M 



C'HASE, SALMON P. 



hip of Ohio a remarkable aptitude fur finan- 

 cial affair*; bat he had of course no sj 

 irainintr. and his election as s :' tlio 



Treasury in President Lincoln's iii>t cabinet, 

 at a time when the nation was entering a 

 period of great peril, wag regarded with no 

 iittlf apprehension. Mr. Chase's whole life 

 was a raooeackm of surprises; bat his career 

 M Secretary of the Treasury was the gr. 

 surprise of them all. In the worst days of 

 tb war, when the prospect was darkest and 

 the coat of the campaign most enormous, the 

 Gorernment was never at a loss for money. 

 His service* at this period, though universally 

 recognised, have never been more clearly or 

 slated than by Mr. Grot-ley in his 

 :u-rican Conflict:" " When he accepted the 

 office of Secretary of the Treasury, on the ac- 

 cessiof) of Mr. Lincoln," says Mr. GreeK-y, 

 "the finances were already in chaos; the cur- 

 rent revenue being inadequate, even in the ab- 

 sence of all expenditure or preparation for 

 war, his predecessor (Cobb, of Georgia) having 

 attempted to borrow $10,000,000, in October. 

 160, and obtained only $7,022,000 the bid- 

 ders to whom the balance was awarded choos- 

 ing to forfeit their initial deposit, rather thnn 

 take and pay for their bonds. Thenceforth, ho 

 had tided over till his resignation, by selling 

 Treasury notes, payable a year from date, at G 

 to 12 percent discount; and, when, after he 

 bad retired from the scene, General l>ix, who 

 succeeded him in Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, at- 

 tt-mpted (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 9) percent. Hence, of Mr. Chase's 

 first loan of $8,000,000, for which bids were 

 opened (April :<! ten days before Beauregard 

 first fired on Fort Sumter, the offering* ranged 

 from 5 to 10 per cent discount; and only 

 $8,OM,000 were tendered at or under 6 per 

 cent discount he, in the face of A vehement 

 clamor, ilerlining nil bids at higher rates of 

 discount than per cent., nml placing soon 

 forward the balance of the $8,000,00i> in 

 two-year Treasury notes at par or a fr. 



li were the financial auspices under 

 li the republic commenced ItM 

 psntic and costly struggle that the world luul 

 erer known a itruggle in which it was ulti- 

 mately required to keep on foot an army of 

 1.000,000 men. with a Tast and costly steam 

 nary* war in which well-appointed armies 

 had to be transported by water or by railroads 

 f<>r hundreds of miles a war for which nearly 

 every weapon, erery carriage, every means of 

 offenat, bad to be created or bought on tho 

 apor of the exigency a war wherein our in- 

 experience and lack of adaptation to the bnsi- 

 nese were serious elements of cost a war 

 whereto countless millions bad to be rate 

 the bed of ewy great disaster, often when 

 ooraeat of jrovernment was in imminent peril 

 of captor*, and when foreigners, with scarcely 

 aa exception, proclaimed oar cause already 



\-ssly lost, and deafened the general ear 

 with their vehement protests against the crim- 

 inal madness of pouring out rivers more of 

 blood and heaping up mountains of debt to no 

 possible end but to gratify a sullen, stupid, 

 brutal obstinacy, a bankrupt but inexorable 

 pride. When we add that a very considerable 

 proportion of the wealth and intelligent 

 the loyal States was profoundly hostile to the 

 prosecution of the war on our part as fatal to 

 all hopes of any desirable or even possible 

 ration of the Union, and very naturally 

 not only refrained from subscribing to the 

 loan continually pressed on the market, bi.t 

 dissuaded others from subscribing, and that 

 we number few moneyed capitalists among 

 our people most, even of those in thrift^ and 

 comfortable circumstances, being oftener in 

 debt than otherwise, while few are acensti nu d 

 to control considerable sums in money it 

 must be felt that the raising, in one way or an- 

 other, of the gigantic loans and other means 

 whereby the war was at length brought to a 

 conclusion, was the standing miracle of tho 

 contest. Had the wildest devotee of Mm 

 J 'i -tiny been asked beforehand to estimate the 

 extent to which our Government could bor- 

 row money or incur debt to prosecute a civil 

 war which imperiled its existence, he could 

 hardly have gone beyond $1,000,000,000 

 which was barely a third of the debt actually 

 created; and. when weconsider, also, the State 

 and local debts likewise incurred in raising 

 and fitting out their several continents, the 

 actual debt incurred wns probably over lour 

 billions, the total expenditure in prosecuting 

 tho war on our side being considerably above 

 that stupendous sum." 



Having accomplished his part in this great 

 work, and completely exhausted by Lis nr- 

 duous labors which had known no moment of 

 intermission in considerably more than 

 years, Secretary Chase resigned on Jim. 

 1864, and was succeeded on the 6th of July by 

 tho late William Pitt Fcssenden. The next 

 few months were spent, though not without 

 many and oppressive patriotic anxieties, in tin- 

 endeavor to regain a portion of the wasti-d 

 health and strength. On December r>. If-'H-t, 

 President Lincoln nominated him for Chiet- 

 Jiistico of the Supremo Court of the I'nitcd 

 States, as the successor of Roger li. T 



-ed. He was at onco confirmed by tho 

 Senate, and soon after his assumption of the 

 office made an extended tour throughout the 

 Southern States to ascertain by personal ob- 

 servation the actual condition of the people. 

 This tour was of great service in many of the 

 <>ns which subsequently came up for 

 decision in that court. There were those who 

 were inclined to think unfavorably of Mr. 

 Chase's appointment to this high office. For 

 the better part of his life ho had practically 

 abandoned the profession of the law; he bad 

 never filled a judicial position; he had never 

 remained at the her even long enough t 



