September 27, 2021
Biographer Stahr (Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man) delivers a comprehensive and largely admiring portrait of U.S. Treasury Secretary and Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873). Contending that “Lincoln could never have become president without the vital work that Chase had done in the two preceding decades,” Stahr documents the Ohio lawyer’s evolution from a “rank-and-file Whig, with no strong views on slavery” in the late 1830s to a prominent legal defender of fugitive slaves and abolitionists. A founder of the Republican Party, Chase actively campaigned for Abraham Lincoln after falling short in his own quest for the party’s nomination in the 1860 presidential election. Lincoln put Chase in charge of the U.S. Treasury, where he created a national standard currency, known as the “greenback,” and helped establish a national bank system. In 1864, Lincoln appointed Chase to the Supreme Court, where he presided over the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868. Prodigious research and abundant use of diaries, letters, and other primary sources support Stahr’s nuanced portrait, which makes room for criticism that Chase put his presidential ambitions ahead of his principles in seeking the 1868 Democratic nomination for president. This robust reassessment sheds new light on an undersung hero in the battle to end slavery.
October 15, 2021
In a follow-up to Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man and Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary, Stahr turns his attention to the president's treasury secretary. Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873) was also the sixth chief justice of the Supreme Court and a major player in pushing for Black emancipation and voting rights, and he created the first national bank system and paper currency at a time of deep conflict and crisis during the Civil War. Born in New Hampshire, Chase cut his teeth in Ohio law and politics, where he evolved from an ambitious dilettante regarding slavery to a ferocious defender of fugitive slaves and Black voting rights. His parents died young, leaving behind 10 children and "substantial debt," and Chase went to live with one of his uncles, an Episcopalian bishop who founded Kenyon College. Like many Chases before him, he graduated from Dartmouth College and studied law until he passed the bar in 1829. In Stahr's overlong yet sturdy narrative, Chase emerges a driven young man determined to make his mark. He headed a vigorous law practice in Cincinnati and served in the Senate and as the governor of Ohio. As the nation began to break apart along pro- and anti-slavery lines, Chase embraced the Whig Party but found ultimately that it could not incorporate the anti-slavery movement. He advocated first for the Liberty Party, then became an important founder of the Republican Party, on whose ticket Lincoln ran for president. While Chase was brought up multiple times as a presidential candidate, he was best suited as ally, and Lincoln relied on him, despite the rival status, as treasury secretary during the Civil War and then as chief justice. During his tenure as justice, he supported the first Black man to the bar and dissented strongly in a case that prohibited a woman from practicing law. He also presided over the Andrew Johnson impeachment, a key moment in this well-researched account. Despite countless books about Lincoln and those in his orbit, Chase is an important figure who merits this capable study.
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October 15, 2021
Were it not for his uncommon name, which even he found "fishy" and tried to change, few would remember the man who played a pivotal role in the founding of the Republican Party and went on to create a national currency to fund the Civil War. Stahr (Stanton, 2017) continues his series on Lincoln's cabinet members with Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. An Ohio governor and U.S. senator, Chase was vociferous in his antislavery sentiments early on. As an attorney, he vigorously defended runaway enslaved people, much to the consternation of white Southerners. As a leader in the nascent Republican Party, he was assumed to be its 1860 nominee for President, but the more charismatic Abraham Lincoln outmaneuvered him. Lincoln appointed Chase first to be his Secretary of the Treasury, then later to be Chief Justice. Succeeding Roger Taney, he pushed for full legal equality for the formerly enslaved. Today, Chase lives on in his namesake, Chase Bank. Stahr ably documents Chase's career and reminds us how much good this now largely forgotten American accomplished.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
November 1, 2021
In 1860, Salmon P. Chase lost the Republican Party's presidential nomination to Abraham Lincoln but proved to be a "vital rival." In the 1840s, he had laid the groundwork for the party itself by forming and leading antislavery parties, and as Secretary of the Treasury he urged the president to pursue emancipation and the rights of Black Americans. From the author of the New York Times best-selling Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man and a two-time winner of the Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography.
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