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Salmon P. Chase: A Biography
 
 
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Salmon P. Chase: A Biography (Hardcover)

by John Niven (Author)
Key Phrases: confiscation act, national bank system, New York, Free Soil, United States (more...)
4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"John Niven...presents a meticulous study of Chase--the man and the politician. In the process, he throws a laser beam on the inner-workings of the Lincoln presidency and, more broadly, the politics of the age....Salmon P. Chase is a fine biography of a complex man maneuvering through a complex time."--The Times (Trenton)
"One of the Salmon P. Chase paradoxes is the fact that, among Lincoln's contemporaries, he has been relatively neglected because of his very importance. He was engaged in such a wide range of public activities as to intimidate biographers. Now, having mastered the sources, John Niven in the first comprehensive biography re-creates the man in all his complexity, personal as well as political. The book is as readable as it is authoritative."--Richard Nelson Current
"A brilliant account of the public and personal life of one of the most complex and fascinating major figures of the Civil War era."--Kenneth Stampp, author of America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink
"Niven's smooth but thorough biography reminds us of the importance to history of a long-forgotten player."--Booklist
"In detailing Chase's quest for ever higher office, the author reveals a complex will."--The New Yorker (Recommended Reading)


Product Description
Salmon P. Chase was one of the preeminent men of 19th-century America. A majestic figure, tall and stately, Chase was a leader in the fight to end slavery, a brilliant administrator who as Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury provided crucial funding for a vastly expensive war, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the turmoil of Reconstruction, and the presiding officer of the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Yet he was also a complex figure. As John Niven reveals in this magisterial biography, Chase was a paradoxical blend of idealism and ambition. If he stood for the highest moral purposes--the freedom and equality of all mankind--these lofty ideas failed to mask a thirst for power so deeply ingrained in his character that it drove away many who shared his principles, but mistrusted his motives.

Niven provides a vivid description of Chase's early years--his childhood in New Hampshire (where his father's failed business venture and early death left the family all but destitute) and in Ohio (where he was sent to live with his uncle Philander, an Episcopal bishop), his education at Dartmouth, and his early law career in Cincinnati. Niven shows how the plight of the slaves stirred this reticent young lawyer, and how Chase gradually moved to the forefront of the antislavery movement. At the same time, we see how he used his growing prominence in the antislavery movement to forward his political ambitions. Niven illuminates Chase's long tenure as a public man. Twice elected United States Senator, twice chosen governor of Ohio (then the third most populous state in the Union), Chase organized the widespread but diffuse anti-slavery movement into a workable political organization, the Free Soil party (whose slogan "Free Soil, Free Labor, Freemen" Chase coined himself). We read of Chase's work in Lincoln's war cabinet and his tenure as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and we also follow his many political maneuvers, his attempts to undercut rivals, and his poorly run campaigns for presidential nominations. Niven also provides an intimate portrait of Chase's family life--his loss of three wives and four of his six children, and the unfortunate marriage of his beautiful daughter Kate to a rich but dissolute man--and a vivid picture of life at mid-century.

What emerges is a portrait of a tragic figure, whose high qualities of heart and mind and whose many achievements were ultimately tarnished by an often unseemly quest for power. It is a striking look at an eminent statesman as well as a revealing glimpse into political life in 19th-century America, all set against a background of the anti-slavery movement, the Civil War, and the turmoil of Reconstruction.

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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 576 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (March 9, 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0195046536
  • ISBN-13: 978-0195046533
  • Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #738,630 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
confiscation act, national bank system
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New York, Free Soil, United States, Van Buren, Know Nothings, Supreme Court, New England, New Orleans, White House, Chief Justice, Van Zandt, New Hampshire, War Department, Port Royal, Fugitive Slave Law, Jay Cooke, Treasury Department, District of Columbia, Thurlow Weed, Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Montgomery Blair, Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton County, Bull Run, Ohio River
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Salmon Chase: Hubris and Humanity, July 19, 2002
By Gregory Maier (Concord, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Prof. Niven isn't the most exciting writer, yet he fearlessly approaches one of America's most important political figures of the 19th century. No small undertaking.

Chase emerges as a deeply conflicted man whose inability to reconcile what he wanted for himself and what he knew to be right shaped not only his rising career as a politician, but his inability to find true happiness throughout his life, particularly as Lincoln's Treasury Secretary and, later, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Whether one pities Chase or lauds his accomplishments --or both-- one cannot come away from this highly informative biography about one man's chosen path and where it led him -and America- in the crucial time of the American Civil War and its aftermath, including the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson and how Chase presided over that turbulent affair, without a greater understanding of American history and, perhaps, ourselves. Many readers will surely recognize some part of themselves in the complexities of Chase's thoughts, actions; his ability to rationalize, his pridefulness, and doubtless will admire the brilliant legal mind of a thoughtful yet driven man who was undone before his time (i.e., Chase was almost always his own worst enemy).

Niven is not always thorough in exploring many of the events surrounding Chase's life decisions, decisions that forever shaped America, particularly on issues legal. In spite of this, one is afforded a look at the sincere humanity of a man who, in his own words, never felt at home "in this great Babylon," never quite at ease with himself, the world, or his place in it.

Anyone desiring to enrich their knowledge of the man whose portrait graces the $10,000 bill, his life and times, will certainly find this a worthwhile read.

Personally, the only thing I could have asked for from Prof. Niven was that he had included a bibliography to guide the interested reader down other paths of exploration, whether one wants to know about "greenbacks," the Johnson proceedings, and so forth.

The gift of this book is an insight into the mind of a man, power and its influences on the subject's conscience and career, needless to say his personal life. Though Prof. Niven concludes that Salmon Portland Chase was a tragic figure, he is here rendered human and, for the most part, quite accessible.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great biography of a thoroughly unpleasant man, April 14, 2008
By S. A. Kuipers (Groningen, Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Salmon P. Chase wanted to be President so bad that it hurt. His great ambition almost consumed him. From the 1850 on, as he became more and more prominent in politics, he planned, plotted and schemed unabashedly to get into the White House. He never got there, well not as President anyway. Chase hid his burning ambition behind an exterior of dull respectability, humourless piety, and lots of sanctimonious, pretentious pontificating.

Yet Chase was also a man of great intelligence and enormous ability: he was an excellent Secretary of the Treasury from 1861 to 1864. He did a great job putting the Union war effort on a sound financial and fiscal basis. In doing so he undoubtedly made a powerful contribution to the Union victory.
But he was ever ridden by the demon of his own ambition, even during the war, when he should have put his ambitions aside. But Chase never forgave Lincoln for becoming President in 1860 and in order to trip Lincoln up he stooped very low. He spread vicious stories about Mary Todd Lincoln and more than once tried to undermine the President's position.
Lincoln, who had seen through Chase from the start, was convinced it would be better having him in the Cabinet p***ing out of the Administration, than having him in Congress p***ing in. He deftly avoided the traps Chase laid for him, but made sure Chase trod in quite a few that Lincoln set up for him.
Powerless against Lincoln's wily political handiwork Chase resorted to huffiness and wounded pride and time and again offered to resign form the Cabinet. In the spring of 1864, when the country's finances were in fine order and the war effort assured, and Lincoln did no longer need Chase in Cabinet, he accepted Chase's umpteenth offer of resignation, to Chase's surprise and dismay.

Then came a masterstroke: Lincoln appointed Chase to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Chase had an excellent legal mind and was eminently qualified for the post, but his political ambitions were at once wrecked: the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the highest judge of the Republic, could of course not be actively involved in politics!!
Lincoln had thus eliminated a contender for the republican nomination for the presidential election of 1864, while seemingly honouring and rewarding Chase for his services in the Cabinet with high and distinguished office.

After that, nothing ever went right for Chase anymore: his role in the impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson was widely critiscized, and his repeated attempts to get nominated for presidential candidate were frowned at, he was after all the Chief Justice!
For though Chase desperately wanted to be President, there were far too many people who did not want him to be. Chase never seemed to realise this: his ambitions had blinkered him too much. In the end it left him a lonely man: friendless, disappointed, embittered and widely distrusted.

He had offered everything to his ambition: his self-respect, his reputation and his health: you just have to look at a photograph taken in 1864 where he poses as the newly appointed Chief Justice with the other members of the US Supreme Court, and then look at his portrait taken only a few years later: Chase's hair has gone snow white and his emaciated face looks like his own death mask.

He even offered the respectability and happiness of his family to his ambition: in order to further (and finance) his own political goals, Chase goaded his beautiful and intelligent daughter Kate, the apple of his eye, into marriage with the dissolute, corrupt drunk William Sprague, the millionnaire Governor of Rhode Island, who later became a Senator. The marriage proved disastrous and it disintegrated spectacularly. Sprague's fortune evaporated after he had invested it badly.
Chase's political prospects were damaged by rumours about his son-in-law's dealings with the Confederacy during the war. Some of Sprague's textile factories had smuggled in southern cotton during the war, an act of treason of which Sprague had been fully aware, and likely even the initiator. There are strong indications that, among others, Seward and the powerful Blair clan used this information to keep Chase from the Presidency after 1865. The scandal would have wrecked his career.
But it had been Chase himself who had wanted his daughter to marry Sprague, so again he had been his own worst enemy.

Dr. Niven's excellent book on this important figure of the Civil War era is readable and entertaining, yet scholarly and thoughtful. Read about Salmon P. Chase: how a capable and smart man can be too ambitious for his own good.

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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Subject matter great, book not as good, April 11, 2002
By Schmerguls "schmerguls" (Sioux City, Ia USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)      
I read John Niven's biography of Martin Van Buren, and thought it was often dull. This biography is some better, tho there are dull portions, especially some of the pages during the time Chase was Secretary of the Treasury. But the life and the period is so fascinating that I found when I had finished the book that I felt I had really learned a lot. There is no bibliography in the book, tho there are many pages of notes and with work one can deduce therefrom the books consulted. I sure wish the book had a bibliography, since the notes cite various interesting books I'd like to read.
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