CHASE, Salmon Portland, American jurist And statesman: b. Cornish, N. H., 13 Jan. 1808; d. New York, 7 May 1873. He was the son of Ithamar and Janet Ralston Chase, the former of English and the latter of Scotch descent. After a preliminary education in schools at Keene, N. H., and Windsor, Vt., and under a tutor, he went to Ohio in 1820 under the care of his uncle, Philander Chase (q.v.), Episcopal bishop of Ohio, and attended the bishop's school at Worthington, near Columbus, doing farm work when not in the school room. He studied for a year at Cincinnati College but then returned to Keene, in 1824 entered Dart mouth College as a junior, teaching in country schools during the winter vacations, and gradu ated in 1826. He then went to Washington, D. C., for the next three years taught in a boys' school there, during which time he studied law, and in December 1829 was admitted to the bar. In March 1830 he went to Cincinnati, where he began the practice of law, soon be coming known as one of the best lawyers in that city. He also made an impression as a lecturer, delivering several lectures before the Cincinnati Lyceum, which he was largely instru mental in founding, two of his lectures being published in the North American Review en titled "The Life and Character of Henry Brougham* (July 1831) and "Effects of Machin ery* (January 1832). In 1832 he formed the project of publishing a collection of the laws of Ohio with notes and references, and his work, even though it did not reward him financially, became the standard edition and gave him a solid reputation throughout the West. He also wrote a brief but excellent historical sketch of Ohio. In July 1834 Chase became solicitor of the Cincinnati branch of the Bank of the United States, and in the following November became solicitor of the Lafayette Bank, these trusts affording him so lucrative a practice that his literary pursuits were practi-' tally abandoned. In 1841 his connection with the Bank of the United States was severed because his fees were considered too high, but politics and the anti-slavery movement were beginning to absorb his attention and his loss failed to disturb him. Meanwhile on 4 March 1834 he had married Catherine Jane Garniss, who died 1 Dec. 1835; on 26 Sept. 1839 he mar ried Eliza Ann Smith (d. 29 Sept 1845), and on 6 Nov. 1846, Sarah Bella Dunlop Ludlow (d. 13 June 1852). Of his six children only two lived to maturity.
Early in his career Chase became identified with the anti-slavery movement. He was aroused not by the wrongs of the slaves alto gether but by the dangers to white men, and his earliest act as an anti-slavery man (1836) was to defend the rights of a fellow citizen (James G. Birney) to express his mind freely. He indignantly disavowed any sympathy with the disunion sentiments of William Lloyd Garrison (q.v.), declaring that he was not one of those "abolitionists or anti-slavery men who regarded the Constitution as at war with moral obligations and the supreme law.* He states in his diary that he differed from Garrison and others "as to the means by which the slave power could be best overthrown and slavery most safely and fitly abolished under our Amer ican Constitution.° He was a frequent speaker at anti-slavery meetings and conventions throughout Ohio and the neighboring States and even in the East, but he was neither an orator nor a good stump speaker. His great
forte was the preparation of formal addresses and platforms, since in these he had time and space more carefully and comprehensively to marshal his facts and thoughts, and accordingly from 1841 to 1848 he was often called upon by the Liberty and Free Soil men to undertake such tasks. But while Chase's powers of merit made him a valuable ally of the Ohio anti slavery men, he became their leader in the period from 1837 to 1849 chiefly through pronouncements against slavery and his legal services in connection with fugitive slave cases. He became known as the "attorney-general of fugitive slaves,* but was defeated in every case in which he appeared for the defense. Some of his arguments were against indisputable his torical facts — such as his absolute denial that Congress possessed power to establish slavery anywhere by any process, though he did admit that laws had been framed to support slavery in the District of Columbia, in the territories, and (as regards fugitive slaves) in free States, but he declared Congress had no constitutional power to enact such laws. He held the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 to be contrary to the Ordi nance of 1787, which provided for recovery of slaves only from the "original States)) and to be incompatible with the constitutional form of / Federal goVernment for, said he, "when a slave / passes beyond the jurisdiction of the State in which he is held as such, he ceases to be a slave,' because he continues to be a man and leave behind him the law of force which made him slave.* The law was contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution, in denying proc ess of law* and authorizing "unreasonable searches and seizures*: the States and not Con gress were responsible for the apprehension of fugitive slaves; and finally, "the legislature cannot authorize injustice by law; . . . it cannot repeal the laws of nature, cannot create any obligation to do wrong, or neglect duty. No court is bound to enforce unjust laws.* These and other arguments were used in his various cases. In March 1837 he acted as coun sel for an alleged fugitive slave, Matilda, and for Birney, who was accused of "harboring') her. Chase based his argument on the fact that Matilda had been brought into Ohio by her master and had then escaped, wherefore she was a free person and could not be "a person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another." The judge decided against Chase, and Matilda was re manded into slavery, but Birney appealed and the State Supreme Court reversed the decision. The most famous of the Ohio fugitive slave cases was that of John Van Zandt, who at tempted to convey to safety some slaves who had escaped from their owner and were later recovered by force. One of the slaves escaped, however, and the owner sued Van Zandt to recover the slave's value and the expense of recapturing the others and also to recover the penalty of $500 allowed by the act of 1793 against anyone who "after due notice harbored and concealed" a fugitive. Chase defended Van Zandt at the first trial in July 1842 and lost, but the award of $500 against Van Zandt was appealed to the Supreme Court, which in 1847 sustained the lower tribunal.