Legal Miscellany.

PUBLISHED BY THE D. B. CANFIELD COMPANY LIMITED, PHILADELPHIA,

SUBSCRIPTION, ONE DOLLAR A YEAR. SINGLE COPY, TEN CENTS.

Copyrighted 1890. Entered at the Post Office at Philadelphia as second-class matter.

Vol. II.

October 15, 1890.

No. 10.

SALMON P. CHASE.

Born, January 13th, 1808; Died, May 7th, 1873.

The seventh Chief Justice of the United States was born in Cornish, New Hampshire, on January 13th, 1808. His youth was spent in acquiring an education, under disadvantages that have marked the careers of so many of our public men in the accomplishment of the same object. This period of his life was interrupted by a sojourn of a couple of years in Ohio, at that time almost an uninhabitable forest, with a paternal uncle, Philander Chase, who was Bishop of the Episcopal Church in that primitive State, and who contemplated making an Episcopalian clergyman of him. His sojourn in Ohio, however, did not result in accomplishing the cherished object of his uncle, but, it added considerably to his educational acquirements, so that upon his return to the maternal roof in New Hampshire, he was enabled to enter the Junior Class at Dartmouth College, which he did in 1824. His college career was characterized by a close attention to his studies, which culminated in his graduation from that institution in 1826.

After a short time spent in social recreation, he directed his steps toward the South, in which locality he had determined to cast his lot in life.

He had determined to combine the occupation of a schoolteacher with his professional studies, preparatory to the practice of the law, which he had determined to pursue and make the occupation of his life. With this object in view, he left the maternal roof in New Hampshire, shortly after his graduation, and proceeded to Frederic, Maryland, in which place he hoped to estab

lish himself in a school.

But the hope of success in that city fled in the course of a few days' stay, and with it Mr. Chase departed to Washington, where his efforts to establish a school were finally, after a hard struggle, rewarded with a reasonable success.

In September, 1827, he became a student-at-law, in the office of William Wirt, at that time Attorney-General of the United States. The time at length arrived when, his object being accomplished in pursuing the occupation of a teacher, he relinquished it and turned to the study of that profession to which he had determined to devote his life, having only taken up that of a teacher as a means to an end and to accomplish the purpose of an occupation for life.

His application for admission to the bar of Maryland was attended by a public examination as to his fitness and the length of time he had pursued his studies under the statute which made three years' study an essential prerequisite to admission to the bar of the State. The examination resulted in the admission of Mr. Chase to the bar of the State of Maryland, and was immediately followed by the preparation to remove to the West, after changing his determination to settle in Baltimore, the young lawyer declaring that "I would rather be first, twenty years hence, at Cincinnati than at Baltimore." In consequence, he departed from Washington immediately after his admission to the Maryland bar, and arrived in Cincinnati in March, 1830; was admitted to the bar of Ohio, in the following June, and at once entered, with ardor and hope, upon the active work of a lawyer's life.

Mr. Chase had, like all lawyers, and especially lawyers in a new country, strong political convictions, and had become prominent in the party which advocated them. His convictions were that slavery was an evil, and the extension of it, over and into the free Commonwealths of the North, was an evil unwarranted by the fundamental law of the land, and, in consequence, should be resisted by every lawful means in his power. This was the ruling action of his political and public life. It was, therefore, legitimate for him to become, as he did very early in his professional career, the active exponent of the unrelenting opposition of all that he conceived to be wrong in the system as regulated by law. His position as an attorney in Cincinnati, a border State having unusual commercial intercourse with the adjoining slave States, gave him unusual opportunities for professional employment in the particular line of his political conviction.

His professional engagements, invariably unaccompanied with

compensation, in behalf of alleged runaway negro slaves was so frequent that he soon became known as the " Attorney-General for runaway negroes."

His professional and political career, therefore, led to an extremely unpopular course of conduct, involving the contesting of rights, in the courts of justice, concerning which the laws of the country were held to be universally adverse, and the advocacy of which, in the forum of the intelligent conscience of the country, were attended with peculiar disappointments and heart-burnings. There is no disappointment so keen and disheartening as the persistent denial of justice and the imposition of wrong, when the converse should prevail in the case.

It was under such a trying ordeal that a large part of the professional efforts, and all the political action of Mr. Chase occurred, for the greater part of the first half of his life.

Mr. Chase established a character as a lawyer of unflinching honesty and faithfulness to his client, uncompromising truthfulness to the principle of the law as he understood it, and a truthfulness of purpose as persistent as the needle is to the pole, in a trust undertaking. These characteristics he carried with him into public life, and whatever public position he assumed in after life.

The first political success which greeted his efforts was one effected by a compromise between the "Independent Democrats," or "Free Soilers," and the regular Democrats of Ohio, which resulted in the election of Mr. Chase to the United States Senate as a Senator from Ohio, in accordance with the conditions of which the Democrats of Ohio were to aid in the repeal of " the black laws" of that State.

It was not until the formation of the Republican organization that Mr. Chase's views upon public questions assumed a character that met with the partial approval of the people. It was, consequently, not until 1855 or 1856, that his political action did not call forth a disapproval of them in a spirit of unfriendly aggressive

ness.

Accustomed, therefore, or rather schooled to entertaining opinions adverse to those with whom he was acting in political harmony, he was prepared for the bitter animosities which his action gave rise to as Chief Justice, in denying in the opinion of the Supreme Court the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Act. This act, he, as the Secretary of the Treasury, advocated; but nothing daunted, and convinced that the opinion of the Court was right, he pronounced it, although its sentiments were not in harmony with those

whose political principles agreed with his at the time the act had been passed.

Substantial political honors, however, were awaiting Mr. Chase at the hands of a party not yet born, a party built upon those principles which were so dear to him as a lawyer and a politician, and which had been advocated by him.

His Senatorial term having expired, he received and accepted the nomination for Governor of his adopted State, to which position he was triumphantly elected, and upon the expiration of the term he was again elected, and upon the expiration of that term he was re-elected to the United States Senate, each of these nominations and elections being at the hands of the Republican party, which advocated the principles in harmony with those Mr. Chase urged during his whole life. He was, in consequence, no longer the advocate of unpopular and despised principles, but the recognized head and chosen leader of a splendid organization.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, by the Republican party, upon the leading principle that slavery was to be confined to the limits fixed by the people of the respective States and Territories in the Union, he invited Mr. Chase to enter his Cabinet and take the portfolio of the Treasury. Mr. Chase, therefore, resigned the United States Senatorship to which he had just been elected, although the performance of its duties would be more congenial to his tastes, and assumed the place in the Cabinet, whose responsibilities were new to him and in a measure untried.

The place called for the most vigorous intellect. The great civil war had just been precipitated upon the country, and the people of the North responded to the call of the Government for troops in a way most encouraging to the patriotism of the country. But that did not supply a bankrupt treasury and fulfill the financial promises of the Government. The enemies of the Government had taken good care that there should be an empty treasury, and a Government whose record in the financial world was such that the Secretary of Treasury, who had just abandoned that office, could not borrow the paltry sum of ten million dollars without allowing a large discount.

Among the financial measures which were adopted, and whose adoption was believed at the time to be absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Government, were the "Legal Tender Acts," under which the Government issued its promise to pay the bearer on demand. Those acts of Congress declared that such promise should be taken, as money, in payment of all individual debts and

private debts. It is just here that the fame of Mr. Chase must bear the crucial test of a just criticism, with regard to his action concerning the legality of the issuing of these "legal tender"

notes.

The limits of a magazine article forbids the analysis or discussion of the ways and means which brought forth the financial results which are a part of the history of the country from 1861 to 1865. It is more to our purpose to harmonize, if possible, the apparent conflict of this great intellect, in its workings upon the same questions at different times viewed by him from different standpoints, surrounded by different circumstances and bearing a different official relation to them; notably viewing his action, when as Chief Justice he delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, deciding the "Legal Tender Acts" to be and to have been, at the time they were passed, unconstitutional; though these were the very acts which he, as the Secretary of the Treasury, advocated and urged Congress to enact into laws as essential to the very existence of the Government.

On the 6th of December, 1864, Abraham Lincoln, the then President of the United States, nominated Salmon P. Chase for the office of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, an office made vacant by the death of Chief Justice Taney, in October preceding. This nomination the Senate at once confirmed, and the incumbent immediately assumed the duties of the office; these proved both arduous, troublesome, and difficult. With the cessation of hostilities in our great civil war, in the following spring, came questions of the gravest importance arising out of the war, and determining the changed relations of the States lately in rebellion, the terms upon which they had been admitted into the Union again, in short, their reconstruction, and some of the measures used by the Government in defending itself against the assaults of its enemies.

It should be stated here that it is the policy of our Government to appoint to the Federal Judiciary such men as are in harmony with the dominant political party at the time. Such has been the uniform practice of the Government with reference to the judiciary since its foundation. This peculiarity arises from the fact that questions of public policy, as well as private rights, are dependent upon how the Magna Charta of American liberty is expounded, for to those Courts all questions arising under it are referred, and by virtue of it are deferred. The interpretation of the Constitution depends, therefore, upon the political predilections and con