Conference smurf::civil_war

140.0. "Salmon P. Chase, fugitive slaves, Northern secession, cost of the war" by VAXUUM::SCHWEIKER (Roy Schweiker) Tue Aug 20 1996 20:22

    I picked up the biography "Salmon P. Chase" by Albert Bushnell Hart
    published in 1899 at a yard sale because he was someone I had heard of
    but didn't know anything about. While I don't consider this particular
    book very readable, it contained some fascinating insights on the Civil
    War era which I will summarize below. The general impression is that
    Chase was an honest and able man who disdained the personal contacts
    that he needed to become president.

    Chase was born in N.H. in 1808, lived for a while with his uncle in Ohio,
    returned to N.H. and graduated from Dartmouth College, read law in 
    Washington D.C., then became a lawyer in Cincinnati. Although he developed
    a good commercial practice and wrote the first annotated compilation of
    Ohio laws, he became interested in the plight of fugitive slaves.

    Although the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Ohio constitution of 1802
    forbade slavery, this did not include slaves held in 1787 and there were
    still legal slaves in Ohio in the 1840 census. The federal Fugitive Slave
    Act of 1793 gave a slave owner or his agent the authority to seize a
    fugitive slave in a free state and drag him home, subject to a hearing
    before any magistrate to prove his identity, a jury trial not allowable
    based on the presumption that the accused was a slave and thus not 
    entitled to one. This law was unenforceable in the New England states due
    to adverse public opinion, but commonly used in Ohio and nearby states. 
    The noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison actually advocated secession
    by the Northern states since by remaining in a Union with slave states
    everyone was forced to support slavery. Particularly alarming was a 
    tendency in slave states to ban discussion of abolition on the grounds
    that it reduced the value of property and might lead to insurrection, the
    right to own slaves seemingly more valuable than the right to free speech.
    There were also stories of free blacks being jailed for vagrancy or other
    similar crimes, and then sold to pay their jail fees.

    A former slaveowner named James Birney founded an anti-slavery newspaper
    in Cincinnati in 1836, and Chase was one of the few prominent individuals
    who denounced the mob that sacked its office. In 1837, Birney employed an
    escaped slave who walked away from her master in Cincinnati, and Chase
    argued unsuccessfully in a state court that the fugitive slave laws did
    not apply to someone brought into the state by their master. In 1842, he
    lost a case in Federal court in which Underground Railroad conductor John
    Van Zandt was forced to pay a penalty of $500 and damages of $1200 for
    helping escaped slaves in Ohio. He handled so many cases from 1845 to 1849
    that he became known as "the attorney-general of fugitive slaves", even
    though he lost all of them.

    Chase left the Whig party in 1841 as they had no room for abolitionists,
    and was active in the Liberty and successor Free Soil parties. As result
    of the 3-party split in Ohio, Chase became a U.S. Senator as part of an
    anti-Whig coalition and was seated as a Democrat. During his service from
    1849-55, he was generally a fiscal conservative although an early 
    supporter of a transcontinental railroad and what became the Homestead Act,
    although neither passed during his tenure. He was the leading opponent
    of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, both of which
    allowed residents of territories to decide the slavery issue rather than
    accepting the boundaries of slavery from the Missouri Compromise. This
    concept although reasonable on the surface was a signal to abolitionists
    that the South intended that slavery should exist forever, rather than
    gradually dying out.

    Chase served two terms as Republican governor of Ohio from 1855-59,
    narrowly winning reelection when the state treasurer misplaced $500,000.
    He hoped for the Republican presidential nomination in 1856, but stepped
    aside in favor of the less-controversial John C. Fremont. He then hoped
    for the 1860 nomination as it was apparent that the leading candidate,
    William Seward of New York, had too many enemies to get a majority. But
    Chase had too few friends, and on the third ballot several Chase delegates
    shifted to dark-horse Lincoln and secured his nomination. Although Chase 
    was elected Senator from Ohio, Lincoln handed out cabinet posts to his 
    former opponents in order of importance, and Chase accepted the 
    second-ranking position of Secretary of the Treasury. 

    Paying for the war was gradually recognized as a major problem, as most 
    Federal revenue was from customs duties which shrank as the South seceded 
    and foreign trade slowed. Congress agreed to supplement this with 
    assessment of the states, a 3% income tax, and confiscation of Rebel 
    property, but consistently underestimated the cost and length of the war 
    and the ability and willingness of the public to pay for it. Most currency
    in circulation was issued not by the government but by private
    state-chartered banks and might not be accepted outside its local area;
    Chase replaced this with a system of nationally-chartered banks, and
    Congress over his objections approved circulating legal-tender notes
    which were not redeemable in gold. Chase saw the role of the Cabinet as 
    being general advisors to the president (particularly on the most critical
    issue, military matters) as well as specific administrators. In his dual 
    roles of financing the war and selling confiscated property, he worked
    more closely with several generals than many presidents would have liked, 
    particularly as Chase was angling for the 1864 Republican presidential 
    nomination. Lincoln was of course easily renominated as the war was going 
    well by then.

                   U.S. Finances (in millions of dollars) by fiscal year
    Year      1860-61    61-62        62-63      63-64     64-65       65-66
    Revenues     41       52           111        261       330         558

    Expenses
    Civilian     27       25            27         35        59          60
    Army         23      394           599        691      1031         284
    Navy         12       43            63         86       123          43

Interest on debt  4       13            25         54        77         133

Outstanding debt 90      514          1099       1741      2683        2773

    Chase saw himself as a man of principle, and resigned several times after
    disagreements with Lincoln, usually over appointments to minor Treasury
    posts. In June 1864, his resignation was accepted. But Chief Justice Taney
    died in October, and after the election Chase was appointed to that post
    and immediately confirmed by the Senate. The Court made relatively few 
    significant decisions, but deferred to the significant changes Congress
    was making through legislation and constitutional amendments. Chase took
    an assertive and fair role in presiding over the impeachment trial of
    President Johnson, although he was once again campaigning for the 1868
    presidential nomination. When it became obvious that Grant would receive
    the Republican nomination, Chase switched to the Democratic party on the
    grounds that he opposed the continued military government of the former
    Confederate states, and thought that universal suffrage should include
    former Confederates as well as former slaves. He narrowly missed the
    nomination when it unexpectedly went to the convention chairman instead
    of Chase as a compromise candidate, but Grant was probably unbeatable
    anyway. In 1872, Chase once again passed the word that he was interested,
    but this was a mere formality as he had missed the entire 1870-71 court
    term through illness, and he died May 7, 1873.

    Fascinating!  I hadn't known half of this stuff.  Now it's a lot easier
    to understand why Chase's picture is on the US $10,000 bill.
    
    Thanks for entering this note.