CHASE.
CHASE.
CHASE, Salmon Portland, chief justice, was
boi-u ia Cornish, 2s. H., Jan. 13, 1808, sou of Itha-
mar and Janette (Ralston) Chase, and sixth in
descent from Aquila and Ann Chase, emigrants,
who left England in 1640, and settled in Newbury,
Mass. His father was a farmer and in 1815 re-
moved from Cornish
to Keene, N. H.,
where, with his wife
and eleven children,
he estabUshed a new
home, having in 1813
engaged in the man-
ufacture of glass and
become bankrupt.
Salmon attended the
district school until
1817, when his father
died, and he was sent
to Windsor, Vt. ,
where he continued
his studies. In 1820
his mother sent liim
to "W o r t h i n g t o n,
Ohio, at the suggestion of her brotlier-in-law.
Bishop Philander Chase, who conducted a col-
legiate school at that place, and who agreed to
give him a home and educational advantages.
He made the journey with an elder brother and
H. R. Schoolcraft, who were going west to join
the Cass exploring expedition. On the removal
of the bishop to Cincinnati ia 1822, to accept the
presidency of Cincinnati college, Salmon entered
that institution, and in 1823, when his uncle went
to Europe to procure funds to establish Kenyon
college, he returned to his mother's home in
Keene, N. H., taught school at Royalton, Vt.,
and matriculated at Dartmouth college in 1824,
graduating with the class of 1826. He then went
south, expecting to find employment as tutor in
some private family, but in this was disappointed,
and returning as far as "Washington he there was
refused a situation in one of the departments, his
uncle, Dudley Chase, of Vermont, declining to
aid him on the ground that such an appointment
had already ruined one nephew. He secured a
private school, where he had among other pupils
a son of Attorney-General "Wirt. This incident
led to an offer from Mr. "Wirt to receive the young
tutor as a law student, and he was admitted to
the bar of the District of Columbia in 1829. He
continued his school until 1830, when he returned
to the home of his uncle in Cincinnati, and was
admitted as an attorney and counsellor at the
Ohio bar. His anxious waiting for clients was
relieved by industrious application to the prepar-
ation of an edition of the statutes of Oliio, which
his conscientious codification, copious annotation,
and comprehensive historical sketch of the growth
and development of the territory and state, ex-
panded to three volumes. Upon its publication
the fame of the author spread with its rapid sale,
all previous "Statutes of Ohio " being superseded
by the new work. Practice now came to the
young barrister, and among his clients were
the bank of the United States in Cincinnati, and
the Lafayette, a prominent city bank, which en-
gaged his services as director, secretary of the
board, and solicitor. This experience directed
the mind of the rising lawyer to subjects of
finance, and was the preparatory school of the
future U. S. treasurer. The question of slavery
and the rights of fugitives from bondage was at
this time (1837) uppermost in the public mind,
especially in the vicinity of Cincinnati. Mr.
Chase was retained as counsel for a colored woman
claimed as a fugitive slave, and also in the case
of James G. Birney, prosecuted under a state law
for harboring a fugitive slave. Both causes were
defended by him before the state supreme court,
and his arguments against the right of the fed-
eral government to demand of a state magistrate
any service in the case of a slave voluntarily
brought by his master into a free state and there
escaping from his control, and in maintaining
that the law of 1793 was unwarranted by the
constitution of the United States, and there-
fore void, Avere published and extensively circu-
lated by the anti -slavery party. In the case of
Van Zandt. before the supreme court of the
United States in 1846, he was associated with
William H. Seward, and there argued that under
the ordinance of 1787 no fugitive from service
could be reclaimed from Ohio, unless escaped
from one of the original slave states, and that the
question of slavery was an interstate, and not a
federal question for adjudication by Congress.
In politics Mr. Chase had taken no positive posi-
tion, and had supported either Whig or Democrat
as they pro?nised to further his one political idea,
the blotting out of slavery; but in 1841 lie called
the convention that organized the Liberty party
in Ohio, wrote the address to the people, and sup-
ported the candidate for governor named by the
party. In 1843, when the Liberty party met in
convention at Baltimore to nominate candidates
for president and vice-president, Mr. Chase was a
member of the committee on resolutions, and
opposed the radical proposition offered, refusing
to support the tliird clause of the Constitution if
it was applied to the case of a fugitive slave, his
opposition preventing its becoming a part of the
committee's report. It was, however, introduced
before the convention and adopted. The move-
ment for a convention of "all who believe that
all that is worth preserving in republicanism can
be maintained only by uncompromising war
against the usurpation of the slave power, and
