Cha: Chace through Chase

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


CHACE, Elizabeth Buffum, 1806-1899, Society of Friends, Quaker, women’s suffrage leader, penal reform leader, abolitionist leader.  Co-founder of the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society of Fall River, Massachusetts, 1836.  Member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, founded by her father, Arnold Buffum, in 1832.  Contributed articles for abolitionist newspaper, Liberator.  Her home was a station on the Underground Railroad.  She resigned from the Society of Friends in 1843 as a result of its continuing pro-slavery position.  At the end of the Civil War, she was elected Vice President of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  She published her memoirs in 1891, Anti-Slavery Reminiscences. Her grandfather, parents, husband, two sisters, and two brothers-in-law were all abolitionists. 

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 158; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 225, 280, 290, 424n54; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 44, 218; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 22, 37, 49-52, 58, 67, 69-71, 73, 159, 171, 191-192, 208-209, 219-221, 232n5; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 584; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 158-159; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 4, p. 609)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 584:

CHACE, ELIZABETH BUFFUM (December 9, 1806-December 12, 1899), anti-slavery and woman-suffrage advocate, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the second daughter of Arnold Buffum [q.v.] and Rebecca (Gould) Buffum. She passed her childhood in Smithfield, Rhode Island, and in Connecticut, where she attended the common schools, later studying at the Friends' School, Providence. In June 1828, at Fall River, Massachusetts, she married Samuel Buffington Chace, a cotton manufacturer of that city, like herself an orthodox Friend. Under her father's influence she early interested herself in anti-slavery activities, and in Valley Falls, Rhode Island, whither the Chaces removed in 1840, they conducted an Underground Railroad station. Mrs. Chace gave valued counsel to officers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and was their agent for  arranging meetings in Rhode Island, entertaining in her home Garrison, Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and other lecturers. In 1843 she resigned from the Society of Friends, alleging their indifference to the abolition cause. Thereafter she was unaffiliated with any religious sect; she retained belief in the "Inner Light," but her views became increasingly liberal. For some years she was a spiritualist, reading assiduously the Banner of Light and the writings of Andrew Jackson Davis, but in later life spiritualism ceased to influence her. She helped to sponsor the Woman's Rights convention held in 1850 in Worcester. With Mrs. Paulina W. Davis she organized, in 1868, the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association, of which she was president from 1870 till her death. For many years she was also an officer of the American Woman Suffrage Association. She worked ardently for suffrage, writing, speaking, and securing petitions for legislative action. Temperance and humanitarian activities also engaged her. In 1870 her efforts secured the passage of a state law providing for a board of women visitors to inspect Rhode Island penal and correctional institutions where women or children were confined; on this board she served for several years. At the International Congress on the Prevention and Repression of Crime, Including Penal Reformatory Treatment, in London (1872), she was a delegate and active participant. She brought about the establishment of the Rhode Island Home and School for Dependent Children (1884), and several years later reform of abuses in its management. Her wide range of interests brought her many friends, including Julia Ward Howe, Moncure D. Conway, John Weiss (Shakespearean scholar), Thomas Davidson, and Andrew Carnegie. She contributed to the New England Magazine and extensively to the Providence Journal. Her summer home at Wianno, on Cape Cod, became a literary center for reformers. After 1893 feebleness confined her to her home at Central Falls, where she died. The mother of ten children, she was the affectionate center of her home, which, amid all her activities, she never neglected. Three children only survived her; of these Lillie (Mrs. John C. Wyman) became her mother's biographer, and Arnold B. Chace chancellor of Brown University.

[Sources are Mrs. Chace's vivid Anti-Slavery Reminiscences (1891) and Elizabeth Buffum Chace (2 volumes, 1914), by L. B. C. Wyman and A. C. Wyman. A shorter sketch appears in L. B. C. Wyman's American Chivalry (1913), pp. 35-50.]

R. S. B.


CHAFFEE, Calvin C., 1811-1896, physician, politician, U.S. Congressman, abolitionist. 

(Blaustein, 1991; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)


CHALMERS, John, Jr., charter member of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, in December 1816. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 258)


CHAMBERLAIN, Homer M., Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Abolition Society, Manager, 1839-


CHAMBERLAIN, Jeremiah, 1794-1851, clergyman, educator, abolitionist.  President of Centre College, Kentucky, 1822-1825.  Founder and President of Oakland College in Mississippi, 1830-1851.  Co-founded Mississippi Colonization Society.  He was murdered for his anti-slavery stance on September 5, 1851, by a pro-slavery planter.


CHAMBERLAIN, Lewis, New York, American Abolition Society

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)


CHAMBERS, Ezekiel Forman, 1788-1867, Maryland, jurist, soldier, U.S. Senator from Maryland.  Supported the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the Senate.  Proposed bill in Senate to support the ACS with federal funding.  Defended colonization from detractors. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 566; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 602; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 176, 207)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 566:

CHAMBERS, Ezekiel F., senator, born in Kent county, Maryland, 28 February, 1788; died in Charleston, Maryland, 30 January, 1867. He was graduated at Washington college, Maryland, in 1805, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1808. He performed military service in the war of 1812, and subsequently attained the rank of brigadier-general of militia. Though elected in 1822 to the state senate against his will, he took an active part in the legislation of that body, and in 1825 arranged a system for the more effectual recovery of slaves. In 1826 he was elected U. S. senator from Maryland, and in 1832 re-elected. He distinguished himself as one of the ablest debaters and antagonists in that body. In 1834 he was appointed chief judge of the second judicial district and a judge of the court of appeals, which places he held till 1857, when the Maryland judiciary became elective. In 1850 he was a member of the constitutional convention of the state. In 1852 President Fillmore offered him the post of secretary of the navy on the resignation of Sec. Graham, but the condition of his health compelled him to decline. Yale conferred on him the degree of LL. D. in 1833, and Delaware in 1852. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


CHANDLER, Elizabeth Margaret, 1807-1834, poet, Society of Friends, Quaker, abolitionist.  Member of the Free Produce Society.  Co-founded the first anti-slavery society in Michigan, the Logan Female Anti-Slavery Society, in Lenawee County, Michigan Territory, October 8, 1832, with Laura Haviland.  Writer for Benjamin Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation after 1829.  In 1836, Chandler’s anti-slavery writings were published.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 279-281, 350-351; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 90-91, 97, 111, 113, 120; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 573; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 613; Mason, Martha J. Heringa, ed. Remember the Distance That Divides Us. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2004). A collection of her poems and essays was edited, with a memoir, by Benjamin Lundy (Philadelphia, 1836). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 613:

CHANDLER, ELIZABETH MARGARET (December 24, 1807-November 2, 1834), author, born at Centre, Delaware, was the youngest of the three children of Thomas Chandler, descended from English Quaker settlers along the Delaware River, and his wife, Margaret Evans of Burlington, New Jersey. Her mother died while Elizabeth was a baby, and Thomas Chandler removed to Philadelphia, where he placed his daughter in the care of her grandmother Evans. Elizabeth attended schools managed by the Society of Friends and was strictly trained in religion by her grandmother. When she was nine her father died, and this loss, combined with her religious education, made her unchildishly reflective. At thirteen she left school, but she had acquired the habits of reading and writing, which were her favorite occupations throughout her short life. Friends published some of her essays and poems, anonymously, for she was timid and feared publicity.  At sixteen she was writing much for the press and her articles were copied by various newspapers. She had never cared for the amusements of her day and seldom went out except to meetings of the Friends. She had become much interested in philanthropy, especially in the anti-slavery cause, and most of her writing was now concerning the wrongs of slavery. Her best known poem, "The Slave Ship," published in the Casket, received a prize and was copied by Benjamin Lundy, editor of the Genius of Universal Emancipation, who asked its author to become a regular contributor. Many of her poems on slavery appeared in the Genius, among them "The Wife's Lament," "The Recaptured Slave," and "The Slave's Appeal." In 1829 she took charge of the "female department" of the Genius, where she soon published an "Appeal to the Ladies of the United States" concerning slavery, which is said to have caused some women to emancipate their slaves. In 1830 she went with her brother and aunt to make a new home in the Territory of Michigan. There on a farm, which they christened "Hazelbank," in Lenawee County, she continued by mail her editorial work for the Genius. Her work was interrupted by an illness, called "remittent fever," which after some months ended in her death. A portrait of her shows a full oval face, with large dark eyes under heavy arching brows, dark hair piled high on her head, a bow mouth, and an expression of happy alertness not suggestive of her serious nature. Two volumes of her writings were published after her death: Essays, Philanthropic and Moral (1836) and Poetical Works of Elizabeth Margaret Chandler; with a Memoir of Her Life and Character (1836), by Benjamin Lundy. Her work is inspired by a burning moral purpose, but viewed as literature, her best poetry is not her slavery verse but that expressing her love of beauty and tenderness for associations, as in "The Brandywine," "Schuylkill," "The Sunset Hour," and "Summer Morning."

[Benjamin Lundy, ante; Rufus W. Griswold, The Female Poets of America (1859); Philadelphia American Sentinel, November 28, 1834.

J S.G.B.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 573:

CHANDLER, Elizabeth Margaret, author, born in Centre, near Wilmington, Delaware, 24 December, 1807; died 22 November, 1834. She was the daughter of Thomas Chandler, a Quaker farmer, was educated at the Friends' school in Philadelphia, and began at an early age to write verses. Her poem “The Slave-Ship,” written when she was eighteen years old, gained the prize- offered by the “Casket,” a monthly magazine. She became a contributor to the “Genius of Universal Emancipation,” a Philadelphia periodical favoring the liberation of the slaves, and in it nearly all her subsequent writings appeared. In 1830, with her aunt and brother, she removed to a farm near Tecumseh, Lenawee county, Mich., and from there continued her contributions in prose and verse on the subject of slavery. A collection of her poems and essays was edited, with a memoir, by Benjamin Lundy (Philadelphia, 1836). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 573.


CHANDLER, Thomas, abolitionist, Adrian, Michigan, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-42.


CHANDLER, William, abolitionist.  Founder and first President, Delaware Abolition Society, 1827.


CHANDLER, William Eaton, born 1835, Concord, New Hampshire.

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

CHANDLER, William Eaton, cabinet minister, born in Concord, New Hampshire, 28 December, 1835. He studied law in Concord, and at the Harvard law-school, where he was graduated in 1855. For several years after his admission to the bar in 1856 he practised in Concord, and in 1859 was appointed reporter of the New Hampshire supreme court, and published five volumes of reports. From the time of his coming of age Mr. Chandler was actively connected with the republican party, serving first as secretary, and afterward as chairman of the state committee. In 1862 he was elected to the New Hampshire house of representatives, of which he was speaker for two successive terms in 1863-'4. In November, 1864, he was employed by the navy department as special counsel to prosecute the Philadelphia navy-yard frauds, and on 9 March, 1865, was appointed first solicitor and judge-advocate-general of that department. On 17 June, 1865, he became first assistant secretary of the treasury. On 30 November, 1867, he resigned this place and resumed law practice. During the next thirteen years, although occupying no official position except that of member of the Constitutional convention of New Hampshire in 1876, he continued to take an active part in politics. He was a delegate from his state to the Republican national convention in 1868, and was secretary of the national committee from that time until 1876. In that year he advocated the claims of the Hayes electors in Florida before the canvassing board of the state, and later was one of the counsel to prepare the case submitted by the republican side to the electoral commission. Mr. Chandler afterward became an especially outspoken opponent of the southern policy of the Hayes administration. In 1880 he was a delegate to the Republican national convention, and served as a member of the committee on credentials, in which place he was active in securing the report in favor of district representation, which was adopted by the convention. During the subsequent campaign he was a member of the national committee. On 23 March, 1881, he was nominated for U. S. solicitor-general, but the senate refused to confirm, the vote being nearly upon party lines. In that year he was again a member of the New Hampshire legislature. On 7 April, 1882, he was appointed secretary of the navy. Among the important measures carried out by him were the simplification and reduction of the unwieldy navy-yard establishment; the limitation of the number of annual appointments to the actual wants of the naval service; the discontinuance of the extravagant policy of repairing worthless vessels; and the beginning of a modern navy in the construction of the four new cruisers recommended by the advisory board. The organization and successful voyage of the Greely relief expedition in 1884 were largely due to his personal efforts. Mr. Chandler was a strenuous advocate of uniting with the navy the other nautical branches of the federal administration, including the light-house establishment, the coast survey, and the revenue marine, upon the principle, first distinctly set forth by him, that “the officers and seamen of the navy should be employed to perform all the work of the National government upon or in direct connection with the ocean.” Mr. Chandler is controlling owner of the daily “Monitor,” a republican journal, and its weekly, the “Statesman,” published in Concord, New Hampshire. In June, 1887, he was elected U. S. senator. N.H. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


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.


CHANNING, Reverend William Ellery, 1780-1842, Unitarian clergyman, orator, writer, strong opponent of slavery.  Active in the peace, temperance, and educational reform movements.  Published anti-slavery works, The Slavery Question, in 1839, Emancipation in 1840, and The Duty of the Free States, in 1842.

(Brown, 1956; Channing, “Slavery,” 1836; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 273, 352-353; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 33, 34, 59, 80, 88, 93, 101, 128, 141, 184; Goodell, 1852, pp. 419, 560; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 15, 16, 43, 51, 79, 105, 384n14; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. xxxix-xl, lvii, lx, 114-118, 240-245; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 43, 46, 162, 169; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 72; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 576-577; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 4-7; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 160-163; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 4, p. 680)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 4-7:

CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY (April 7, 1780-October 2, 1842), Unitarian clergyman, was born in Newport, Rhode Island. His ancestors on both sides were of the best New England stock. The earliest American Channing was John, who came from Dorsetshire, England, in 1711. His wife was Mary. Antram, a fellow passenger on the voyage hither. Their son John became a prosperous merchant of Newport, Rhode Island, but lost his fortune in later life. John's son William, born in Newport in 1751, was graduated from Princeton College in 1769 and entered at once upon the study of the law. In 1773 he married Lucy, daughter of William Ellery [q.v.], who was graduated from Harvard College in 1747. The son of this marriage inherited thus a double academic tradition; on one side the stern Presbyterianism of Princeton, on the other the already threatening liberalism of Harvard. The father would have sent the boy to his own alma mater, but the stronger influence of the family connection with Cambridge decided the matter. The boy's maternal grandmother, Ann Remington, was of Cambridge origin, and Francis. Dana, chief justice of Massachusetts, whose wife was a sister of Lucy Ellery, was living there. The boy was received into this uncle's family and spent the four years of his college life there, enjoying the benefits of a refined home but deprived of the rough-and-tumble discipline of dormitory life. Contemporary accounts describe him as a serious, over-thoughtful youth, inclined to self-inspection but acutely sensitive to the conditions of life about him. After graduation from college in 1798 he accepted a position as tutor in the family of David Meade Randolph in Richmond, Virginia, and spent a year and a half there. Up to this time he had been in good health, fond of exercise, and a cheerful if rather serious companion. During this Southern residence among people of alien sympathies he acquired habits of overwork and ascetic discipline which undermined his health. Returning to Newport he applied himself with characteristic fervor to the study of theology. In 1802 he was called to Cambridge as "Regent" of Harvard College, a kind of proctorial office which left him abundant leisure for his chosen studies. In 1814 at the age of thirty-four he married his cousin Ruth Gibbs. On June 1, 1803, he was ordained and installed as minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston, and continued in this pastorate until his death in 1842. Channing's semi-invalidism accounts in a large measure for the social aloofness which was one of his great limitations. He was compelled to husband his physical energy very carefully, and he was shielded by his wife and by his admiring friends from many of the ruder contacts with the world. Only a strong will prevented him from becoming a recluse, and he constantly struggled, not always with conspicuous success, against a valetudinarian habit.

On the pedestal of the statue of Channing in the Public Garden of Boston is the inscription, "He breathed into theology a humane spirit." This expresses his real contribution to theology. He had no novelties of doctrine to propose. He was no innovator. He accepted historic Christianity as a way of life and was eager only to persuade others to walk in it. He was by nature a Broad Churchman of the type common in the Church of England. It is one of the ironies of history that he should have had an important part in some of the bitterest religious and political controversies of his time. A man whose temper was altogether catholic was forced by circumstances to appear as the standard bearer of a new sect.

The "Unitarian Controversy" in which the young minister of the Federal Street Church was destined to take a prominent part was the result of forces which had long been working among the Congregational churches of New England. There had come to be Calvinists, moderate Calvinists, Armenians, and even some ministers darkly suspected of Arianism. About 1815 the differences became acute and the orthodox party, alarmed at the progress of "heresy," insisted upon a thorough house-cleaning. "If Socinians and Arians are among us," they said, ''let them show their colors!”

The challenge was promptly accepted, and the word "Unitarian" became henceforth the rallying point for the gathering opposition. New England was in a welter of theological pamphleteering at just the time when Channing was maturing his own thought up on religion. His importance lies in the fact that he refused to identify himself with any of the numerous shades of opinion in the community about him. He committed what, in the eyes of his critics, was the unpardonable sin of doing his own thinking. Starting with a profound conviction of the sufficiency of the Christian Scriptures as the guide of faith, he sought there a basis for the creed of Calvinism in which he had been reared. A "jealous''-- God; a mankind conceived in iniquity; the vicarious sacrifice of an innocent victim as atonement for "sin" in which man's will had no part; election by grace:-for all these Channing searched the Scriptures in vain. He did not enter the controversy by the barren method of textual criticism, but by the preaching of a gospel founded upon precisely opposite ideas: the goodness of God, the essential virtue and perfectibility of man, and the freedom of the will with its consequent responsibility for action. The effect of his preaching and writing was to bring to a focus all the unrest and dissatisfaction that had long been gathering within the sects, more especially among the Congregationalists.

The name "Unitarian" was borrowed from England but it was some time before the independent thinkers of America could bring themselves to adopt it. Channing himself hesitated, fearing that if a new party with a distinctive name were to be formed, it would soon produce a "Unitarian orthodoxy" with all the limitations and petty tyrannies of the old. He deplored the necessity of organizing a new denomination. "I desire," he said, "to escape the narrow walls of a particular church, and to live under the open sky, looking far and wide and seeing with my own eyes and hearing with my own ears." Soon, however, he recognized that the movement had gone beyond his control and then he not only threw himself heartily into it, but became its acknowledged leader. In 1819 he preached a sermon defining the position of the Unitarian party and defending their right to Christian fellowship. The disruption that followed grieved him, but he accepted it as inevitable. In the following year, 1820, he organized the Berry Street Conference of liberal ministers, at a meeting of which in May 1825 there was organized the American Unitarian Association. The first number of the Christian Register, the weekly unofficial organ of the Unitarian denomination; appeared in 1821. Associations and publications alike became vehicles for Channing's thought. "Channing Unitarianism" came to be and has remained the recognized term for that form of religious liberalism which, while unwavering in its assertion of the right of the human reason as a part of the essential dignity of human nature, still clung fondly to the supernatural element of the Christian tradition.

Channing's objection to the Trinitarian orthodoxy of the time was not so much to its doctrine about the nature of the Godhead, as to its view of the nature of man. This he made clear in his epoch-making sermon, "The Moral Argument against Calvinism." The idea that human nature was essentially depraved and incapable of natural growth into goodness was abhorrent to him.  His conception of Christ linked him with Arians like John Milton. He did not reject the New Testament miracles, but they became less and less important to him as evidences of the truth of Christianity.

Those who heard Channing preach testify to the arresting quality of his voice and the charm of his manner. His style was unadorned by illustration. To the modern reader he seems unnecessarily didactic, but this was a characteristic which did not impress his contemporaries. He steadily grew away from the stilted manner of his earlier discourses. There are few of his sermons which do not have their moments of real eloquence.

But though he attained a place of great power as a preacher, it was not from the pulpit of the Federal Street Church that he exerted his widest influence upon his generation. In 1822 the state of his health required a prolonged vacation in Europe. After his return, Reverend Ezra Stiles Gannett, himself a man of distinction in the Unitarian body, became his colleague and took upon himself an increasing part of the ministerial work. From that time Channing addressed the public directly through the press. His essays on Milton, Fenelon, and Napoleon had a wide circulation. In his address on Self-Culture he made a plea for adult education, denying the academic distinction between cultural and vocational studies and insisting on the possibility of attaining true culture by means of one's vocation intelligently pursued. It is interesting, as illustrating the sweep of Channing's mind, to find him in this address delivered in 1838 advocating the policy of setting apart the funds derived from the sale of public lands to support public education.

The influence of Channing on American literature was very direct. The term "Channing Unitarians," while not precise when applied to a theological party, was very apt when applied to the group of New England writers who flourished in the middle of the nineteenth century. Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes were all closely associated with the Unitarian movement, and acknowledged their indebtedness to Channing. If "he breathed into theology a humane spirit" it may with equal truth be said that he breathed into literature a religious spirit.

Channing's Remarks on American Literature, published in 1830, is still worth reading. He defines literature as "the expression of a nation's mind in writing." Then he criticizes the tendency among American writers to imitate English models rather than to find inspiration in what is characteristic of their own land. American literature must become national instead of colonial. The time has come for a literary Declaration of Independence. "We think that the history of the human race is to be rewritten. Men imbued with the prejudices which thrive under aristocracies and state religions cannot understand it. . . . It seems to us that in literature immense work is yet to be done. The most interesting questions of mankind are yet in debate. Great principles are yet to be settled in criticism, in morals, and in politics; and above all, the true character of religion is to be rescued from the disguises and corruptions of ages. We want a reformation .... The part which this country is to bear in that intellectual reform we presume not to predict. We feel, however, that if true to itself, it will have the glory and happiness of giving new impulses to the human mind. This is our cherished hope. We should have no heart to encourage native literature did We not hope that it would be instinct with a new spirit. We cannot admit the thought that this country is to be only a repetition of the old world" (Works, 1903 edition, p. 134).

To those who are familiar only with Channing's sermons there is something amusing in his serious denial of the charge that he cherished political ambitions and was desirous of becoming a member of Congress. But he never looked upon politics with indifference. All questions were to him moral questions. Politics was the native air he breathed in childhood. His father, William Channing, was a politician so successful that he was at the same time attorney-general of Rhode Island and United States district attorney. His grandfather, William Ellery, whose companionship he enjoyed to middle life, was one of the most ardent of the Sons of Liberty and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. His classmate and intimate friend, Judge Story, tells of Channing's intense interest in political questions while in college. During the exciting year 1798, Channing secured a meeting of his fellow students in Harvard "for the purpose of expressing their opinions on the existing crisis in public affairs." The youthful politician was given the principal part at Commencement and assigned the subject "The Present Age" with the stipulation that all reference to present politics should be avoided. Channing resented the restriction and won the plaudits of the audience by stopping in the midst of his address and declaiming, "But that I am forbid I could a tale unfold that would harrow up your souls." His early associations were with the Federalists. His family was connected with the Cabots, the Lees, Jacksons, and Lowells whose names counted for much in the society of those days. George Cabot, the leader of the New England Federalists and president of the Hartford convention, was a friend for whom he cherished the most profound respect. Nevertheless, the trend of his own thought allied him with Jefferson rather than with Hamilton, and he soon outgrew fears of the "Jacobins." His account of the failure of the Federalist party and the reasons for it is full of discriminating sympathy. "A purer party than the Federalists, we believe, never existed under any government." But their fear of the French Revolution destroyed their confidence in their own institutions. "We apprehend that it is possible to make experience too much our guide .... There are seasons in human affairs of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. These are periods when the principles of experience need to be modified, when hope and trust and instinct claim a share with prudence in the guidance of affairs, when in truth to dare is the highest wisdom" (Ibid., p. 641).

Unlike the members of the society in which he lived, Channing was conscious of the tremendous revolutionary forces which were at work. He distinguished between the outer and the inner revolution, and his aim was to make the outer revolution peaceful and beneficial, by the timely release of the moral forces which he believed to be stored up in the individual soul. This is emphasized in his pamphlets and addresses on the slavery question. Slavery, he insisted, is an unspeakable evil. But so also is war and of all wars the most dreadful to contemplate is a civil war. He could not dismiss as did many abolitionists the possibility of a war between the states. His residence in Virginia had given him a deep respect for the courage of the Southerners and their willingness to fight in defense of state rights. In his discussions of slavery he addressed himself to the conscience of the South rather than to the New England conscience. He was attacked from both sides, but his addresses did much to prepare people to understand and follow Abraham Lincoln. (See his Slavery, 1835; The Abolitionist, 1836; Open Letter to Henry Clay, 1837; Duty of the Free States, 1842.)

In the modern movement against war, Channing may be counted as a pioneer. He began with an outspoken sermon against the War of 1812. In this he voiced the general feeling of Massachusetts. The great aim of his essay on Napoleon was to destroy the romantic glamour that invests the successful warrior. The Massachusetts Peace Society was organized in his study. His lecture on War delivered in 1838 is almost Tolstoyan in its anti-militarism. Unlike Tolstoy, however, he could not follow literally the injunction "Resist not evil." He admitted the right of a nation to use force in self-defense, but insisted that it must be as carefully defined by law as the similar right of an individual. It is possible for a nation to commit murder.

In his discussion of temperance, the condition of laborers, and public education, Channing was clearly in advance of his time. His viewpoint was surprisingly anticipatory of the thought of present-day social workers. Intemperance he treated as a vice for which the community was largely responsible. The law might properly be invoked to prohibit the sale of intoxicants as of other harmful drugs, but improvements in hygiene, food, and recreation were more needed. "I have insisted on the importance of increasing the innocent gratifications in a community. Let us become more cheerful and we shall become a more temperate people" (Ibid., p. 112). In prophetic words, he warns the advocates of temperance against the attempt to coerce. "We w ant public opinion to bear on temperance, but to act rationally, generously and not passionately, tyrannically and with a spirit of persecution. Men cannot be driven into temperance" (Ibid., p. 116).

[Wm. Henry Channing, Life of Wm. Ellery Channing (1848; Centenary ed., 1880); John White Chadwick, Wm. Ellery Channing, Master of Religion (1903); Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Reminiscences of Reverend Wm. Ellery Channing 1880); Chas. Wm. Eliot, Four American Leaders (1906); Ezra Stiles Gannett, An Address at the Funeral of Wm. Ellery Channing (1842).]

S.M.C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 576-577:

CHANNING, William Ellery, clergyman, born in Newport, Rhode Island, 7 April, 1780; died in Bennington, Vt., 2 October, 1842. His boyhood was passed in Newport, where his first strong religious impressions were received from the preaching of Dr. Samuel Hopkins. As a youth, he appears, though small in person and of a sensibility almost feminine, to have been vigorous, athletic, and resolute, showing from childhood a marked quality of moral courage and mental sincerity. In his college life at Harvard, where he was graduated in 1798, he showed a singular capacity to win the ardent personal attachment of his fellows; and, though he was very young, his literary qualities seem even then to have been fully developed, his style being described by his classmate, Judge Story, as “racy, flowing, full, glowing with life, chaste in ornament, vigorous in structure, and beautiful in finish.” He was also conspicuous in the students' debating-clubs, and shared fully in the political enthusiasms of the day, refusing the commencement oration assigned him until granted permission to speak on his favorite theme. Among the authors of his choice at this time, Hutcheson appears to have inspired his profound conviction of “the dignity of human nature,” Ferguson (“Civil Society”) his faith in social progress and his “enthusiasm of humanity,” and Price (“Dissertations”) that form of idealism which “saved me,” he says, “from Locke's philosophy.” As a private instructor in Richmond, Virginia, in the family of D. M. Randolph, in 1798-1800, he felt “the charm of southern manners and hospitality,” and at the same time acquired an abhorrence of the social and moral aspects of slavery, then equally abhorred by the most intelligent men and women at the south. Here he became eagerly interested in political discussions growing out of the revolutionary movements in Europe, and a keen admirer of such writers as Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and especially Rousseau; but, as if by a certain unconscious reaction against these influences, he gave special study to the historical evidences of Christianity, to which class of evidences he ever after strongly adhered, and was confirmed in his purpose to prepare for the ministry. He also disciplined himself by a vigorously ascetic way of life—exposure to cold, hardship, and fatigue, with scant diet (leading to permanent “contraction of the stomach” with painful dyspepsia), insufficient clothing, and excessive devotion to study. The ill-effect of these practices, aggravated by the exposures of his return voyage to Newport, followed him through life, and “from the time of his residence in Richmond to the day of his death he never knew a day of unimpaired vigor.” After a short stay in Newport, where the influences of early life were renewed and deepened, he returned to Cambridge as a student of theology, with the title and petty income of “regent,” a sort of university scholarship. At this period Bishop Butler and William Law were the writers that chiefly influenced his opinions; and he is represented as having had a tendency to Calvinistic views, though “never in any sense a Trinitarian.” His first and only pastoral settlement was over the church in Federal street, Boston, 1 June, 1803, which he accepted, in preference to the more distinguished place in Brattle square, partly on the ground that a smaller and feebler congregation might not overtax his strength. Here he was shortly known for a style of religious eloquence of rare “fervor, solemnity, and beauty.” His views at this time—and indeed, prevailingly, during his later life—are described as “rather mystical than rational”; in particular, as to the controverted doctrine of Christ's divinity, holding “that Jesus Christ is more than man, that he existed before the world, that he literally came from heaven to save our race, that he sustains other offices than those of a teacher and witness to the truth, and that he still acts for our benefit, and is our intercessor with the Father.” Early in his ministry, however, Mr. Channing was closely identified with that movement of thought, literary and philosophic as well as theological, which gave birth to the “Anthology Club,” and to a series of journals, of which those longest-lived and of widest repute were the “North American Review” and the “Christian Examiner.” Essays published in these journals, especially those on Milton and on the character of Napoleon, gave him literary reputation in Europe as well as at home. The intellectual movement in question was marked by an increasing interest in questions of theological and textual criticism, and by a leaning toward, if not identification with, the class of opinions that began about 1815 to be currently known as Unitarian. Though Mr. Channing was disinclined to sectarian names or methods, though he never desired to be personally called a Unitarian, and would have chosen that the movement of liberal theology should go on within the lines of the New England Congregational body, to which he belonged from birth, yet he became known as the leader of the Unitarians, and may almost be said to have first given to the body so called the consciousness of its real position and the courage of its convictions by his sermon delivered in Baltimore, 5 May, 1819, at the ordination of Jared Sparks. This celebrated discourse may be regarded less as a theological argument, for which its method is too loose and rhetorical, than as a solemn impeachment of the Calvinistic theology of that day at the bar of popular reason and conscience. And a similar judgment may be passed, in general, upon the series of controversial discourses that he delivered in the succeeding years. For about fifteen years, making the middle period of his professional life—a life interrupted only by a few months' stay in Europe (1822-'3) and a winter spent in Santa Cruz (1830-'31)—Mr. Channing was best known to the public as a leader in the Unitarian body, and the record of this time survives in several volumes of eloquent and noble sermons, which constitute still the best body of practical divinity that the Unitarian movement in this country has produced. Very interesting testimony to the habit and working of his mind at this period is also to be found in the volume of “Reminiscences” by Miss E. P. Peabody (Boston, 1880). A sermon on the “Ministry at Large” in Boston (1835) strongly illustrates the sympathetic as well as religious temper in which he now undertook those discussions of social topics—philanthropy, moral reform, and political ethics—by which his later years were most widely and honorably distinguished. From organized charity the way was open to questions of temperance and public education, which now began to take new shapes; and from these again, to those that lie upon the border-ground of morals and politics—war and slavery. Regarding the last, indeed, which may be taken as a type of the whole, it does not appear that he ever adopted the extreme opinions, or approved the characteristic modes of action, of the party known as abolitionists. But his general and very intense sympathy with their aims was of great moral value in the anti-slavery movement, now taking more and more a political direction. Of this the earliest testimony was a brief but vigorous essay on slavery (1835), dealing with it purely on grounds of moral argument; followed the next year by a public letter of sympathy to James G. Birney (“The Abolitionists”), who had just been driven from Cincinnati with the destruction of his press and journal; and again, in 1837, by a letter to Henry Clay on the annexation of Texas, a policy which the writer thought good ground to justify disunion. The event that, more than any other, publicly associated his name and influence with the anti-slavery party was a meeting held in Faneuil Hall, 8 December, 1837, after the death of Elijah P. Lovejoy, who was shot while defending his press at Alton, Illinois, when for the first time Mr. Channing stood side by side, upon the public platform, with men in whom he now saw the champions of that freedom of discussion which must be upheld by all good citizens. His later writings on the subject are a letter on “The Slavery Question” (1839) addressed to Jonathan Phillips; a tract on “Emancipation” (1840), suggested by a work of J. J. Gurney's on emancipation in the British West Indies; and an argument (1842) on “The Duty of the Free States,” touching the case of the slaves on board the brig “Creole,” of Richmond, who had seized the vessel and carried her into the port of Nassau. His last public act was an address delivered in Lenox. Massachusetts, 1 August, 1842, commemorating the West India emancipation. A few weeks later, while on a journey, he was seized with an attack of autumn fever, of which he died. Interesting personal recollections remain, now passing into tradition, of Channing's rare quality and power as a pulpit orator, of which a single trait may here be given: “From the high, old-fashioned pulpit his face beamed down, it may be said, like the face of an angel, and his voice floated clown like a voice from higher spheres. It was a voice of rare power and attraction, clear, flowing, melodious, slightly plaintive, so as curiously to catch and win upon the hearer's sympathy. Its melody and pathos in the reading of a hymn was alone a charm that might bring men to the listening like the attraction of sweet music. Often, too, when signs of physical frailty were apparent, it might be said that his speech was watched and waited for with that sort of hush as if one was waiting to catch his last earthly words.” Numerous writings of Dr. Channing were published singly, which were gathered shortly before his death (5 vols., Boston, 1841), to which a sixth volume was added subsequently, and also, in 1872, a volume of selected sermons entitled “The Perfect Life.” All are included in a single volume published by the American Unitarian association (Boston). A biography was prepared by his nephew, W. H. Channing (3 vols., Boston, 1848). Translations of Channing's writings “have been, either wholly or in part, published in the German, French, Italian, Hungarian, Icelandic, and Russian languages.” While in America he is best known as a theologian and preacher, his influence abroad is said to be chiefly as a writer on subjects of social ethics. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 576-577.


CHAPIN, Chauncey, abolitionist.  Massachusetts Abolition Society, Manager, 1841-42.


CHAPIN, David, New York, abolitionist.  American Abolition Society. 

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)


CHAPIN, Edwin Hubbell, 1814-1880, Union Village, Washington County, New York, clergyman, opponent of slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 579-580; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, p. 15)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 579-580:

CHAPIN, Edwin Hubbell, clergyman, born in Union Village, Washington county, New York, 29 December, 1814; died in New York city, 27 December, 1880. He received his early training at the Bennington, Vt., seminary, his parents having removed to that town, and. after completing the seminary course, studied law in Troy, New York, but soon went to Utica and became editor of “The Magazine and Advocate,” a periodical devoted to the interests of Universalism. About the same time he determined to study for the ministry, and was ordained in 1837. His first pastoral duties were in Richmond, Virginia, where he remained for three years, and then removed to Charlestown, Massachusetts. After six years spent there, he was invited to take charge of the School street Universalist church in Boston, as the colleague of the venerable Hosea Ballou. In 1848 he accepted an invitation from the 4th Universalist church of New York city, then situated near City Hall park. His preaching proved so attractive that a larger building became necessary, and within four years two changes were made to more spacious quarters. In 1850 Dr. Chapin went to Europe as a delegate to the peace congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main. In the period preceding the civil war he was conspicuous among the opponents of negro slavery, and during its continuance lent his great influence to the support of the government. At the close of the war, when the flags of the New York regiments were delivered to the keeping of the state, Dr. Chapin was appointed orator for the occasion, and made an address of remarkable power and eloquence. In 1866 his congregation removed to the “Church of the Divine Paternity,” 45th street and 5th avenue, New York city, where it has since remained. Dr. Chapin had long been one of the most prominent of metropolitan preachers, and the new church became one of the points to which throngs of church-goers—and, which is more important, throngs of non-church-goers—resorted whenever it was known that the pastor would speak. Although he was zealous and diligent in his church duties, he was among the most popular of public lecturers, and, while his health permitted, his services were constantly in demand. He was not a profound student in the scholarly acceptation of the term, but as a student and interpreter of human nature, in its relations to the great questions of the time, he had few superiors. His denominational religious associations were with the Universalists; but his sympathies were of the broadest character, and he numbered among his personal friends many of the staunchest advocates of orthodoxy, who could not but admire his eloquence, however much they may have dissented from his religious teaching. In creeds Dr. Chapin did not believe; but he preached a wise conduct in life, and included in the range of his pulpit themes every topic, social or political, that affects the well-being of mankind. In 1856 he received the degree of S. T. D. from Harvard, and in 1878 that of LL. D. from Tufts. He was a trustee of Bellevue medical college and hospital and a member of many societies. The Chapin Home for aged and indigent men and women, named in his honor, remains a monument to his memory. In 1872 he succeeded Dr. Emerson as editor of the “Christian Leader.” The closing years of his life were marked by failing physical powers, though his mind was as brilliant as ever. He travelled in Europe, but was unable to regain his wonted vigor, and for a long time before his death he suffered from nervous depression that no doubt hastened the end. Most of his sermons and lectures were collected and published in book form. The titles are “Hours of Communion” (New York, 1844); “Discourses on the Lord's Prayer” (1850); “Characters in the Gospels” (1852); “Moral Aspects of City Life” (1853); “Discourses on the Beatitudes” (1853); “True Manliness” (New York, 1854); “Duties of Young Men” (1855); “The Crown of Thorns—a Token for the Suffering, probably the most widely read of his books (1860); “Living Words” (Boston, 1861); “The Gathering”—memorial of a meeting of the Chapin family (Springfield, Massachusetts, 1862); “Humanity in the City”; “Providence and Life”; and “Discourses on the Book of Proverbs.” With James G. Adams as his associate, he compiled “Hymns for Christian Devotion” (1870). Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


CHAPIN, Josiah, abolitionist, Providence, Rhode Island, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1840-43.


CHAPIN, Rulon, New York, abolitionist.  American Abolition Society. 

(Radical Abolitionist, Volume 1, No. 1, New York, August 1855)


CHAPLIN, William Lawrence, 1796-1871, abolitionist leader, Farmington, NY.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839-1840.  Agent of the New York Anti-Slavery Society.  He was known as “The General.”  He was involved in slave freedom lawsuits, “Self-Purchase,” and aided fugitive slaves.  Helped plan the “Pearl” ship escape.  Supported by Gerrit Smith. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 297; Goodell, 1852, pp. 246, 445, 463, 556; Sinha, 2016, pp. 402, 405, 407, 501, 529, 534; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 113; Radical Abolitionist; Wilson, 1872, Volume 2, pp. 80-82)

Chapter: “Underground Railroad. - Operations at the East and in the Middle States,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

The case of William L. Chaplin affords another example of what it cost in those days to be honest and humane, to listen to the voice of sympathy and to carry into action the simple precepts of Christian love. In the year 1836 this gentleman, a young lawyer of Eastern Massachusetts, just .entering upon -the practice of his profession, with generous ambition and flattering prospects, was invited, on the very threshold of what he had marked out as his life's work, to relinquish all these prospects, that he might espouse the cause of the despised and downtrodden slave. Yielding to what he regarded the voice of duty, he relinquished his profession and its prospects, and for a quarter of a century devoted himself to the cause of the oppressed. Having served the national antislavery society for several months, he accepted the appointment of general agent of the New York State society. Possessing energy and marked executive ability, he devoted himself for four years, with large success, to the work of organizing the new forces of freedom in those early years of the reform.  Afterward, for several years in connection with others, he made a specialty of procuring and publishing antislavery tracts, documents, and volumes. In 1844 he assumed control of the Albany "Patriot," the paper which Mr. Torrey then in the Maryland penitentiary, had recently started. Becoming the Washington correspondent of his own paper, he often found occasion, during -his residence at the capital, to exhibit the philanthropy of his nature by aiding in the purchase of the relatives of those who had previously escaped to the North. During the session of 1850 he was persuaded to assist two young men, slaves of Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, in their endeavor to escape. Being surprised in the attempt, he was arrested and cast into prison, on the charge of abducting slaves. Having lain in prison five months, he was released on the excessive bail of twenty-five thousand dollars.

But his alleged offences, according to the laws of the District of Columbia and of Maryland, would subject him, if convicted, to imprisonment for years, if not for life. The masters of the slaves he had aided were violent and most exacting in their demands, the country was intensely agitated, and the fate of. Torrey was fresh in memory. There was little doubt that,. if brought to trial, he would be convicted. It was deemed advisable, therefore, to prevent .a trial whose probable results would be thus serious, if not practically fatal; and it was determined by his friends that his bail, though so large, should be forfeited and paid. To do this, his own little property was sacrificed and heavy contributions were made by his friends and the friends of the cause. In this work, Gerrit Smith of New York, with his usual and prompt sympathy, his large-hearted beneficence and princely munificence, became his surety, and contributed a large portion of the amount. And this was the price demanded by the nation, and paid by Mr. Chaplin and his friends, for performing the simple and neighborly act of aiding two young men to escape from the horrible bondage of chattel slavery. But he lived to see the day when those slaves, if living, were not only free, but enfranchised men, and those masters, stripped of all control over them and of their own rights of citizenship, were dependent upon the generosity of the nation for even the privilege of life.

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 80-82.


CHAPMAN, Henry G., abolitionist, Boston, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Treasurer, 1835-40, 1840-42.


CHAPMAN, Maria Weston, 1806-1885, educator, writer, newspaper editor, prominent abolitionist leader, reformer.  Advocate of immediate, uncompensated emancipation.  Editor of the anti-slavery newspaper The Liberty Bell.  Also helped to edit William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, the Liberator.  Co-founded and edited the National Anti-Slavery Standard.  Leader and founder of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), which she founded and organized with twelve other women, including three of her sisters.  The Society worked to educate Boston’s African American community and to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia.  In 1840, Chapman was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  She was Councillor of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1841-1865.  Her husband was prominent abolitionist Henry Grafton Chapman.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, p. 273; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 55, 76, 129, 143, 184; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 62, 68, 72, 80, 105, 249, 259, 274; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. xliv-l, li, lii, lxx, 205-212; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 199, 367, 402; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 97, 119, 123, 135, 137, 173, 185, 190-191, 206-208; Weston, “How Can I Help Abolish Slavery?, or Councels to the Newly Converted,” New York, 1855; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 581; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 19-20; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 163-164; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 4, p. 710; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 315)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 2, pp. 19-20:

CHAPMAN, MARIA WESTON (July 25, 1806-July 12, 1885), reformer, daughter of Warren and Anne (Bates) Weston, was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, of Pilgrim descent. She was married in 1830 to Henry Grafton Chapman, a Boston merchant. Her husband's parents were enthusiastic abolitionists, and in 1834 Maria Weston Chapman went into the movement. She became the soul of the Boston female Anti-Slavery Society, editing (1836-40) its reports published annually under the title Right and Wrong in Boston. Her services to Garrison were said to have been inestimable, her cooperation with him perfect. She was present at the meeting in Boston in. 1835 at which Garrison was mobbed, and it was to her house that the meeting adjourned. Of the Boston gathering she said that when the women left the hall a roar of rage and contempt went up which increased when it was evident that they meant to walk in a regular procession, "each with a colored friend." The next year she spoke for the first time in her life in a public meeting, the day before Pennsylvania Hall was destroyed. She became one of the editors of the Non-Resistant, and, with Edmund Quincy, she edited the Liberator at various times during Garrison's illness or absence. In 1840 she was made a member of the executive committee of the Anti-Slavery Society, with Lucretia Mott and Lydia Maria Child, and in the same year, the Massachusetts Society chose her as one of its delegates to the World's Convention. In 1842 her husband died. In the two months after his death, she was very busy with the Anti-Slavery Fair, in supporting the Latimer fugitive slave case agitation and with writing almost weekly for the Liberator. She edited the Liberty Bell (1839-46).

She published Songs of the Free, and Hymns of Christian Freedom (1836) and How Can I Help to Abolish Slavery (1855), and in 1877 edited, with a memoir, the autobiography of Harriet Martineau, whom she had known for many years.

[Wm. Lloyd Garrison, the Story of His Life, Told by His Children (1885-89); files of the Liberty Bell, Liberator, Right and Wrong in Boston.]

M.A.K.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 581:

CHAPMAN, Maria Weston, reformer, born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, in 1806; died there in 1885. She was a daughter of Warren Weston, of Weymouth. After being educated in her native town and in England, she was principal of the newly established Young ladies' high-school in Boston in 1829-'30. She was married in 1830, and in 1834 became an active abolitionist. Her husband died in 1842, and in 1848 she went to Paris, France, where she aided the anti-slavery cause with her pen. She returned to this country in 1856, and in 1877 published the autobiography of her intimate friend, Harriet Martineau.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 581. 



CHAPMAN, Mary G., leader, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS).

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)


CHAPMAN, William M., abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.


CHASE, Jeremiah Townly, Annapolis, Maryland, Chief Justice of the Maryland Court of Appeals.  Member of the Annapolis auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 70)


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.


CHASE, Samuel, 1741-1811, Maryland, founding father, jurist.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

CHASE, Samuel, signer of the Declaration of Independence, born in Somerset county, Maryland, 17 April, 1741; died 19 June, 1811. His father, an Episcopalian clergyman of English birth, and a fine classical scholar, had charge of his early education, and sent him, at the age of eighteen, to study law at Annapolis, where he was admitted to the bar in 1761 and began practice. He was soon prominent in his profession, and became a member of the colonial legislature, where he distinguished himself by his independent bearing and by his opposition to the royal governor. He voted at one time for a resolution relating to the support of the clergy, by which his father, then rector of St. Paul's, Baltimore, lost half his income. He was an ardent patriot, vehemently resisted the stamp-act, and was prominent in an assemblage of the “Sons of liberty” at Annapolis that forcibly opened the public offices, destroyed the stamps, and burned the collector in effigy. He afterward published a letter to the authorities, avowing and defending his connection with this affair. The Maryland convention sent him as one of five delegates to the Continental congress of 1774, and he continued a member of successive congresses until the end of 1778. The Maryland delegates were restricted, by special instructions of the convention, from voting for independence, and Mr. Chase, chafing at being obliged to withhold open support from a measure he so enthusiastically favored, gladly accepted from congress a mission to Canada, in company with Benjamin Franklin and Charles Carroll. The mission, the object of which was to persuade Canada to join the colonies, was fruitless; and on his return Mr. Chase canvassed the state of Maryland, and obtained from county meetings expressions of patriotic sentiment that the convention could not resist. It now voted for independence, and Mr. Chase returned to Philadelphia just in time to join in adopting the decisive resolution. He was appointed on most of the important committees in congress, where his industry was unwearied. In 1778 he drafted an eloquent address to the people of the country, in answer to papers that had been circulated by the tories. During the last two or three years of the war he devoted himself to his private law business, which he had not hesitated to neglect, while in congress, for his public duties. In 1783 he was sent to England by the Maryland legislature, as agent of the state, to recover money that had been invested by it in the bank of England before the war. He remained there for nearly a year, succeeded in recovering $650,000, and made the acquaintance of many eminent lawyers, including Pitt, Fox, and Edmund Burke, whose guest he was for a week. Chase was thanked by the legislature for his “zeal and fidelity, diligence and ability” in this mission. He removed to Baltimore in 1786, became chief justice of a newly established criminal court there in 1788, and also a member of the Maryland convention that adopted the federal constitution. Although he did not think this instrument democratic enough, lamented the “monarchical principles” that had come into vogue, and was an admirer of France, he was throughout his life an earnest federalist. In 1791 he became chief justice of the general court of Maryland, and in 1794 distinguished himself by his course on the occasion of a riot. He had caused the arrest of two popular men as leaders; but they refused to give bail, and the sheriff was apprehensive of a rescue should he take them to prison. “Call out the posse comitatus, then,” said the judge. “Sir,” was the reply, “no one will serve.” “Summon me, then; I will be the posse comitatus; I will take them to jail.” Such was the state of the public mind that the grand jury, instead of presenting the rioters, presented the judge for holding a place in two courts at the same time. He simply told them that they had meddled with topics beyond their province. Washington made Judge Chase an associate justice of the U. S. Supreme court in 1796, and in 1804 his political opponents in congress, led by John Randolph, of Virginia, secured his impeachment by the house for misdemeanor in the conduct of the trials of Fries and Callender for sedition, five years before, and for a recent address to a Maryland grand jury. The requisite two thirds not being obtained, he was discharged by the senate on 5 March, 1805, resumed his seat on the bench, and retained it till his death. The impeachment of Judge Chase excited much sympathy, even among his opponents, on account of his age, his services to the country, and the purity of his judicial record. There is no doubt, however, that it did good in checking the overbearing conduct prevalent at that time on the bench. Judge Chase was better fitted for an advocate than for a judge. He was somewhat irascible, free in censure where he thought it deserved, and always ready to express his political opinions, even on the bench; but the purity of his motives seems beyond question. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.

Biography from National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans:

THE REVEREND THOMAS CHASE, the father of the subject of these pages; was the only son of Samuel Chase, of a highly respectable family in Great Britain. At the age of eighteen Thomas was sent to Eaton College, where, by his close application and untiring zeal, he became a proficient in the Latin and Hebrew languages, and soon after he received the honors of the College. The professorship of those languages was tendered to him, which he gladly accepted, as his father had lately suffered some loss in his pecuniary affairs.

In 1738 he fled from the persecution of Cromwell to the Island of Jamaica, where he practised physic, which science he had studied during his leisure hours at Eaton. He remained in Jamaica but a few months, whence he sailed to the American Colonies; and Somerset County, Maryland, was the place he chose for his residence.

In January, 1740, he was married to Matilda Walker, the daughter of a respectable farmer. The fruit of this union was one son; and the day that presented Mr. CHASE an heir deprived him of his amiable helpmate.

In 1743 Mr. T. Chase was honored with the appointment of rector of St. Paul’s parish in Baltimore, whither he removed with his infant son, who had received the name of SAMUEL.

Deprived of the tender care of a mother, SAMUEL was the sole object of his father’s love, and under the direction of this kind parent he received his education.

At the age of eighteen he went to Annapolis, where he studied law under the direction of John Hammond and John Hall; and in 1761 he was admitted to the Provincial Courts.

The year following he was united to Miss Anne Baldwin of Annapolis, a lady of distinguished merit, pious, amiable, affable and courteous. This union was blessed with six children, two only of whom are now living—SAMUEL CHASE, his second son, at present holding an office of judge in the District of Columbia, and Miss Anne Chase.

Mr. CHASE soon became distinguished as a lawyer, and engaged with great zeal in opposing the odious and oppressive measures of Great Britain.

In 1764 he commenced his public life in the General Assembly of Maryland, and was an active member of that body for upwards of twenty years.

He was among the first opposers of the Stamp Act, and engaged, in the most decisive manner, to frustrate its malignant effects. He was one of the framers of the famous “Declaration of Rights of Maryland,” and its firm supporter.

His leisure hours were also devoted to his country, in arousing the people to a sense of their wrongs by essays and pamphlets.

In 1774 he was chosen a delegate to the first Congress.

In 1776 he was again chosen to represent Maryland in the general Congress; and it may be said that Maryland, who had refused her consent, was induced by his entreaties to unite in declaring the United States free and independent.
 
His whole conduct in this Assembly was marked by activity and zeal, and a firm adherence to the principles of liberty breathed forth in the Declaration of Independence.

The name of CHASE is found on many of the most important committees, and he was ever at his post.

In 1782 he was appointed by the Governor of Maryland, Agent and Trustee of the State of Maryland to recover the stock in the Bank of England owned by the State; and for this purpose he proceeded to England, where he remained one year, enjoying the intimacy of Fox, Pitt, Burke, and other great luminaries of the day. It would not be amiss here to state that the late William Pinckney was a student in his office at this time. Young Pinckney styled Mr. CHASE his “Patron and his Friend.”

In March, 1783, Mr. CHASE was married to Miss Hannah Kilty Giles of London, by whom he had two daughters; the eldest, Eliza, the widow of Dr. Skipwith Coale, now residing in Baltimore; and Mary, his second daughter, who was married to the eldest son of Commodore Barney, and who has proved herself an American matron, worthy to be the daughter of Judge CHASE and daughter-in-law of a hero.

In 1786 the liberality of the late Colonel John Eager Howard induced him to remove to Baltimore.

In 1791 he was appointed Judge of the General Court of Maryland, and in 1793 he received the appointment of Judge of the Criminal Court for Baltimore County; but it being thought unconstitutional to hold these two offices, he resigned his seat in the General Court.

In 1796 General Washington offered him a seat on the Bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was in the discharge of his duties in this Court that faction armed his opponents, and he was arraigned at the bar of his country to defend his slandered character. His defence on this occasion has been pronounced the most able production of the bar of this country; Aaron Burr, then Vice-President of the United States, presided at this trial; and the even-handed justice he dealt out was ever a subject of praise by Mr. CHASE.

The late Chief Justice Marshall, in a letter dated May 6th, 1834, to one of Judge CHASE’S descendants, writes of Judge CHASE:—

“He possessed a strong mind, great legal knowledge, and was a valuable judge, whose loss was seriously felt by his survivors.

“He was remarkable also for his vivacity and companionable qualities. He said many things which were much admired at the time, but I have not treasured them in my memory so as to be able to communicate them.”

Judge Duvall, in a letter of the same date, writes:—

“I knew Judge CHASE intimately, from the year 1775 until the time of his decease. At the commencement of the revolution, Mr. CHASE, as an advocate at the bar, was at least on a level with the ablest lawyers in Maryland, and in my judgment he never had a superior.

“He was constantly engaged in public life, and in legislative assemblies he was more able and powerful than at the bar.

“The late Chancellor Hanson always said that Mr. CHASE was the ablest speaker he ever heard in a legislative assembly; and Mr. Hanson was capable of forming a correct opinion.

“His knowledge increased with his years. During the Revolutionary contest it may be said with truth, that in Maryland he was the foremost in supporting American rights. Always at his post in the legislature, he took the lead: and his talents enabled him to be formidable and influential. His zeal and patriotism led him into many political controversies, all of which he maintained with ability.

“Mr. CHASE’s opinions as a Judge of the Supreme Court are held in high estimation. Whilst on the bench of the General Court of Maryland, his opinions were applauded. He was an able civilian and jurist.

“The truth of these general remarks, as to Mr. CHASE’S character is known to every man who lived in his time and during the revolution.”

In his private life he was a kind husband, a fond parent, and a lenient master. For many months he had suffered under a severe disease, ossification of the heart, and had purposed a journey to the North for the benefit of his health; but on the day previous he was taken suddenly ill, he called for writing materials, but it was too late; and he died without making a will, on the 19th of June, 1811, at the mature age of seventy years, a great and good man.

Source: National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 1839, Volume 4.


CHASE, William M., Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1841-42.



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.