the fifth ballot, when he received 541 votes, his nomination was made unanimous (E. Stanwood, History of the Presidency, l, 321), and he was later elected. An offer of the secretaryship of state in August 1871 was declined. Consideration of his availability as a presidential candidate by the Liberal Republicans in 1872 aroused the opposition of administration leaders, and at the Philadelphia convention he was defeated for renomination on the first ballot, the vote standing 321½ for Colfax and 364½ for Henry Wilson (Ibid., I, 348). Shortly thereafter he declined an offer of the editorship of the New York Tribune. He was implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal, the investigation showing that he had agreed to accept twenty shares of stock in the company and had received a considerable sum in dividends. His denial of the charge was not convincing, and in his examination before the committee "it is impossible to believe that he told the truth" (Rhodes, VII, 13-15). He escaped formal censure on the ground that his misconduct, if any, had been committed before he became vice-president, but although he claimed to have been "fully exonerated" (Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1928, p. 834), his political standing was ruined. His part in the Credit Mobilier affair was somewhat overshadowed by the disclosure that he had received in 1868 a campaign gift of $4,000 from a contractor who had supplied envelopes to the government while Colfax was chairman of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads. He continued after his retirement to be in demand as a lecturer, and devoted much time to the Odd Fellows, of which order he had been a member since 1846. He died suddenly at Mankato, Minnesota, and was buried at South Bend. His first wife, Evelyn Clark of New York, whom he married October 10, 1844, died at Newport, Rhode Island, July 10, 1863. On November 18, 1868, he married Ellen W. Wade, a niece of Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio [q.v.].

[The chief authority, aside from the Journal of the House of Representatives, the Congressional Globe, and the reports of House committees, is O. J. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax (1886), able and thorough but overfriendly. A. Y. Moore, The Life of Schuyler Colfax (1868), a campaign biography, is valuable for the texts of speeches, letters, newspaper comment, etc. The Poland and Wilson reports on the Credit Mobilier scandal form House Report No. 77, 42 Congress, 3 Session; their facts and findings are judiciously summarized and appraised in J. F. Rhodes, History of the U.S., VII (1906), ch. 40.)

W. M.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 687-688:

COLFAX, Schuyler, statesman, born in New York city, 23 March, 1823; died in Mankato, Minn., 13 January, 1885. His grandfather was General William Colfax, who commanded the life-guards of Washington throughout the Revolutionary war. His father died a short time before the son's birth, and in 1834 his mother married George W. Matthews. After attending the public schools till he was ten years of age, and serving three years as clerk in his step-father's store, Schuyler went with the family to Indiana in 1836, and settled in New Carlisle, St. Joseph county, where Mr. Matthews soon became postmaster. The boy continued to serve as his clerk, and began a journal to aid himself in composition, contributing at the same time to the county paper. His step-father retired from business in 1839, and Colfax then began to study law, but afterward gave it up. In 1841 Mr. Matthews was elected county auditor, and removed to South Bend, making his step-son his deputy, which office Colfax held for eight years. In 1842 he was active in organizing a temperance society in South Bend, and continued a total abstainer throughout his life. At this time he reported the proceedings of the state senate for the Indianapolis “Journal” for two years. In 1844 he made campaign speeches for Henry Clay. He had acted as editor of the South Bend ”Free Press” for about a year when, in company with A. W. West, he bought the paper in September, 1845, and changed its name to the “St. Joseph Valley Register.” Under his management, despite numerous mishaps and business losses, the “Register” quadrupled its subscription in a few years, and became the most influential journal, in support of whig politics, in that part of Indiana: Mr. Colfax was secretary of the Chicago harbor and river convention of July, 1847, and also of the Baltimore whig convention of 1848, which nominated Taylor for president. The next year he was elected a member of the convention to revise the constitution of the state of Indiana, and in his place, both by voice and vote, opposed the clause that prohibited free colored men from settling in that state. He was also offered a nomination for the state senate, but declined it. In 1851 he was a candidate for congress, and came near being elected in a district that was strongly democratic. He accepted his opponent's challenge to a joint canvass, travelled a thousand miles, and spoke seventy times. He was again a delegate to the whig national convention in 1852, and, having joined the newly formed republican party, was its successful candidate for congress in 1854, serving by successive re-elections till 1869. In 1856 he supported Fremont for president, and during the canvass made a speech in congress on the extension of slavery and the aggressions of the slave-power. This speech was used as a campaign document, and more than half a million copies were circulated. He was chairman of several important committees of congress, especially that on post-offices and post-roads, and introduced many reforms, including a bill providing for a daily overland mail-route from St. Louis to San Francisco, reaching mining-camps where letters had previously been delivered by express at five dollars an ounce. Mr. Colfax favored Edward Bates as the republican candidate for the presidency in 1860. His name was widely mentioned for the office of postmaster - general in Lincoln's cabinet, but the president selected C. B. Smith, of Indiana, on the ground, as he afterward wrote Colfax, that the latter was “a young man running a brilliant career, and sure of a bright future in any event.” In the latter part of 1861 he ably defended Fremont in the house against the attack of Frank P. Blair. In 1862 he introduced a bill, which became a law, to punish fraudulent contractors as felons, and continued his efforts for reform in the postal service. He was elected speaker of the house on 7 December, 1863, and on 8 April, 1864, descended from the chair to move the expulsion of Mr. Long, of Ohio, who had made a speech favoring the recognition of the southern confederacy. The resolution was afterward changed to one of censure, and Mr. Colfax's action was widely commented on, but generally sustained by Union men. On 7 May, 1864, he was presented by citizens of Indiana then in Washington with a service of silver, largely on account of his course in this matter. He was twice re-elected as speaker, each time by an increased majority, and gained the applause of both friends and opponents by his skill as a presiding officer, often shown under very trying circumstances. In May, 1868, the republican national convention at Chicago nominated him on the first ballot for vice-president, General Grant being the nominee for president, and, the republican ticket having been successful, he took his seat as president of the senate on 4 March, 1869. On 4 August, 1871, President Grant offered him the place of secretary of state for the remainder of his term, but he declined. In 1872 he was prominently mentioned as a presidential candidate, especially by those who, later in the year, were leaders in the liberal republican movement, and, although he refused to join them, this was sufficient to make administration men oppose his renomination for the vice-presidency, and he was defeated in the Philadelphia convention of 1872. In December, 1872; he was offered the chief editorship of the New York “Tribune,” but declined it. In 1873 Mr. Colfax was implicated in the charger of corruption brought against members of congress who had received shares of stock in the credit mobilier of America. The house judiciary committee reported that there was no ground for his impeachment, as the alleged offence, if committed at all, had been committed before he became vice-president. These charges cast a shadow over the latter part of Mr. Colfax's life. He denied their truth, and his friends have always regarded his character as irreproachable. His later years were spent mostly in retirement in his home at South Bend, Ind., and in delivering public lectures, which he did frequently before large audiences. His first success in this field had been in 1865 with a lecture entitled “Across the Continent,” written after his return from an excursion to California. The most popular of his later lectures was that on “Lincoln and Garfield.” Mr. Colfax was twice married. After his death, which was the result of heart disease, public honors were paid to his memory both in congress and in Indiana. See “Life of Colfax” by O. J. Hollister (New York, 1886). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 687-688.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 193

THE name of Colfax appears in Revolutionary history. General William Colfax, grandfather of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, commanded the life-guards of General Washington during the Revolutionary war. Subsequently to the war he was one of Washington's most intimate personal friends. The wife of General Colfax was a cousin of General Philip Schuyler.
Schuyler Colfax, son of General Colfax, and father of the Statesman, resided in New York, where he held an office in one of the city banks. He died soon after his marriage, and before the birth of his son.

Hon. Schuyler Colfax was born in the city of New York March 23, 1823. He attended the common schools of the city until he was ten years old. At this early age his school training terminated, and he launched into active life to acquire learning and make his way as best he could. The boy served three years as clerk in a store, and at the end of that time removed with his mother and stepfather, Mr. Matthews, to Indiana. They could have found no more attractive region in all the West than the place they chose for settlement—the beautiful region of prairies and groves bordering the River “St. Joseph of the Lakes.”

For four years following his removal to the West, the youth was employed as a clerk in a village store. At the age of seventeen, having been appointed deputy auditor, he removed to South Bend, the county town which ever since has been his residence. He frequently wrote for the local newspaper of the town, and attracted attention by the perspicuity and correctness with which he expressed his views. During several sessions of the Legislature he was employed in reporting its proceedings for the Indianapolis Journal.

In 1845 Mr. Colfax became proprietor and editor of the “St. Joseph Valley Register,” the local newspaper of South Bend. At the outset he had but two hundred and fifty subscribers, and at the end of the first year he found himself fourteen hundred dollars in debt. Being possessed of tact, energy, and ability, he pushed bravely forward in his laborious profession, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing his paper a success. A few years later his newspaper office was burned, without insurance, and the editor had to begin his fortune again at the foundation. Mr. Colfax applied himself with renewed industry to his work, and in a few years made the St. Joseph Valley Register the most influential paper in that portion of the State.

Mr. Colfax was, in 1848, a delegate and secretary to the Whig National Convention which nominated General Taylor. Although his district was opposed to his political party, his personal popularity was so great that in 1849 he was elected a member of the Convention to revise the Constitution of Indiana. He was soon after offered a nomination to the State Senate, which he declined on account of the demands of his private business.

Mr. Colfax received his first nomination as a candidate for Congress in 1851, and was beaten by a majority of only two hundred votes in a district strongly opposed to him in politics. In 1852 he was a delegate to the Whig National Convention which nominated General Scott. · He declined to be a candidate for Congress in the subsequent election, which went against his party by a majority of one thousand votes.

The succeeding Congress signalized itself by passing the Nebraska bill, which wrought a great change in public opinion throughout the North. The Representative from Mr. Colfax's district voted for this odious act. He came home and took the stump as a candidate for re-election. Mr. Colfax was put forward as his opponent, and the two candidates traversed their district together, debating before the same audiences the great question which agitated the public mind. The unfortunate member strove in vain to justify his vote, and render the Nebraska act acceptable to the people. He who had gained the previous election by one thousand votes now lost it by a majority of two thousand.

The Thirty-Fourth Congress, to which Mr. Colfax was then elected, convened December 3, 1855. At that time occurred the memorable contest for the Speakership which lasted two months, and resulted in the election of Mr. Banks. At one stage in the contest, an adroit attempt to foist Mr. Orr, of South Carolina, upon the House as Speaker, was defeated by an opportune proposition made by Mr. Colfax, by which the question was deferred and the result avoided.

On the 21st of June, 1856, Mr. Colfax delivered a memorable speech on the “ Laws” of Kansas, which fell with decided effect upon Congress and the country, as a plain and truthful showing of the great legislative enormity of the day. During the Presidential campaign of that year, half a million copies of this speech were distributed among the voters of the United States.

While in Washington, Mr. Colfax was nominated for reelection, and, after a laborious canvass, carried his district, although the Presidential election went against his party. To each succeeding Congress Mr. Colfax has been regularly nominated and re-elected.
In the Thirty-Sixth Congress, Mr. Colfax was Chairman of the Committee on Post-Offices and Post-Roads—a position in which he did good service for the country, by securing the extension of mail facilities to the newly-settled regions of the far West.

The nomination of Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, was eminently satisfactory to Mr. Colfax, who entered with great spirit into the canvass, and did much to aid in carrying Indiana for the Republican party. During Mr. Lincoln's entire term, down to the day of his assassination, he regarded Mr. Colfax as one of his wisest and most faithful friends, whom he often consulted on grave matters of public policy.

At the opening of the Thirty-eighth Congress, December, 1863, Mr. Colfax was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. Ile has since been twice re-elected to this important office, on each occasion by a larger majority than before. He has displayed signal ability in performing the duties of an office of great difficulty and responsibility. His remarkable tact, unvarying good temper, exhaustless patience, cool presence of mind, and familiarity with parliamentary law, all combine to render him, as a Speaker of the House, second to none who have ever occupied its Chair.

In April, 1865, Mr. Colfax went with a party of friends on a journey across the continent, to San Francisco. The evening before his departure he called at the White House to take leave of President Lincoln. An hour after he grasped his hand with a cheerful and cordial good-bye, he was startled with the intelligence that the beloved President was assassinated. Before leaving for the Pacific, Mr. Colfax delivered a eulogy on the murdered President at Chicago, and afterward, by invitation, repeated it in Colorado, at Salt Lake City, and in California.

On his way westward, Mr. Colfax spent a few days among the Mormons at Salt Lake City, studying their organization with the eye of a statesman. “I have had a theory for years past,” he said, in explaining the motives of his journey, “ that it is the duty of men in public life, charged with a participation in the government of a great country like ours, to know as much as possible of the interests, developments, and resources of the country whose destiny, comparatively, has been committed to their hands.” Brigham Young, inquiring of him what the Government intended to do about the question of polygamy, Mr. Colfax shrewdly replied that he hoped the prophet would have a new revelation on that subject, which would relieve all embarrassment.

The reception of Mr. Colfax along his route and on the Pacific coast was an ovation which revealed his great popularity. On his return, Mr. Colfax, by urgent solicitation, delivered in various cities and before vast audiences, an eloquent and instructive lecture describing adventures, scenes, and reflections, incident to his journey “ Across the Continent.” The proceeds of the delivery of this lecture were generally given to the widows and children of soldiers who had fallen in the war, and to other objects of benevolence.

On the 20th of May, 1868, the National Republican Convention assembled in Chicago. After unanimously nominating General U. S. Grant for President, the Convention nominated Hon. Schuyler Colfax for Vice-President, receiving on the first formal ballot a majority over all the distinguished gentlemen who had been named as candidates. This nomination was made unanimous amid unbounded enthusiasm.

On the day following his nomination, Mr. Colfax received the congratulations of his friends in Washington, and in the course of a brief speech on that occasion, uttered the following noble sentiments : “Defying all prejudices, we are for uplifting the lowly, and protecting the oppressed. History records, to the immortal honor of our organization, that it saved the nation and emancipated the race. We struck the fetter from the limb of the slave, and lifted millions into the glorious sunlight of liberty. We placed the emancipated slave on his feet as a man, and put into his right hand the ballot to protect his manhood and his rights. We staked our political existence on the reconstruction of the revolted States, on the sure and eternal corner-stone of loyalty, and we shall triumph.”

No public party ever made more popular nominations. Both candidates added special and peculiar elements of strength to the Republican ticket.

After one of the most important and exciting political campaigns in the history of the country, Mr. Colfax was, on the 3d of November, elected Vice-President of the United States, receiving, with the illustrious candidate for the Presidency, a large majority of both the electoral and popular votes.

Mr. Colfax was first married at the age of twenty-one to an early playmate of his childhood. After being for a long time an invalid, she died several years ago, leaving him childless. His mother and sister have since presided at his receptions, which, if not the most brilliant, have been the most popular of any given at the Capital. On the 18th of November, a fortnight after his election to the Vice-Presidency, Mr. Colfax was married to Miss Ella M. Wade, of Andover, Ohio. She is a niece of Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, and is a lady whose virtues and accomplishments fit her to cheer the private life, and grace the public career of her distinguished husband. Mr. Colfax is of medium stature and compact frame, with a fair complexion, a mild, blue eye, and a large mouth, upon which a smile habitually plays. He has a melodious voice, a rapid utterance, and smooth and graceful elocution. Consistent in politics, agreeable in manners, and pure in morals, he has all the elements of lasting popularity.



CONKLING, ROSCOE (October 30, 1829-April 18, 1888), senator.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 327)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 327:

CONKLING, ROSCOE (October 30, 1829-April 18, 1888), senator, was born at Albany, New York, but lived most of his life in Utica, New York. His father was Alfred Conkling [q.v.]; his mother, Eliza Cockburn, was of Scotch extraction and was noted for her beauty. His older brother, Frederick, was congressman for a single term, and a colonel in the Civil War. The family removed to Auburn, New York, in 1839 and in 1842 Roscoe entered the Mount Washington Collegiate Institute in New York City. He went to Utica in 1846 to study law in the office of Spencer & Kuman, was admitted to the bar in 1850, and was immediately appointed district attorney of Albany. At the close of the term he entered into partnership with Thomas H. Walker of Utica. One of the great "spread eagle" orators of his day, before he was thirty years of age he was a familiar and valued figure at the Whig conventions of his county and state. He became mayor of Utica in 1858, was elected to Congress in the autumn of the same year, and represented his district at Washington, 1859-67, except for the single term 1863-65. He married in 1855 Julia, a sister of Horatio Seymour, Democratic governor of New York in 1853 and 1863. He remained temperate in a day when strong drink was a pervasive enemy of American men, he detested tobacco, and he built up his body by systematic exercise and boxing, so that he enhanced the dignity and impressiveness of a figure of which he was inordinately proud, and which his jocose critics described as the "finest torso" in public life. On a notable occasion soon after his entry into Congress, and not long after the attack on Sumner in the Senate, he stood up beside the crippled and sharp-tongued Thaddeus Stevens as a body-guard, and discouraged interference. He not only protected Stevens, but he agreed with him, becoming a sturdy War-Republican, and an advocate of vigorous repressive measures in the Reconstruction period. His ambitions in Congress and in the Republican party collided more than once with those of James G. Blaine, and produced a biting description by the latter, who jeered at Conkling's "haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, super-eminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut" (Congressional Globe, April 30, 1866, p. 2299). The words could not be forgotten.

The decision of William H. Seward, leader of the New York Republicans, to remain loyal to President Andrew Johnson, and to support the latter in his Reconstruction policy, caused a break in the party and gave opportunity for the appearance of a leader among the radical Republicans of the state. Conkling was elected senator in 1867, and in the following autumn dominated the Republican convention, establishing an ascendancy over Governor Reuben E. Fenton. In the next ten years, with the support of the federal patronage and the New York City "custom-house crowd," he became the almost undisputed leader of his party in the state, and an aspirant to greater things. He was reelected to the Senate in 1873 and 1879. In 1876 he was the favorite son of New York as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in rivalry to James G. Blaine, but met with disappointment when Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio secured the nomination and became president in 1877. Conkling's intimacy with and support of President U. S. Grant, to which he owed much of his strength as leader of New York, had procured for him in 1873 an offer of the post of chief justice of the United States, to succeed Salmon P. Chase. He had declined the honor, recognizing that his talents were those of a partisan rather than of a judge. He was again later to be offered an appointment to the Supreme Court by his friend Chester A. Arthur, and was again to decline.

Conkling was a bitter opponent of President Hayes. He claimed to believe that the latter had no right to his position, he had reason to fear that the power of the Grant dynasty was broken, and he was outraged by Hayes's selection of a New Yorker whom he hated, William M. Evarts, as secretary of state. He regarded the New York patronage as his special preserve, and fought to defend it when the treasury department under John Sherman began to inquire into the management of the custom-house and the services therein of Chester A. Arthur and Alonzo B. Cornell [qq.v.], who were Conkling's chief assistants in the control of the party organization. He led the opposition to the desires of Hayes to separate civil service officials from the direction of party affairs, and his presence and spirit pervaded the New York Republican convention of September 1877, where the President was openly flouted. In substance he asserted the privilege of a senator to control the federal administration in his own state; and he denied to a president the right to select and direct his subordinates. The Tenure of Office Act, passed in 1867 to restrain Andrew Johnson, made it harder for the President to win his point; but eventually in 1879 Hayes had his way arid got rid of Conkling's friends. New York, however, remained loyal to its leader. Cornell was made governor, Conkling was triumphantly reelected to the Senate, and another of his lieutenants, Thomas C. Platt [q.v.], was chosen as the other senator in 1881. Arthur had meanwhile risen to greater rewards.

Disgusted with Hayes, and anxious for the return of the old order of politics, Conkling was a leader in the movement for the renomination of Grant in 1880. His success went only far enough to deadlock the Republican convention, and prevent the nomination of either Blaine or Sherman. Garfield, who was chosen after a long and destructive fight, represented the anti-Conkling or "Half-Breed" wing of the Republicans; and the selection of the "Stalwart," Arthur, for vice-president failed to heal the breach. It was only after much persuasion that Conkling ceased to sulk in the canvass of 1880, and gave any support to the ticket of Garfield and Arthur. His friends and he believed, that as the price of his final and lukewarm support, Garfield had made him sweeping promises of presidential patronage; but to this belief the selection of Blaine as secretary of state gave contradiction. Within a few days after the organization of the new administration, Conkling was again in opposition, and again over the right to control the jobs in the New York custom-house. He fought the confirmation of Garfield's appointees until defeat came to him in May 1881. He then resigned his Senate seat in protest, May 14, 1881, and induced his colleague to resign with him. He turned to the usually pliant legislature at Albany for vindication and reelection, but discovered that his power to dominate it had departed. Even the open support of Arthur, now vice-president, was in vain. For the remainder of his life, Conkling was outside of politics. He removed to New York City, and entered into the practise of his profession, where he made a large fortune and a great name. He died in the spring of 1888, as the result of over-exertion during a severe snow-storm. His personal character and integrity were never challenged; he was, said the New York Times (January 18, 1879), on the occasion of his third election to the senate, "a typical American statesman-a man by whose career and character the future will judge of the political standards of the present."

[Robt. G. Ingersoll, Memorial Address on Roscoe Conkling (1888), includes many obituary notices. There is a family biography by Conkling's nephew, Alfred R. Conkling, The Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling, Orator, Statesman, and Advocate (1889). Many of the details of his career may be traced in De Alva S. Alexander, Political History of the State of New York (3 volumes, 1906-09), but no one has yet assembled and evaluated the material upon his public life that fills the press from 1859 to 1881.]

F.L.P-n.



CONNESS, John, born 1822.  Union Republican U.S. Senator from California.  U.S. Senator 1863-1869.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 708; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 708:

CONNESS, John, senator, born in Ireland, 20 September, 1821. He emigrated to the United States at the age of thirteen, learned the trade of a piano-forte maker, and worked in New York city until the discovery of gold in California. He went to that state in 1849, engaged in mining, and afterward became a merchant. He was a member of the California legislature in 1853-'4 and in 1860-'1, a candidate for lieutenant-governor in 1859, and the union democratic candidate for governor in 1861, receiving 30,944 votes, to 32,751 cast for the Breckinridge democratic candidate, and 56,036 for Leland Stanford, the successful republican candidate. He was elected as a union republican to succeed Milton S. Latham, a democrat, to the U. S. senate, and sat from 4 March, 1863, till 4 March, 1869, serving on the committees on finance and the Pacific railroad, and as chairman of the committee on mines and mining. He resided in Massachusetts after the conclusion of his term. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 708.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 51.

JOHN CONNESS is a native of Ireland, and was born in 1822. At thirteen years of age he came to this country, whither he had been preceded by some enterprising brothers. By their kindness he was favored with the advantages of academical education. Soon after arriving at manhood, he departed for California among the earliest emigrants to that country. There he devoted himself with success to mining and mercantile pursuits.

Turning his attention to politics, he was, in 1852, elected to the State Legislature, in which he held a seat during four successive terms. In 1859, he was a candidate for Lieutenant-Governor ; and in 1861, he was the Union Democratic candidate for Governor. In 1863, he was elected a Senator in Congress from California for the term ending in 1869. He has served in the Senate on the Committees on Finance and the Pacific Railroad, Chairman of the Committee on Mines and Mining, and as a member also of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads.

Mr. Conness ranks among the efficient and active members of the Senate. The record clearly shows him to be vigilant and awake to all the great questions naturally passing in review before the Senate. His speeches are generally brief and to the point, giving evidence of excellent sense, and a fearless aim to accomplish what appears to him to be his duty as a legislator, regardless of favor or reproach. As illustrative of all this, we may select almost at random various passages from his speeches on different occasions.

Pending the question of dropping from the roll of the army unemployed general officers, Mr. Conness, January 6, 1865, submitted the following remarks, which must impress the reader as both curious and interesting :

“Early in the conduct of this war, nominations for high ranks were easily obtained. The result was, that inefficient men-men unable and unfit to conduct our armies to victory and success—obtained the highest rank in the army; and the consequences were losses in every direction to the national cause. Why, sir, at a certain period, during the last session of Congress, we desired a new Department Commander for the Pacific Department, and, anxious to send an officer there of good ability, of high military skill, that that country might be organized and prepared for an emergency likely to arise-possible, at least, to arise—I had several conferences with the Secretary of War; I had an examination, with that officer, of the long list of unemployed major-generals and brigadier-generals then under the pay of the Government, and without public employment; and if I were at liberty here to repeat the comment that followed the name of each in those various conferences, it would demonstrate the necessity of action somewhere to rid the country of the unnecessary and profitless burden that those gentlemen in high rank, holding high commissions under the Government, imposed upon it. It was five months before an officer deemed competent to send to that department could be selected, by the exercise of the greatest wisdom, from the long list of the then unemployed generals in the United States army.”

In the Fortieth Congress Mr. Conness has distinguished himself by the earnestness and ability with which he advocated measures designed to protect American citizens abroad. He successfully urged the passage of an “ Eight-Hour Law.” When this bill was pending in the Senate, he made a speech in which occurs the following passage:

“When I saw the column of Burnside, thirty thousand or forty thousand strong, marching through this city to the sanguinary fields between the Wilderness and Richmond and Cold Harbor, inclusive, and stood where I could see the eye of every man in the column, I saw scarcely any but those who had the marks of toil and stalwart labor, black and white; and if I never before that time reverenced the men who labor, I should do it beginning at that period of my life; but it was not necessary for me to begin then.

“Now, Mr. President, there is considerable agitation in this country upon this question of whether a day's labor shall be constituted of eight or ten hours, and I have no doubt there are those who think if this bill be passed, and the example be set by the Government, the eight-hour rule will follow in other industries conducted in the country. Well, sir, I hope it will. A personal experience enables me to say that I could, myself, perform more labor in eight hours than in ten, taking any given week for the average; and then it gave more hours for study. Many and many a morning, at two o'clock, when I labored ten and eleven hours a day in my youth, found me yet endeavoring to enable myself to take my rank among my fellows in society; and I desire, by my vote and voice, if that can influence any one, to give an equal opportunity to the youths of the land connected with labor and toil. Let no man forget, because his task is made easy in this world, the thousands, the tens of thousands, and the hundreds of thousands who labor and toil for an ill-requited compensation, for a small compensation scarcely sufficient to furnish bread, much less to enable them to educate their children and bring them up fit to be citizens of this Republic. Make their path as easy as you can, by limiting their hours of labor. Give them time to think.”

As a specimen of effective “stump oratory," we quote the following extract from a speech delivered by Mr. Conness in Cooper Institute, New York, September 30, 1868, before an immense audience composed largely of Irish-Americans: “I come before you to-night, fellow-citizens, as one of yourselves, as one of a class of Americans denominated Irish-Americans. [Applause.] I will not say, I know I could not say, that there can be any title higher than that of an American citizen. [Applause.] And while some of us may be denominated, and may be better known as Irish-Americans, it should be our boast peculiarly that we are Americans, and Americans alone-[Applause]—not forgetting our origin, not forgetting the trials of the land we came from, and the race from which we sprang, for that but sharpens the mental appetite for liberty, as we find it established here,—[Cheers]—but as American citizens simply, owning a part in the great cause of the Republic established by the fathers, and maintained by their sons, to go down, I trust, to all posterity for ever. [Applause.] We have a high title in having a part in that cause, and in being known as American citizens. [Cheers.] The American people, in a short time, are to determine who shall be the Executive, to give to the Republic a guardian of its interests; a safeguard, so far as an Executive can be such, to the principles upon which the Republic is founded, and we are to replace the man now filling that station by an accident—[Laughter and cheers]—with not only the greatest military leader of the world, but, greater than his military leadership, one of the simplest and the most virtuous citizens of America—a man who advanced, as he need not have done—and yet 'twas well done—that he is not to have a policy against at once the intelligence and the virtue of the American people—[Applause]—but whose policy, if he is elected President, will be to give reality and effect to that intelligence and virtue. [Cheers.] What is to be tried, and what is being tried, in the contest that is now going on for the Presidential office is, whether, after the nation, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, and thousands of millions of treasure, maintained intact the national integrity—whether that integrity shall be continuously maintained, and, in addition, whether the great principles of liberty, law and humanity, vindicated and re-established by our grand successes against rebellion, shall also be maintained, and also whether, in addition still, the measures that the American people have found it necessary to enact to maintain the condition of things shall be carried out."



COVODE,  John,   U.S. Representative from Pennsylvania. Anti-slavery political leader.

COVODE, JOHN, a Representative from Pennsylvania; born near West Fairfield, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, March 17, 1808; attended the public schools; engaged in agricultural pursuits, manufacturing, and transportation; largely interested in the coal trade; elected as an Opposition Party candidate to the Thirty-fourth Congress and as a Republican to the Thirty-fifth, Thirty-sixth, and Thirty-seventh Congresses (March 4, 1855-March 3, 1863); chairman, Committee on Public Expenditures (Thirty-seventh Congress); delegate to the Union National Convention at Philadelphia in 1866; elected as a Republican to the Fortieth Congress (March 4, 1867-March 3, 1869); chairman, Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds (Fortieth Congress); contested with Henry D. Foster the election to the Forty-first Congress, neither being sworn pending the contest, as no credentials were issued by the Governor; on February 9, 1870, the House declared him duly elected, whereupon he qualified and served until his death; was not a candidate for reelection in 1870; died in Harrisburg, Pa., January 11, 1871; interment in Methodist Episcopal Cemetery, West Fairfield, Pa.

He was a strong supporter of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Reconstruction Acts. On February 21, 1868, Covode introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives to impeach President Andrew Johnson.

He served as chairman of the United States House Committee on Public Expenditures from 1857 until 1859 and the United States House Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds from 1867 until 1869. He also served on the United States Congress Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War.



CRESWELL, John Angel James, 1828-1891, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland, 1863-1865.  U.S. Senator 1865-.  Supported the Union.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, p. 8; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 541; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 5, p. 726; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 541:

CRESWELL, JOHN ANGEL JAMES (November 18, 1828-December 23, 1891), postmaster-general, was born at Port Deposit, Maryland. His father, John G. Creswell, was a Marylander of English ancestry, and his mother, Rebecca E. Webb, a Pennsylvanian, whose forebears were German and English, one of the latter being the famous Quaker missionary, Elizabeth Webb. Creswell received his advanced education at Dickinson College, graduating with honors in 1848. After studying law for two years, he was admitted to the Maryland bar, in 1850, and soon began to practise. Early in his career he married Hannah J. Richardson of Maryland, a woman of considerable wealth.

In politics, Creswell was a strong partisan. He first affiliated with the Whigs, then after that party broke up, was for a short period a Demo crat, and attended the Cincinnati convention which nominated Buchanan. After the Civil War opened, however, he became and remained a staunch and influential Republican. In the critical days of 1861 and 1862 Creswell filled his first public office, as loyalist member of the Maryland House of Delegates, and did much toward keeping the state in the Union. A year later, as assistant adjutant-general, he had charge of raising Maryland's quota of troops for the Northern army. From 1863 to 1865 he was a member of the national House of Representatives; but in March of the latter year he was elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. In January 1865, after Maryland had freed its slaves, he made a strong impression by a speech in the House in favor of general emancipation. As senator, he stood for manhood suffrage, the compensation of loyal owners of drafted slaves, and strict enforcement of the Civil Rights Act.

Creswell 's most important public work was done as head of the Post Office Department, to which he was appointed by President Grant in March 1869. The country has had few, if any, abler postmasters-general. The changes made by him in the Department were sweeping, reformatory, and constructive. The cost of ocean transportation of letters to foreign countries was reduced from eight cents to two, and great increase in speed was secured by giving the carriage of the mails to the best and fastest steamers, four of which were to sail each week, and by advertising a month in advance the vessels selected; the pay to railroads for mail-carriage was rearranged on a fair basis; there was great increase in the number of railroad postal lines, postal clerks, and letter-carriers, and in the number of cities having free delivery of mail and money-order departments; one-cent postal cards were introduced; the system of letting out contracts for the internal carriage of the mails was so reformed as ultimately to do away with straw bidding and to secure fair competition among responsible bidders; the laws relating to the Post Office Department were codified, with a systematic classification of offenses against the postal laws; and postal treaties with foreign countries were completely revised. Creswell also denounced the franking system as the "mother of frauds," and secured its abolition, and he strongly urged the establishment of postal savings banks and a postal telegraph.

Pressure of private business led him to resign from the Post Office Department in July 1874, but he later accepted the position of United AT States counsel before the court of commissioners on the Alabama claims, and served until the court expired by law in December 1876. Thereafter, he spent most of his remaining years at Elkton, Maryland, where he had his home, and gave his attention to banking and the practise of law. Here, following two years of general ill health, he died of bronchial pneumonia.

[Journal of the Maryland House of Delegates, 1861-62; Congressional Globe, 1863-69; Reports of the Postmaster-General, 1869-74; Biography American Congress, 1774-1927 (1928); sketch in Biography Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and the D. C. (1879), based, apparently, upon data furnished by Creswell himself. The short biography included in Sams and Riley, Bench and Bar of Maryland (1901), was founded upon the account given in the Biography Cyclopedia just mentioned. An editorial on Creswell's appointment as postmaster-general appears in the Baltimore (Weekly) Sun, March 6, 1869, and an obituary in the supplementary issue of the same paper for December 26, 1891.]

M. W. W.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume II, p. 8:

CRESWELL, John A. J., statesman, born in Port Deposit, Cecil county, Maryland, 18 November, 1828. He was graduated at Dickinson college, Pennsylvania, in 1848, studied law, and was admitted to the Maryland bar in 1850. He was a member of the state legislature in 1860 and 1862, and assistant adjutant-general for Maryland in 1862-'3. He was elected to congress, and served from 7 December, 1863, till 3 March, 1865; and, having distinguished himself as an earnest friend of the Union, was elected as a republican to the U. S. senate in March, 1865, to fill the unexpired term of Thomas H. Hicks. On 22 February, 1866, he delivered, at the request of the House of representatives, a memorable eulogy of his friend and colleague, Henry Winter Davis. He was a delegate to the Baltimore convention of 1864, the Philadelphia loyalists' convention of 1866, the Border states convention held in Baltimore in 1867, and the Chicago republican convention of 1868. In May, 1868, he was elected secretary of the U. S. senate, but declined. On 5 March, 1869, he was appointed by President Grant postmaster-general of the United States, and served till 3 July, 1874. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume II, pp. 8.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.