Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase

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EULOGY

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ON

CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE,

DELIVERED BY

WILLIAM M. EYAETS,

BEFORE THE

ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, AT HANOVER, JUNE 24, 1874.

NEW YORK-:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

549 AND 551 BROADWAY.

1874.

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EULOGY

ON

CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE,

DELIVERED BY

WILLIAM M. EYAETS,

BEFORE THE

ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, AT HANOVER, JUNE 24, 1874.

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

549 AND 651 BROADWAY.

1874.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by

D. APPLETON & CO.,

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

EULOGY

ON"

CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE.

ME. PRESIDENT and Gentlemen", the Alumni of Dart-
mouth College : When, not many weeks since, the com-
mittee of your association did me the honor to invite me to
present, in an address to the assembled graduates of the college,
a commemoration of the life, the labors, and the fame of the
very eminent man and greatly honored scholar of your disci-
pline, lawyer, orator, senator, minister, magistrate, whom living
a whole nation admired and revered, whom dead a whole na-
tion laments, I felt that neither a just sense of public duty nor
the obligations of personal affection would permit me to decline
the task. Yielding, perhaps too readily, to the persuasions of
your committee that somewhat close professional and public
association with the Chief -Justice in the later years of his life,
and the intimate enjoyment of his personal friendship, might
excuse my want of that binding tie of fellowship in a commemo-
ration, in which the venerated college does dutiful honor to a
son, and the assembled alumni crown with their affection the
memory of a brother, I dismissed also, upon the same persua-
sion, all anxious solicitudes, which otherwise would have op-
pressed me, lest importunate and inextricable preoccupations of
time and mind should disable me from presenting as consider-
able, and as considerate, a survey of the eminent character and
celebrated career of Mr. Chase as should comport with them, or
satisfy the just exigencies of the occasion.

The commemoration which brings us together has about it
nothing funereal, in sentiment or observance, to darken our
minds or sadden our hearts to-day. The solemn rites of sepul-
ture, the sobbings of sorrowing affection, the homage of public
grief, the concourse of the great officers of state, the assem-
blage of venerable judges, the processions of the bar, of the
clergy, of liberal and learned men, the attendant crowds of
citizens of every social rank and station, both in the great city
where he died, and at the national capital, have already graced
his burial with all imaginable dignity and unmeasured rever-
ence. To prolong or renew this pious office is no part of our
duty to-day. ISTor is the matjfifity or nurture which the college
gives to those it calls its sons, bestowed as it is upon their mind
and character, affected by the death of the body as is the heart
of the natural mother ; nor are you, his brethren in this foster
care of the spirit, bowed with the same sense of bereavement
as are natural kindred. The filial and fraternal relation which
he bore to you, the college and the alumni, is hardly broken by
his death, nor is he hidden from you by his burial. His com-
pleted natural life is but the assurance and perpetuation of the
power, the fame, the example, which the discipline and culture
here bestowed had for their object, and in which they find
their continuing and ever-increasing glory. The energy here
engendered has not ceased its beneficent activity, the torch here
lighted still diffuses its illumination, and the fires here kindled
still radiate their heat.

Not less certain is it that the spirit of this commemoration
imposes no task of vindication or defense, and tolerates no tone
of adulation or applause. The tenor of this life, the manifesta-
tion of this character, was open and public, before the eyes of
all men, upon an eminent stage of action, displayed constantly
on the high places of the world. No faculty that Mr. Chase
possessed, no preparation of mind or of spirit, for great under-
takings or for notable achievements, ever failed of exercise or
exhibition for want of opportunity, or, being exercised or ex-
hibited, missed commensurate recognition or responsive plaudits
from his countrymen. His career shows no step backward,
the places he filled were all of the highest, the services he ren-
dered were the most difficult as well as the most eminent. If,

as the preacher proclaims, " time and chance happeneth to all,"
the times in which Mr. Chase lived permitted the widest scope
to great abilities and the noblest forms of public service ; and
the fortunes of his life show the felicity of the occasions which
befell him to draw ont these abilities, and to receive these ser-
vices. Not less complete was the round of public honors which
crowned his public labors, and we have no occasion, here, to
lament any shortcomings of prosperity or favor, or repeat the
authentic judgment which the voices of his countrymen have
pronounced upon his fame.

The simple office, then, which seems to me marked out for
one who assumes this deputed service in the name of the col-
lege and for the friends of good learning, is, in so far as the
just limits of time and circumstance will permit, to expose the
main features of this celebrated life, " to decipher the man and
his nature," to connect the true elements of his character and
the moulding force of his education with the work he did, with
the influence he wielded in life, with the power of the example
which lives after him, and always to have in view, as the most
fruitful uses of the hour, his relations to the men and events of
his times, and, not less, his true place in history among the
lawyers, orators, statesmen, magistrates of the land. Vera non
verba. is our maxim to-day ; truth, not words, must mark the
tribute the college pays to the sober dignity and solid worth of
its distinguished son.

Born of a lineage, which on the father's side dates its Ameri-
can descent from the Puritan emigration of 1640, and on the
mother's, finds her the first of that stock native to this country,
the son of these parents took no contrariety of traits from the
union of the blood of the English Puritans and the Scotch Cov-
enanters, but rather harmonious corroboration of the character-
istics of both. These, sturdy enough in either, combined in
this descendant to produce as independent and resolute a nature
for the conflicts and labors of his day, as any experience of trial
or triumph, of proscription or persecution suffered or resisted,
had required or supplied in the long history of the contests of
these two congenial races with priests and potentates, with prin-
cipalities and. powers. Nothing could be less consonant with a
just estimate of the strong traits of this lineage, than which

neither Hebrew, nor Grecian, nor Roman nurture has wrought
for its heroes either a firmer fibre or a nobler virtue, than to as-
cribe its chief power to enthusiasm or fanaticism. Plain, sober,
practical men and women as they were, there was no hard detail
of every-day life that they were not equal to, no patient and
cheerless sacrifice they could not endure, no vicissitude of adverse
or prosperous fortune which they could not meet with un-
checked serenity. If it be enthusiasm that in them the fear of
God had cast out the fear of man, or fanaticism that they placed
" things that are spiritually discerned " above the vain shows
of the world of sense, in so far they were enthusiasts and fanat-
ics. In every stern conflict, in every vast labor, in every intel-
lectual and moral development of which this country has been the
scene, without fainting or weariness they have borne their part,
and in the conclusive triumph of the principles of the Puritans
and their policies over all discordant, all opposing elements,
which enter into the wide comprehension of American nation-
ality, theirs be the praise which belongs to such well-doing.

The son of a farmer — a man of substance, and of credit with
his neighbors, and not less with the people of his State — young
Chase drew from his boyhood the vigor of body and of mind
which rural life and labors are well calculated to nourish. Sev-
eral of his father's brothers were graduates of this college, and
reached high positions in Church and State. An unpropitious
turn of the commercial affairs of the country nipped, with its
frost, the growing prosperity of his father, whose death, soon
following, left him, in tender years, and as one of a numerous
family, to the sole care of his mother. With most scanty means,
her thrift and energy sufficed to save her children from igno-
rance or declining manners ; maintained their self-respect and
independence; set them forth in the world well disciplined,
stocked with good principles, and inspired with proud and
honorable purposes. To the praise of this excellent woman,
wherever the name of her great son shall be proclaimed, this,
too, shall be told in remembrance of her: that a Christian's
faith, and a mother's love, as high and pure as ever ennobled
the most famous matrons of history, stamped the character and
furnished the education which equipped him for the labors and
the triumphs of his life. One cannot read her letters to her son

in college without the deepest emotion. How many such women
were there, in the plain ranks of New England life, in her gen-
eration ! How many are there now ! Paying marvelous little
heed to the discussion of women's rights, they show a wonderful
addiction to the performance of women's duties.

His uncle, Bishop Chase of Ohio, assumed, for a time, the
care and expense of his education, and this drew him to the
West, where, under this tutelage, he pursued academic studies
for two years. At the end of this time he returned to his
mother's charge, entered the junior class of Dartmouth College,
and graduated in the year 1826, at the age of eighteen.. The
only significance, in its impression on his future life, of this brief
guardianship of the Western Bishop, was as the determining in-
fluence which fixed the chief city of the West in his choice as
the forum and arena of his professional and public life. After
spending four years in Washington, gaining his subsistence by
teaching, a law-student with Mr. Wirt — then at the zenith of his
faculties and his fame — studying men and manners at the cap-
ital, watching the new questions then shaping themselves for
political action, observing the celebrated statesmen of the day,
conversant with the great Chief- Justice Marshall and his learned
associates on the bench of the Supreme Court, and with Web-
ster, and Binney, and other famous lawyers at its bar, he was
admitted to practice, and, at the age of twenty-two, established
himself at Cincinnati, transferring thus, once and forever, his
home from the New England of his family, his birth, his educa-
tion, and his love, to the ruder but equally strenuous and more
expansive society of the West.

While yet of tender years, following up the earlier pious in-
struction of his mother, and his own profound sense of religious
obligations under the inculcation of the Bishop, he accepted the
Episcopal Church as the body of Christian believers in whose
communion he found the best support for the religious life he
proposed to himself. When he left your college he had not
wholly relinquished a purpose, once held, of adopting the cleri-
cal profession. His adhesion to the Christian faith was simple
and constant and sincere, and he accepted it as the master and
rule of his life, in devout confidence in the moral government of
the world, as a present and real supremacy over the race of man

8

and all human affairs. He was all his life a great student oj. the
Scriptures, and no modern speculations ever shook the solid rea-
sons of his belief. When -he entered the city of Washington,
fresh from college, "the earnest prayer of his heart was, that
God would give him work to do, and success in doing it."
When he was laying out the plans of professional life, on his
first establishment at Cincinnati, his invocation was, " May God
enable me to be content with the consciousness of faithfully dis-
charging all my duties, and deliver me from a too eager thirst
for the applause and favor of men." All through the successive
and manifold activities of his busy and strenuous life, when, to
outward seeming, they were all worldly and personal, the same
predominant sense of duty and religious responsibility animated
and solemnized the whole.

At this point in his life we may draw the line between the
period of education for the work he had before him and that
work itself. What Mr. Chase was, at this time, in all the essen-
tial traits of his moral and intellectual character — in his views of
life, its value, its just objects and aims, its social, moral, and re-
ligious responsibilities; in his views of himself, his duties, obli-
gations, prospects, and possibilities; in his determinations and
desires — such, it seems to me from the most attentive study of
all these points — such, in a very marked degree, he continued to
be at every stage of his ascent in life.

What, then, shall we assign as the decisive elements, the con-
trolling' constituents, of character — and what the assurance of
their persistence and their force— which this youth could bring
to the service of the State, or contribute to the advancement of
society and the well-being of mankind ?

These were simple, but, in combination, powerful, and ade-
quate to fill out worthily the life of large opportunities which,
though not yet foreseen to himself, was awaiting him.

The faculty of reason was very broad and strong in him, yet
without being vast or surprising. It seized the sensible and
practical relations of all subjects submitted to it, and firmly held
them in its tenacious grasp ; it exposed these relations to the ap-
prehension of those whose opinion or action it behooved him to
influence, by methods direct and sincere, discarding mere inge-
nuity, and disdaining the subtleness of insinuation. His educa-

9

tion had all been of a kind to discipline and invigorate his nat-
ural powers ; not to encumber them with a besetting weight of
learning, or to supplant them by artificial training.

His oratory was vigorous, with those " qualities of clearness,
force, and earnestness, which produce conviction." His rhetoric
was ample, but not rich ; his illustrations apposite, but seldom
to the point of wit ; his delivery weighty and imposing.

His force of will, whether in respect of peremptoriness or
persistency, was prodigious. His courage to brave, and his
fortitude to endure, were absolute. His loyalty to every cause
in which he enlisted — his fidelity in every warfare in which he
took up arms — were proof against peril and disaster.

His estimate of human affairs, and of his own relation to
them, was sober and sedate. All their grandeur and splendor,
to his apprehension, connected themselves with the immortal
life, and with God, as their guide, overseer, and ruler; and the
sum of the practical wisdom of all worthy personal purposes
seemed to him to be, to discern the path of duty, and to pur-
sue it.

His views of the commonwealth were essentially Puritan.
Equality of right, community of interest, reciprocity of duty,
were the adequate, and the only adequate, principles with him
to maintain the strength and virtue of society, and preserve the
power and permanence of the State. With these principles un-
impaired and unimpeded he feared nothing for his countrymen
or their government, and he made constant warfare upon every
assault or menace that endangered them.

It was with these endowments and with this preparation of
spirit, that Mr. Chase confronted the realities of life, and as-
sumed to play a part which, whether humble or high in the scale
and plane of circumstance, was sure to be elevated and worthy
in itself ; for the loftiness of his spirit for the conflict of life was

"Such as raised
To height of noblest temper heroes old
Arming to battle."

Such a character necessarily confers authority among men,
and that Mr. Chase was ready, on all occasions arising, to assert
his high principles by comporting action was never left in doubt.

10

Whether by interposing his strong arm to save Mr. Birney from
the fury of a mob of Cincinnati gentlemen, incensed at the free-
dom of his press in its defiance of slavery; or by his bold and
constant maintenance in the courts of the cause of fugitive
slaves in the face of the resentments of the public opinion of
the day ; or by his fearless desertion of all reigning politics to
lead a feeble band of protestants through the wilderness of anti-
slavery wanderings, its pillar of cloud by day, its pillar of fire
by night; or as Governor of Ohio facing the intimidations of
the slave States, backed by Federal power and a storm of
popular passion ; or in consolidating the triumphant politics on
the urgent issue which was to flame out into rebellion and re-
volt; or in his serene predominance, during the trial of the
President, over the rage of party hate which brought into peril
the coordination of the great departments of Government, and
threatened its whole frame— in all these marked instances of
public duty, as in the simple routine of his ordinary conduct,
Mr. Chase asked but one question to determine his course of
action, " Is it right ? " If it were, he had strength, and will,
and courage to carry him through with it.

In the ten years of professional life which followed his ad-
mission to the bar, Mr. Chase established a repute for ability,
integrity, elevation of purpose and capacity for labor, which
would have surely brought him the highest rewards of forensic
prosperity and distinction, and in due course, of eminent judicial
station. In this quieter part of his life, as in his public career, it
is noticeable that his employments were never common-place, but
savored of a public zest and interest. His compilation of the
Ohio Statutes was a magnum opus, indeed, for the leisure hours
of a young lawyer, and possesses a permanent value, justifying
the assurance Chancellor Kent gave him, that this surprising
labor would find its "reward in the good he had done, in the
talents he had shown, and in the gratitude of his profession."

But this quiet was soon broken, never to be resumed, and
though the great office of Chief-Justice was in store for him, it
was to be reached by the path of statesmanship and not of
jurisprudence.

If it had seemed ever to Mr. Chase and his youthful con-
temporaries, that they had come upon times when, as Sir Thomas

11

Browne thought two hundred years ago, " it is too late to be
ambitious," and " the great mutations of the world are acted,"
the illusion was soon dispelled. It has been sadly said of Greece
in the age of Plutarch, that " all her grand but turbulent activi-
ties, all her noble agitations spent, she was only haunted by the
spectres of her ancient renown." No doubt, forty years ago,
in this country, there was a prevalent feeling that the age of
the early settlements and, again, of our War of Independence,
had closed the heroic chapters of our history, and left nothing
for the public life of our later times, but peaceful and progressive
development, and the calm virtues of civil prudence, to work
out of our system all incongruities and discords. But what
these political speculations assigned as the passionless work of
successive generations, was to be done in our time, and, as it
were, in one " unruly tight." i%^J

Mr. Chase had supported General Harrison for the presi-
dency in 1840, not upon any very thorough identification with
Whig politics, but partly from a natural tendency toward the
personal fortunes of a candidate from the West, and from his
own State, in the absence of any strong attraction of principle
to draw him to the candidate or the politics of the Democratic
party. But, upon the death of Harrison and the elevation of
Tyler to the presidency, Mr. Chase, promptly discerning the
signs of the times, took the initiative toward making the national
attitude and tendency on the subject of slavery the touchstone
of politics. Politic and prudent by nature, and with no per-
sonal disappointments or grievances to bias his course, he doubt-
less would have preferred to save and use the accumulated and
organized force of one or the other of the political parties which
divided the country, and press its power into the service of the
principles and the political action which he had, undoubtingly,
decided the honor and interests of the country demanded. He
was among the first of the competent and practical political
thinkers of the day, to penetrate the superficial crust which
covered the slumbering fires of our politics, and to plan for the
guidance of their irrepressible heats so as to save the constituted
liberties of the nation, if not from convulsion, at least from con-
flagration. He found the range of political, thought and action,
which either party permitted to itself or to its rival, compressed

12

by two unyielding postulates. The first of these insisted, that
the safety of the republic would tolerate no division of parties,
in Federal politics, which did not run through the slave States
as well as the free. The second wa"s that no party could main-
tain a footing in the slave States, that did not concede the
nationality of the institution of slavery and its right, in equality
with all the institutions of freedom, to grow with the growth
and strengthen with the strength of the American Union.
Nothing can be more interesting to a student of politics than
the masterly efforts of patriotism and statesmanship, in wThich
all the great men of the country participated, for many years,
to confine the perturbations of our public life to a controversy
with this latter and lesser postulate. Sewrard with the Whig
party, Chase with the Democratic party, and a host of others in
both, tried hard to conciliate the irreconcilable, and to stultify
astuteness, to the acceptance of the proposition that slavery, its
growth girdled, would not be already struck with death. Quite
early, however, Mr. Chase grappled with the primary postulate,
and through great labors, wise counsels, long-suffering patience,
and by the successive stages of the Liberty party, Independent
Democracy, and Free-Soil party, led up the w^ay to the Repub-
lican party, which, made up by the Whig party dropping its
slave State constituency, and the Democratic party losing its
Free-Soil constituents, rent this primary postulate of our poli-
tics in twain, and took possession of the Government by the
election of its candidate, Mr. Lincoln.

This movement in politics was one of prodigious difficulty
and immeasurable responsibility. It was so felt to be by the
prime actors in it, though with greatly varying largeness of survey
and depth of insight. In the system of American politics it
created as vast a disturbance as would a mutation of the earth's
axis, or the displacement of the solar gravitation, in our natural
wrorld. This great transaction filled the twenty years of Mr.
Chase's mature manhood, say, from the age of thirty to that of
fifty years. He must be awarded the full credit of having
understood, resolved upon, planned, organized, and executed,
this political movement, and whether himself leading or coop-
erating or following in the array and march of events, his plan,
his part, his service, were all for the cause, its prosperity, and its

13

success. To one who considers this career, not as completed and
triumphant, not with the glories of power, and dignities, and
fame which attended it, not with the blessings of a liberated race,
a consolidated Union, an ennobled nationality which receive the
plandits of his countrymen, but as its hazards and renunciations,
its toils and its perils, showed at the outset, in contrast with the
ease and splendor of his personal fortunes which adhesion to the
political power of slavery seemed to insure to him, and then con-
templates the promptness of his choice and the steadfastness of
his perseverance, the impulse and the action seem to find a paral-
lel in the life of the great Hebrew statesman, who, " hj faith,
when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pha-
raoh's daughter," and " by faith, forsook Egypt, not fearing the
wrath of the king."

The first half of this period of twenty years witnessed only
the preliminaries, equally brave and sagacious, of agitation, pro-
mulgation of purposes and opinions, consultations, conventions,
and political organizations, more and more comprehensive and
effective. All this time Mr. Chase was simply a citizen, and
apparently could expect no political station or authority till it
should come from the prosperous fortunes- of the party he was
striving to create. Suddenly, by a surprising conjunction of
circumstances he was lifted, at one bound, to the highest and
widest sphere of influence, upon the opinion of the country,
which' our political establishment presents — I mean the Senate
of the United States. The elective body, the Legislature of
Ohio, was filled in almost equal numbers with Whigs and Dem-
ocrats, but a handful of Liberty party men held the control to
prevent or determine a majority. They elected Mr. Chase.
The concurrence is similar, in its main features, to the election
of Mr. Sumner to the Senate, two years afterward, in Massachu-
setts. Much criticism of such results is always and necessarily
excited. The true interpretation of such transactions is simply a
transition state from old to new politics, wherein party names
and present interests are unchanged, but opinions and projects and
prospects are taking a new shape, and the old mint, all at once,
astonishes everybody by striking a new image and superscription,
soon to be stamped upon the whole coinage. The part of Mr.
Chase in this election, as of Mr. Sumner in his own, was elevated

14

and without guile. His term in the Senate brought him to the
year 1856, and was followed by two successive elections and four
years' service as Governor of Ohio, and a reelection to the Sen-
ate. In these high stations he added public authority to his
opinions and purposes, and gained for them wider and wider in-
fluence, while he discharged all general senatorial duties, and
official functions as Governor, with benefit to the legislation of
the nation and to the administration of the State.

As the presidential election approached and the Republican
party took the field with an assurance of assuming the admin-
istration of the Federal Government, and of meeting the weighty
responsibility of the new political basis, the question of candi-
dates absorbed the attention of the party, and attracted the inter-
est of the whole country. When a new dynast}r is to be en-
throned, the personality of the ruler is an element of the first
importance. In the general judgment of the countiy, and
equally to the 'apprehension of the mass of his own party and of
its rival, Mr. Seward stood as the natural candidate, and upon
manifold considerations. His unquestioned abilities, his un-
doubted fidelity, his vast services and wide following in the party,
presented an unprecedented combination of political strength to
obtain the nomination and carry the election, and of adequate
faculties and authority with the people for the prosperous ad-
ministration of the presidential office. Second only to Mr.
Seward, in this general judgment of his.countrymen, stood Mr.
Chase, with just enough of preference for him, in some quarters,
over Mr. Seward, upon limited and special considerations, to en-
courage that darling expedient of our politics a resort to a thi?7d
candidate. This recourse was had, and Mr. Lincoln was nomi-
nated and elected.

The disclosure of Mr. Lincoln to the eyes of his countrymen
as a possible, probable, actual candidate for the presidency came
upon them with the suddenness and surprise of a revelation.
His advent to power as the ruler of a great people, in the su-
preme juncture of their affairs, to be the head of the state
among its tried and trusted statesmen, to subordinate and co-
ordinate the pride and ambition of leaders, the passions and in-
terests of the massesj and to guide the destinies of a nation
whose institutions were all framed for obedience to law and per-

15

petual domestic peace, through rebellion, revolt, and civil war;
and to the subversion ol the very order of society of a vast ter-
ritory and a vast population, finds no parallel in history ; and
was a puzzle to all the astrologers and soothsayers. It has been
said of George III. — whose narrow intellect and obstinate tem-
per so greatly helped on the rebellion of our ancestors to our
independence — it has been said of George III., that " it was his
misfortune that, intended by nature to be a farmer, accident
placed him on a throne." It was the happy fortune of the
American people, that to the manifest advantages of freedom
from jealousies of any rivals ; and from commitment, by any
record, to schemes or theories or sects or cabals, pursued by no
hatreds, beguiled by no attachments, Mr. Lincoln added a vigor-
ous, penetrating, and capacious intellect, and a noble, generous
nature which filled his conduct o'f the Government, in small
things and great, from beginning to end, " with malice to none
and charity to all." These qualities were indispensable to the
safety of the Government and to the prosperous issue of our
civil war. In the great crisis of a nation struggling with rebel-
lion, the presence or absence of these personal traits in a ruler
may make the turning-point in the balance o.f its fate. Had
Lincoln, in dealing with the administration of government dur-
ing the late rebellion, insisted as George III. did, in his treat-
ment of the American Revolution, upon " the right of employing
as responsible advisers those only whom he personally liked, and
who were ready to consult and execute his personal wishes,"
had he excluded from his counsels great statesmen like Seward
and Chase, as King George did Fox and Burke, who can meas-
ure the dishonor, disorder, and disaster into which our affairs
might have fallen ? Such narrow intelligence and perversity are
as little consistent with the true working of administration un-
der our Constitution as they were under the British Constitution,
and as little consonant with the sound sense as they are with
the generous spirit of our people.

By the arrangement of his Cabinet, and his principal appoint-
ments for critical services, Mr. Lincoln showed at once that na-
ture had fitted him for a ruler, and accident only had hid his ear-
lier life in obscurity. I cannot hesitate to think that the pres-
ence of Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase in the great offices of State

16

and Treasury, and their faithful concurrence in the public service
and the public repute of the President's conduct of the Govern-
ment, gave to the people all the benefits which might have justly
been expected from the election of either to be himself the head
of the Government and much else besides. I know of no war-
rant in the qualities of human nature, to have hoped that either
of these great political leaders would have made as good a
minister under the administration of the other, as President, as
both of them did under the administration of Mr. Lincoln. I
see nothing in Mr. Lincoln's great qualities and great authority
with this people, which could have commensurately served our

' need in any place, in the conduct of affairs, except at their head.
The general importance, under a form of government where
the confidence of the people is the breath of the life of execu-
tive authority, of filling the great offices of state with men who,
besides possessing the requisite special faculties for their several
departments and large general powers of mind for politics and
policies, have also great repute with the party, and great credit
with the country, was well understood by the President. He
knew that the times needed, in the high places of government,
men " who," in Bolingbroke's phrase, " had built about them
the opinion of mankind which, fame after death, is superior
strength and power in life."

Of the great abilities which Mr. Chase, in his administration
of the Treasury, exhibited through the three arduous years of

. that public service, no question has ever been made. The ex-
actions of the place knew no limits. A people, wholly unaccus-
tomed to the pressure of taxation, and with an absolute horror
of a national debt, was to be rapidly subjected to the first with-
out stint, and to be buried under a mountain of the last. Taxes
which should support military operations on the largest scale,
and yet not break the back of industry which alone could pay
them ; loans, in every form that financial skill could devise, and
to the farthest verge of the public credit ; and, finally, the ex-
treme resOrt of governments under the last stress and necessity,
of the subversion of the legal tender, by the substitution of what
has been aptly and accurately called the " coined credit " of the
Government for its coined money — all these exigencies and all
these expedients made up the daily problems of the Secretary's

17

life. We may have some conception of the magnitude of these
financial operations, by considering one of the subordinate con-
trivances required to give to the currency of the country the
enormous volume and the ready circulation without which the
tides of revenue and expenditure could not have maintained
their flow. I refer to the transfer of the paper money of the
country from the State to the national banks. This transac-
tion, financially and politically, transcends in magnitude and
difficulty, of itself alone, any single measure of administrative
government found in our history, yet the conception, the plan,
and the execution, under the conduct of Mr. Chase, took less
time and raised less disturbance than it is the custom of our
politics to accord to a change in our tariff or a modification of a
commercial treaty. Another special instance of difficult and
complicated administration was that of the renewal of the inter-
course of trade, to follow closely the success of our arms, and
subdue the interests of the recovered region to the requirements
of the Government. But I cannot insist on details, where all
was vast and surprising and prosperous. I hazard nothing in
saying that the management of the finances of the civil war was
the marvel of Europe and the admiration of our own people.
For a great part of the wisdom, the courage, and the overwhelm-
ing force of will which carried us through the stress of this
stormy sea, the country stands under deep obligations to Mr.
Chase as its pilot through its fiscal perils and perplexities.
Whether the genius of Hamilton, dealing with great difficulties
and with small resources, transcended that of Chase, meeting
the largest exigencies with great resources, is an unprofitable
speculation. They stand together, in the judgment of their
countrymen, the great financiers of our history.

A somewhat persistent discrepancy of feeling and opinion
between the President and the Secretary, in regard to an im-
portant office in the public service, induced Mr. Chase to resign
his portfolio, and Mr. Lincoln to acquiesce in his desire. No
doubt, it is not wholly fortunate in our Government that the
distribution of patronage, a mixed question of party organiza-
tion and public service, should so often harass and embarrass
administration, even in difficult and dangerous times. Mr.
Lincoln's ludicrous simile is an incomparable description of the

18

system as lie found it. He said, at the outset of his administra-
tion, that "he was like a man letting rooms at one end of his
house, while the other end was on fire." Some criticism of the
Secretary's resignation and of the occasion of it, at the time,
sought to impute to them consequences of personal acerbity be-
tween these eminent men, and the mischiefs of competing am-
bitions and discordant counsels for the public interests. But
the appointment of Mr. Chase to the chief -justiceship of the
United States silenced all this evil speech and evil surmise.

There is no doubt that Mr. Chase greatly desired this office,
its dignity and durability both considered, the greatest gratifica-
tion, to personal desires, and the worthiest in public service, and
in public esteem, that our political establishment affords. For-
tunate, indeed, is he who, in the. estimate of the profession of
the law, and in the general judgment of his countrymen, com-
bines the great natural powers, the disciplined faculties, the
large learning, the larger wisdom, the firm temper, the amiable
serenity, the stainless purity, the sagacious statesmanship, the
penetrating insight, which make up the qualities that should
preside at this high altar of justice, and dispense to this great
people the final decrees of a government " not of men, but of
laws." To whatever President it comes, as a function of his
supreme authority, to assign this great duty to the worthiest,
there is given an opportunity of immeasurable honor for his own
name, and of vast benefits to his countrymen, outlasting his own
brief authority, and perpetuating its remembrance in the per-
manent records of justice, "the main interest of all human
society," so long as it holds sway among men. John Adams,
from the Declaration of Independence down, and with the
singular felicity of his line of personal descendants, has many
titles to renown, but by no act of his life has he done more to
maintain the constituted liberties which he joined in declaring,
or to confirm his own fame, than by giving to the United States
the great Chief -Justice Marshall, to be to us, forever, through
every storm that shall beset our ship of state —

"Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,
And saving them that eye it."

In this disposition, Mr. Lincoln appointed Mr. Chase to the

19

<

vacant seat, and the general voice recognized the great fitness
of the selection.

I may be permitted to borrow from the well-considered and
sober words of an eminent ( judge, the senior Associate on the
bench of the Supreme Court — words that will carry weight
with the country which mine could not — a judicial estimate of
this selection. Mr. Justice Clifford says: "Appointed, as it
were, by common consent, he seated himself easily and naturally
in the chair of justice, and gracefully answered every demand
upon the station, whether it had respect to the dignity of the
office, or to the elevation of the individual character of the in-
cumbent, or to his firmness, purity, or vigor of mind. From
the first moment he drew the judicial robes around him he
viewed all questions submitted to him as a judge in the calm
atmosphere of the bench, and with the deliberate consideration
of one who feels that he is . determiniug issues for the remote
and unknown future of a great people."

Magistratus ostendit mrum — the magistracy shows out the
man. A great office, by its great requirements and great oppor-
tunities, calls out and displays the great powers and rare quali-
ties which, presumably, have raised the man to the place. Let
us consider this last public service and last great station, as they
exhibit Mr. Chase to a candid estimate.

And, first, I notice the conspicuous fitness for judicial service
of the mental and moral constitution of the man. All through
the heady contests of the vehement politics of his times, his
share in them had embodied decision, moderation, serenity, and
inflexible submission to reason as the master and ruler of all
controversies. Force, fraud, cunning, and all lubric arts and
artifices, even the beguilements of rhetoric, found no favor with
him, as modes of warfare or means of victory. So far, then,
from needing to lay down any weapons, or disuse any methods
in which he was practised, or learn or assume new habits of
mind or strange modes of reasoning, Mr. Chase, in the working
of his intellect and the frame of his spirit, was always judicial.

It was not less fortunate for the prompt authority of his
new station, so dependent upon the opinion of the country, that
his credit for great abilities and capacity for large responsi-
bilities was already established. Great repute, as well as essen-

20

♦

tial character, is justly demanded for all elevated public stations,
and especially for judicial office, whose prosperous service, in
capital junctures, turns mainly on' moral power with the com-
munity at large.

Both these preparations easily furnished the Chief-Justice
with the requisite aptitude for the three relations, of prime im-
portance, upon which his adequacy must finally he tested ; I
mean, his relation to the court as its presiding head, his relation
to the profession as masters of the reason and debate over which
the court is the arbiter, and his relation to the people and the
State in the exercise of the critical constitutional duties of the
court, as a coordinate department of the Government.

In a numerous court, that the Chief-Justice should have a
prevalent and gracious authority, as first among equals, to adjust,
arrange, and facilitate the cooperative working of its members,
will not be doubted. For more than sixty years, at least, this
court had felt this authority — -potens et lenis dominatio — in the
presence of the two celebrated Chief-Justices who filled out this
long service. Their great experience and great age had sup-
ported, and general conformity of political feeling, if not opin-
ion, on the bench, had assisted, this relation of the Chief -Justice
to the court.

When Mr. Chase was called to this station, he found the
bench filled with men of mark and credit, and his accession made
an exactly equal division of the court between the creations of
the old and of the new politics. In these circumstances the prop-
er maintenance of the traditional relation of the Chief -Justice
to the court was of much importance to its unbroken authority
with the public. That it was so maintained was apparent to ob-
servation, and Mr. Justice Clifford, speaking for the court, has
shown it in a most amiable light :

" Throughout his judicial career he always maintained that
dignity of carriage and that calm, noble, and unostentatious pres-
ence that uniformly characterized his manners and deportment
in the social circle ; and, in his intercourse with his brethren, his
suggestions were always couched in friendly terms, and were
never marred by severity or harshness."

As for the judgment of the bar of the. country, while it gave
its full assent to the appointment of Mr. Chase, as an elevated

21

and wise selection by the President, upon the general and public
grounds which should always control, there was some hesitancy,
on the part of the lawyers, as to the completeness of Mr. Chase's
professional training, and the special aptitude of his intellect to
thread the tangled mazes of affairs which form the body of pri-
vate litigations. The doubt was neither unkind nor unnatural,
and it was readily and gladly resolved under the patient and
laborious application, and the accurate and discriminating in-
vestigation, with which the Chief -Justice handled the diversified
subjects, and the manifold complexities, which were brought into
judgment before him. In fact, the original dubitation had over-
looked the earlier distinction of Mr. Chase at the bar in some
most important forensic efforts, and had erred in comparing, for
their estimate, Mr. Chase entering upon judicial employments,
with his celebrated predecessors, as they showed themselves at
the close, not at the outset, of their long judicial service. I feel
no fear of dissent from the profession in saying that those who
practised, in the Circuit or in the Supreme Court while he pre-
sided, as well as the larger and widely-diffused body of lawyers
who give competent and responsible study to the reports, recog-
nize the force of his reason, the clearness of his perceptions, the
candor of his opinions, and the lucid rhetoric of his judgments,
as assuring his rank with the eminent judges of our own and the
mother-country.

But, in the most imposing part of the jurisdiction and juris-
prudence of the court ; in its dominion over all that belongs to
the law of nations, whether occupied with the weighty questions
of peace and war, and the multitudinous disturbances of public
and private law which follow the change from one to the other ;
or with the complications of foreign intercourse and commerce
with all the world, which. the genius of our people is constantly
expanding ; in its control, also, of the lesser public law of our
political system, by which we are a nation of republics, where
the bounds of State and Federal authority need constant explo-
ration, and require accurate and circumspect adjustment ; in its
final arbitrament on all conflicts and encroachments by which the
great coordinate departments of the Government are to be con-
fined to their appropriate spheres ; in that delicate and superb
supremacy of judicial reason whereby the Constitution confides

22

to the deliberations of this court the determination, even, of the
legality of legislation, and trusts it, nevertheless, to abstain it-
self from law-making — in all these transcendent functions of the
tribunal the preparation and the adequacy of the Chief-Justice
were unquestioned.

Accordingly, we find in the few years of his service, before
his decline in health, in the crowd of causes bred by the civil
war, which pressed the court with novel embarrassments, and
loaded it with unprecedented labors, that the Chief- Justice gave
conspicuous evidence, in repeated instances, of that union of the
faculties of a lawyer and a statesman, which alone can satisfy
the exactions of this highest jurisdiction, unequaled and unex-
ampled in any judicature in the world. To name these conspic-
uous causes merely, without unfolding them, would carry no
impression ; and time fails for any demonstrative criticism upon
them.

There are two passages in the judicial service of Mr. Chase
which, attracting great attention and exciting some difference of
opinion at the time of the transactions, invite a brief considera-
tion at your hands.

The first political impeachment in our constitutional, history,
involving, as it did, the accusation of the President of the
United States, required the Chief-Justice to preside at the trial
before the Senate, creating thus the tribunal to which the Con-
stitution had assigned this high jurisdiction. Beyond the in-
junction that the Senate, when sitting for the trial of impeach-
ments, should be " on oath," the Constitution gave no instruction
to fix or ascertain the character of the procedure, the nature of
the duty assigned to the specially-organized court, or the distri-
bution of authority between the Chief -Justice and the Senate.
The situation lacked no feature of gravity — no circumstance of
solicitude — and the attention of the whole country, and of
foreign nations, watched the transaction at every stage of its
progress. No circumstances could present a greater disparity of
political or popular forces between accuser and accused, and none
could be imagined of more thorough commitment of the body of
the court — the Senate — both in the interests of its members, in
their political feeling, and their pre-judgments ; all tending to
make the condemnation of the President, upon all superficial

23

calculations, inevitable. The effort of the Constitution to guard
against mere partisan judgment, by requiring a two-third vote
to convict, was paralyzed by the complexion of the Senate, show-
ing more than four-fifths of that body of the party which had
instituted the impeachment and was demanding conviction. To
this party, as well, the Chief -Justice belonged, as a founder, a
leader, a recipient of its honors, and a lover of its prosperity and
its fame. The President, raised to the office from that of Vice-
President — to which alone he had been elected — by the deplored
event of Mr. Lincoln's assassination, was absolutely without a
party, in the Senate or in the country ; for the party whose suf-
frages he had received for the vice-presidency was the hostile
force in his impeachment. And, to bring the matter to the
worst, the succession to all the executive power and patronage
of the Government, in case of conviction, was to fall into the ad-
ministration of the President pf the Senate — the creature, thus,
of the very court invested with the duty of trial and the power
of conviction.

Against all these immense influences, confirmed and inflamed
by a storm of party violence, beating against the Senate-house
without abatement through the trial, the President was ac-
quitted. To what wise or fortunate protection of the stability
of government does the people of this country owe its escape
from this great peril ? Solely, I cannot hesitate to think, to the
potency — with a justice-loving, law-respecting people — of the
few decisive words of the Constitution- which, to the common
apprehension, had impressed upon the transaction the solemn
character of trial and conviction, under the sanction of the oath
to bind the conscience, and not of -the mere exercise of power, of
which its will should be its reason. In short, the Constitution
had made the procedure judicial, and not political. It was this
sacred interposition that stayed this plague of political resent-
ments which, with their less sober and intelligent populations,
have thwarted so many struggles for free government and equal
institutions.

Over this scene, through all its long agitations, the Chief-
Justice presided, with firmness and prudence, with circumspect
comprehension, and sagacious forecast of the vast consequences
which hung, not upon the result of the trial as affecting any per-

24

sonal fortunes of the President, but upon the maintenance of
its character as a trial — upon the prevalence of law, and the su-
premacy of justice, in its methods of procedure, in the grounds
and reasons of its conclusion. That his authority was greatly
influential in fixing the true constitutional relations of the Chief-
Justice to the Senate, and establishing a precedent of procedure
not easily to be subverted ; that it was felt, throughout the trial,
with persuasive force, in the maintenance of the judicial nature
of the transaction; and that it never went a step beyond the
office which belonged to him — of presiding over the Senate try-
ing an impeachment — is not to be doubted.

The President was acquitted. The disappointment of the
political calculations which had been made upon, what was felt
by the partisans of impeachment to be, an assured result, was
unbounded ; and resentments, rash and unreasoning, were vis-
ited upon the Chief -Justice, who. had influenced the Senate to
be judicial, and had not himself been political. No doubt, this
impeachment trial permanently affected the disposition of the
leading managers of the Republican party toward the Chief-
Justice, and his attitude thereafter toward that party, in his char-
acter of a citizen. But the people of the country never assumed
any share of the resentment of party feeling. The charge against
him, if it had any shape or substance, came only to this : that
the Chief-Justice brought into the Senate, under his judicial
robes, no concealed weapons of party warfare, and that he had
not plucked from the Bible, on which he took and administered
the judicial oath, the commandment for its observance.

Not long after Mr. Chase's accession to the bench there
came before the court a question, in substance and in form, as
grave and difficult as any that its transcendent jurisdiction over
the validity of the legislation of Congress, has ever presented,
or, in any forecast we can make of the future, will ever present
for its judgment ; I mean the constitutionality of that feature
and quality of the issues of United States notes during the war,
which made them a legal tender for the satisfaction of private
debts. This measure was one of the great administrative ex-
pedients for marshaling the wealth of the country, as rapidly,
as equally, and as healthfully, to the energies of production and
industry, as might be, and so as seasonably to meet the immeas-

25

urable demands of the public service, in the stress of the war.
That it was debated and adopted, with full cognizance of its
critical character, and with extreme solicitude that all its bear-
ings should be thoroughly explored, and upon the same per-
emptory considerations, upon which the master of a ship cuts
away a mast or jettisons cargo, or the surgeon amputates a limb,
was a matter of history. Mr. Chase, as Secretary of the Treas-
ury, with a reluctance and repugnance which enhanced the
weight of his counsels, approved the measure, as one of neces-
sity for the fiscal operations of the Government, which knew no
other seasonable or adequate recourse. Upon this imposing and
authoritative advice of the financial minister, the legal-tender
trait of the paper issues of the Government was adopted by
Congress, and without his sanction, presumptively, it would have
been denied.

And now, when, after repeated argument at the bar, and
long deliberations of the court, the decision was announced, the
determining opinion of the Chief-Justice, in an equal division
of the six associate justices, pronounced the legal-tender acts un-
constitutional, as not within the discretion of the political de-
partments of the Government, Congress, and the Executive, to
determine this very question of the necessity of the juncture, as
justifying their enactment.

The singularity of the situation struck everybody, and greatly
divided public sentiment between applause and reproaches of
'the Chief-Justice, as the principal figure both in the adminis-
trative measure and in its judicial condemnation. But soon, a
new phase of the unsettled agitation on the merits of the consti-
tutional question, drew public attention, and created even greater
excitement of feeling and diversity of sentiment. The court,
which had been reduced by Congress under particular and tem-
porary motives, hostile to the appointing power of President
Johnson, had been again opened by Congress to its permanent
number, and its vacancies had been filled. A new case, involv-
ing the vexed question, was heard by the court, and the validity
of the disputed laws was sustained by its judgment. The signal
spectacle of the court, which had judged over Congress and the
Secretary, now judging over itself, gave rise to much satire on
one side and the other, and to some coarseness of contumely as

26

to the motives and the means of these eventful mutations in
matters, where stability and uniformity are, confessedly, of the
highest value to the public interests, and to the dignity of gov-
ernment.

Confessing to a firm approval of the final disposition of the
constitutional question by the court, I concede it to be a sub-
ject of thorough regret that the just result was not reached by
less uncertain steps. But, with this my adverse attitude to the
Chief -Justice's judicial position on the question, I find no diffi-
culty in discarding all suggestions which would mix up political
calculations with his judicial action. The error of the Chief -Jus-
tice, if, under the last judgment of the court, we may venture so
to consider it, was in following his strong sense of the supreme
importance of restoring the integrity of the currency, and his
impatience and despair at the feebleness of the political depart-
ments of the Government in that direction, to the point of con-
cluding that the final wisdom of this great question — inter
apices juris? as well as of the highest reasons of state — was to
deny to the brief exigency of war, what was* so dangerous to the
permanent necessities of peace. But a larger reason and a wider
prudence, as it would seem, favor the prevailing judgment,
which refused to cripple the permanent faculties of government
for the unforeseen duties of the future, and drew back the court
from the perilous edge of law-making, which, overpassed, must
react to cripple, in turn, the essential judicial power. The past,
thus, was not discredited, nor the future disabled.

I have now carried your attention to the round of public
service which filled the life of Mr. Chase with activity and use-
fulness, and yet the survey and the lesson are incomplete with-
out some reference to a station he never attained, to an office
he never administered ; I mean, to be sure, the presidency. It
is of the nature of this great place of power and trust, and the
necessity of the method by which alone it can be reached, to
present to the ambition and public spirit of political leaders,
and to the honest hopes and enthusiasm of the great body of
the people, an equally frequent disappointment. This is not
the place to insist upon the reasons of this unquestionable mis-
chief, nor to attempt to point out the escape from them, if in-
deed the problem be not, in itself, too hard for solution. To

27

Mr. Chase, as to all the great leaders of opinion in the present
and perhaps the last generation of our public men, this disap-
pointment came, and in his case, as in theirs, brought with it
the defeat of the hopes and desires of a large following of his
countrymen, who sought, through his accession to the presidency,
the elevation of the Government, and the welfare of the people.

That the range and dignity of Mr. Chase's public employ-
ments and the large capacity, absolute probity, and unbounded
energy which he had shown in them, justified his aspiration to
the presidency, and the public calculations of great benefit from
his accession to it, may not be doubted. In this state of things
it is obvious, that he would necessarily be greatly in the minds
of men, as a candidate for the candidacy, and this, too, whether
they favored or opposed it, without any implication of undue
activity of desire, much less of effort, on his part, to obtain the
nomination. But, it was not in the fortunes of Mr. Chase's
life to take the fiood of any tide, in the restless sea of our poli-
tics, which led on to the presidency. In 1860 there was no
principle and no policy of the Republican party which could
tolerate the postponement of Mr. Seward to Mr. Chase, if a
political leader was to be put in nomination. In 1864 the para-
mount considerations of absolute supremacy, which dictated the
reelection of Mr. Lincoln, would endure no competition of can-
didates in the Republican party. In 1868, when each party
seemed, in an unusual degree, free to seek and find its candi-
dates where it would, Mr. Chase was Chief -Justice, and no issue
of the public safety existed, which alone, in the settled convic-
tions of this people, would favor a political canvass by the head
of the judiciary.

In a just view of the office of President, as framed in the
Constitution, which he only, iii the whole establishment of the
Government, is sworn " to preserve, protect, and defend," and
of the rightful demands of this people from its supreme ma-
gistracy, I am sure most people will agree that Mr. Chase pos-
sessed great qualities for the discharge of its high duties, and
for the maintenance of good government in difficult times.
These qualifications I have already unfolded from his life.
If, indeed, the great hold over the Government, which the
Constitution secures to the people by the election of the Presi-

28

dent, and his direct and constant responsibility to popular opin-
ion, and the fall powers, thus safely confided to him, in the
name and as the trust of the people at large — if this hold is to
be exercised and preserved in its appropriate vigor, it can only
be by the election to the presidency of true leaders of the politi-
cal opinion of the country. In this way alone can power and
responsibility be kept in union ; and any nation which, in the
working of its government, sees them divorced — sees power
without responsibility, and responsibility without power — must
expect dishonor and disaster in its affairs.

I have, thus, with such success as may be, undertaken to
separate the thread of this individual character and action from
that woven tapestry of human life, whose conciliated colors and
collective force make up one of the noblest chapters of history.
I have attempted to present in prominent points, passing per
fastigia . ?*eru?n, the worth, the work, the duty, and the honor
which fill out " the sustained dignity of this stately life." From
his boyhood on the banks of this fair river — famous as having
given birth and nurture to three Chief-Justices of the United
States, Ellsworth, Chase, and Waite ; through his first lessons
in the humanities in beautiful Windsor, his fuller instruction
in the lap of this gracious mother, his loved and venerated
Dartmouth ; through his lessons in law and in eloquence at the
feet of his great master, Wirt, his study of statesmen and gov-
ernment at the capital ; through his faithful service to the law,
that jealous mistress, and his generous advocacy of the rights,
and resentment of the wrongs, of the unfriended and the un-
defended ; through his season of stormy politics with its " estua-
tions of joys and fears ; " through the crush and crowd of labors
and solicitudes which beset him as minister of finance in the
tensions and perils of war ; through all this steep ascent to the
serene height of supreme jurisprudence, this life, but a span in
years, was enough for the permanent service of his country, and
for the assurance of his fame. " Etenim, Quirites, exigioum no-
bis vitce curriculum natura circumscripsit, immensmn glorias?

If I should attempt to compare Mr. Chase, either in resem-
blance or contrast, with the great names in our public life, of
our own times, and in our previous history, I should be inclined
to class him, in the solidity of his faculties, the firmness of his

29

will, and in the moderation of his temper, and in the quality of
his public services, with that remarkable school of statesmen,
who, through the Revolutionary War, wrought out the indepen-
dence of their country, which they had declared, and framed the
Constitution, by which the new liberties were consolidated and
their perpetuity insured. Should I point more distinctly at
individual characters, whose traits he most recalls, Ellsworth as
a lawyer and judge, and Madison as a statesman, would seem
not only the most like, but very like, Mr. Chase. In the groups
of his cotemporaries in public affairs, Mr. Chase is always named
with the most eminent. In every triumvirate of conspicuous
activity he would be naturally associated. Thus, in the prelimi-
nary agitations which prepared the triumphant politics, it is
Chase and Sumner and Hale ; in the competition for the presi-
dency when the party expected to carry it, it is Seward and
Lincoln and Chase ; in administration, it is Stanton and Seward
and Chase ; in the Senate, it is Chase and Seward and Sumner.
All these are newly dead, and we accord them a common hom-
age of admiration and of gratitude, not yet to be adjusted or
weighed out to each.

Just a quarter of a century before Mr. Chase left these halls
of learning, the college sent out another scholar of her disci-
pline, with the same general traits of birth, and condition, and
attendant influences, which we have noted as the basis of the
power and influence of this later son of Dartmouth. . He played
a famous part in his time as lawyer, senator, and minister of
state, in all the greatest affairs, and in all the highest spheres of
public action; and to his eloquence his countrymen paid the
singular homage, with which the Greeks crowned that of Peri-
cles, who alone was called Olympian for his grandeur and his
power. He died with the turning tide from the old statesman-
ship to the new, then opening, now closed, in which Mr. Chase
and his cotemporaries have done their work and made their
fame. Twenty-one years ago this venerable college, careful of
the memory of one who had so greatly served as well as honored
her, heard from the lips of Choate the praise of Webster.
What lover of the college, what admirer of genius and eloquence,
can forget the pathetic and splendid tribute which the con-
summate orator paid to the mighty fame of the great statesman ?

30

What mattered it to him, or to the college, that, for the moment,
this fame was checked and clouded, in the divided judgments
of his countrymen, by the rising storms of the approaching
struggle ? But, instructed by the experience of the vanquished
rebellion, none are now so dull as not to see that, the consoli-
dation of the Union, the demonstration of the true doctrine of
the Constitution, the solicitous observance of every obligation
of the compact, were the great preparations for the final issue
of American politics between freedom and slavery.

To these preparations the life-work of Webster and his as-
sociates was devoted; their completeness and adequacy have
been demonstrated ; the force and magnitude of the explosion
have justified all their solicitudes lest it should burst the cohe-
sions of our unity. The general sense of our countrymen now
understands that the statesmen who did the most to secure the
common government for slavery and freedom under the frame
of the Constitution, and who in the next generations did the
most to strengthen the bonds of the Union, and to avert the last
test till that strength was assured ; and, in our own latest times,
did the most to make the contest at last become seasonable
and safe, thorough and unyielding and unconditional, have all
wrought out the great problem of our statesmanship, which was
to assure to us " Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable." They all deserve, as they shall all receive, each
for his share, the gratitude of their countrymen, and the applause
of the world.

To the advancing generations of youth that Dartmouth shall
continue to train for the service of the republic, and the good
of mankind, the lesson of the life we commemorate, to-day, is
neither obscure nor uncertain. The toils and honors of the past
generations have not exhausted the occasions nor the duties of
our public life, and the preparation for them, whatever else it
may include, can never omit the essential qualities which have
always marked every prosperous and elevated career. These
are energy, labor, truth, courage, and faith. These make up
that ultimate wisdom to which the moral constitution of the
world assures a triumph. — " Wisdom is the principal thing ; she
shall bring thee to honor ; she shall give to thy head an orna-
ment of grace ; a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee."

l(,^cfl>o%<l,o%q/3

THE ONLY BIOGRAPHY AUTHORIZED BY ME. CHASE'S FAMILY,

TTte Life artci Public Services of

SALMON PORTLAND CHASE,

LATE CHIEF-JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES;

Formerly United States Senator, Governor of Ohio, and Secretary of the Treasury.

BY

J. W. SCHUCKERS,

FOR MANY TEAKS PRIVATE SECRETARY TO MR. CHASE.

WITH THE EFLOGT ON MR. CHASE, DELIVERED AT DARTMOUTH,
JUNE 21, BY HON. WM. M. EVARTS.

New York, July 10, 1874.
Messrs. D. APPLETON & CO.,

Gentlemen: We are gratified to learn that the "• Life and Public Services of Salmon
JR. Chase, Late Chief-Justice of the United States," by Mr. J. W. Schuckers, and lately an-
nounced by you, is on the eve of publication. We hope it may find a large sale.

Mr. Schuckers's long and cltise association with Mr. Chase, in a confidential capacity,
having been for many year* and at his death his private secretary, peculiarly fits him, in our
judgment, for writing a history of Mr. Chase's Life.

We know that this bo<) i| approved by all the members of Mr. Chase's family, and
those of his friends who have t •.; . smiied advance sheets.

Very truly yours,

Hiram Barney, Chas. G. Francklyn,

Late Collect' • of Port of N". Y. Agent ot Cunard Line.

John J. Crsco. William Orton,

Late Assistant Treasurer U. S. Pres't Western Union Tel.

Edwards Pierrepont, Whitelaw Reid,

Counselor-at-Law. Editor New York Tribune.

SOLD BY SU3SCRIPTSON ONLY.

Price, in elegant Cloth Binding, $5 00; Leather, $6.00 ; Half Turkey Morocco, $750.

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers,

X40 & 5X1 BROADWAY, N. Y