SALMON P. CHASE.

SALMON PORLAND CHASE was born in Cornish, New Hampshire, Jan. 13th, 1808. He was seven years old when his father removed to the town of Keene, where he attended the village school. In 1817 his father died, and two years later the boy, then only twelve years old, went to Worthington, Ohio. His uncle, Philander Chase, was then Bishop of Ohio, and he superintended the education of his nephew. Shortly after this, he entered Cincinnati College, of which institution his uncle became president. He soon was promoted to the sophomore class. After a year's residence in Cincinnati, he returned to New Hampshire and his mother's house; and, in 1824, entered the junior class of Dartmouth College. He graduated in 1826. The following winter Mr. Chase went to the city of Washington, and opened a classical school for boys. Among his pupils were the sons of Henry Clay, William Niel, and other distinguished men. Many of the citizens of Washington at this day well remember Mr. Chase's efforts as a teacher among them, and at that time learned to esteem and respect the man who has since risen to so high a

position as a politician and statesman. He closed his school in 1829, and soon was admitted to the bar, having studied law under Mr. Niel while teaching his school, manifesting by his industry and courage that he was possessed of the qualities which must certainly in the end bring him position and reputation.

In 1830, Mr. Chase left Washington for Cincinnati, where he has always since resided, save when serving his State in an official capacity, and pursued his profession. He was poor, unknown, and before he could hope to attract the attention of the public, must earn his bread and endure months, if not years, of serious toil and drudgery. During these early years in his professional career, he prepared an edition of Statutes of Ohio, and a preliminary sketch of the history the State. The work made three large volumes, and at once became an authority in the courts. The authorship of this volume was a happy idea, for it not only brought him a moderate pecuniary reward directly, but it also gave him the ear of the people, and practice at once flowed, in upon

him.

In 1834, Mr. Chase became solicitor of the Bank of the United States in Cincinnati, and other corporations. In 1837, he first gave public utterance to his views upon the slavery question in its legal aspects. The article in Appleton's Encylopædia upon Mr. Chase, which on many points is our

authority in this sketch, gives the subjoined history of Mr. Chase's early legal arguments in reference to slavery:

"In 1837, Mr. Chase acted as counsel for a colored woman claimed as a fugitive slave and in an elaborate argument, afterward published, controverted the authority of Congress to impose any duties or confer any powers in fugitive slave cases on state magistrates, a position in which he has since been sustained by the U. S. Supreme Court; and maintained that the law of 1793, relative to fugitives from service, was void, because unwarranted by the Constitution of the United States. The same year, in an argument before the Supreme Court of Ohio, in defence of James G. Birney, prosecuted under a State law for harboring a negro slave, Mr. Chase asserted the doctrine that slavery is local, and independent on state law for existence and continuance, and insisted that the person alleged to have been harbored, having been brought within the territorial limits of Ohio by the individual claiming her as master, was thenceforth, in fact and by right, free. In 1838, in a newspaper review of a report of the judiciary committee of the senate of Ohio against the granting of trial by jury to alleged slaves, Mr. Chase took the same ground as in his legal arguments. In 1846, he was associated with the Hon. W. H. Seward as defendant's counsel in the case of Van Zandt, before

the Supreme Court of the United States. The case excited much interest, and in a speech which attracted marked attention, Mr. Chase argued more elaborately the principles which he advanced in former cases, maintaining that under the ordinance of 1787 no fugitives from service could be reclaimed from Ohio, unless there had been an escape from one of the original States; that it was the clear understanding of the framers of the Constitution, and of the people who adopted it, that slavery was to be left exclusively to the disposal of the several States, without sanction or support from the National Government; and that the clause of the Constitution rela tive to persons held to service was one of compact between the States, and conferred no power of legislation on Congress, having been transferred from the ordinance of 1787, in which it conferred no power on the Confederation, and was never understood to confer any. He was subsequently engaged for the defence in the case of Driskell vs. Parish, before the U. S. Circuit Court at Columbus, and re-argued the same positions."

Mr. Chase's political history is thus summed up in the same article:

"Mr. Chase's sentiments of hostility to the nationalization of slavery were expressed by his position in the political movements of the country, as well as his efforts at the bar. Prior to 1841 he had taken little

part in politics. He had voted sometimes with the Democrats, but more commonly with the Whigs, who, in the North, seemed to him more favorable to anti-slavery views than their opponents. He supported Gen. Harrison in 1840, but the tone of his inaugural address, and still more the course of the Tyler administration, convinced him that no effective resistance to the encroachments of slavery was to be expected from any party with a slaveholding and pro-slavery wing, modifying if not controlling its action; and in 1841 he united in a call for a convention of the opponents of slavery and slavery extension, which assembled in Columbus in December of that year. This convention organized the liberty party of Ohio, nominated a candidate for governor, and issued an address to the people defining its principles and purposes.-This address, written and reported by Mr. Chase, and unanimously adopted by the convention, deserves attention as one of the earliest expositions of the political movements against slavery. In 1843, a national liberty convention assembled at Buffalo. Mr. Chase was an active member of the committee on resolutions, to which was referred, under a rule of the convention, a resolution proposing to regard and treat the third clause of the Constitution, whenever applied to the case of a fugitive slave, as utterly null and void, and consequently as forming no part