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8 Case & Com. 145 (1901-1902)

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    Case and Comment

                               NO'TES OF

            I C-NT IMPORTANT. INTERESTING Di CISiONS

INDEX To ANNOTATION OF THE LAWYERS' REIPORTS. ANNOTATED

                 LEGAL NEws NOTES AND FAcE-r7l.T


VoL. S.


J  t', 1901.


No. 1.


        CAZE AND COMMENT
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            Salmon P. Chase.

  The sixth in the line of the Chief Justices
of the United States Supreme Court is one
who commands the highest respect as a judge,
but whose judicial career was so brief, and
his part in the work of President Lincoln's
administration during the supreme struggle of
the Civil War was so great, that history will
douhtk s speak of him oftener as Secretary of
the Treasury than as Chief Justice.
  Salmon Portland Chase was born at Corn-
ish, New Hampshire, in 1808, the eighth of
eleven children of Ithamar Chase, whose an-
cestor, Aquila Chase, came from England
about 1640. Ills mother was of Scotch blood.
One of his fat her's brothers, Dudley, was a
United States Senator and another, Philander,
was the Protestant Episcopal bishop of Ohio,
with whom, after his father died, lie lived for
three years. Ile graduated from Dartmouth
College in 1826. lie then established a clas-
sical school for boys in Washington, D. C.,
and studied law  with  William  Wirt. Of
course lie found time also to write a poem to
Wirt's daughters, and thig was published. In
1830 he was admitted to the bar and settled in
Cincinnati, Ohio. He had the usual period of
waiting for clients, and is said to have broken
down in his first argument before a Federal


court. About this time he prepared an edition
of the Ohio stattles, with notes and historical
introduction. Eminence in his profession
came at length, and many important cases,
especially in bank business.
  His political career was exciting and stormy.
He was not closely identified with any political
party whatever, but was most uncompromis-
inig in his opposition to slavery. In 1837,
when he defended a fugitive slave woman and
attacked the constitutionality of the statutes
under which she was claimed, an old lawyer
said :  There is a promising young man who
has just ruined himelf. Twice he defended
James G. Birney for harboring a fugitive
slave. In a similar case he and William H.
Seward, without compensation, defended
John Van Zundt, the origina! of the John
Van Trompe in Uncle Tom's Cabin. In
1838 he reviewed with great severity a report
of the judiciary coihmittee of the state senate
denying trial by jury to slaves. On the
organization of the Liberal party in Ohio in
1841 lie was a leader. He earned at length
the name of the attorney general for runaway
negroes. The colored people of Cincinnati
presented to him a silver pitcher for his ser-
vices  in behalf of the oppressed. He wrote
most of the Buffalo platform of 1843, on which
James G. Birney was nominated for president,
but a resolution offered, to the effect that the
fugitive slave clause of the Constitution was
not binding on the conscience, but might be
mentally excepted in taking an oath, met the
vigorous opposition of his clear brain and
sturdy honesty. He presided over the Free
Soil convention of 1818, in Buffalo, which
nominated Martin Van Buren. In 1849 a co-
alition of the Democrats and Free Soilers in
the Ohio legislature made him United Statis

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