Salmon P. Chase

Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873), American statesman and chief justice of the United States.

Salmon Portland Chase was born on January 13, 1808, in Cornish, New Hampshire, and educated at Dartmouth College. As a lawyer in Cincinnati, Ohio, after 1830, he defended numerous fugitive slaves. He was a leading spokesman for the antislavery Liberty Party and helped found the Free-Soil Party in 1848. Chase was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1848 as a Democrat, but he separated from the party in 1852 when it committed itself to slavery. He was elected governor of Ohio in 1855 as a Free-Soiler and in 1857 as a member of the newly formed Republican Party, which he helped to found.

From 1861 to 1864 he was secretary of the treasury in the cabinet of President Abraham Lincoln. During his term in office Chase developed the national banking system and issued the first legal-tender paper currency not backed by gold. This currency, called greenbacks, was used to finance the federal cause in the American Civil War. Chase resigned from the cabinet because he thought Lincoln's antislavery position was too moderate. In 1864, however, Lincoln appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In this capacity Chase presided at the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson and dissented in the well-known Slaughterhouse Cases in 1872. Chase dissented because he felt that this decision by the federal government would endanger the rights of black people in the South. He also took part in decisions that declared unconstitutional the issuing of greenbacks, a policy he had previously implemented as secretary of the treasury. Chase died on May 7, 1873.