SALMON PORTLAND CHASE
If I were asked to name the man to whom the colored
people of this country, who were slaves, or were liable
to become slaves, are under the greatest obligation
for their freedom, I would unhesitatingly say Salmon
Portland Chase.
If I were asked to name the man who was the strongest
and most useful factor in the Government during the
great final contest that ended in the emancipation
of the black man, I would say Salmon Portland Chase.
In expressing the opinions above given, no reproach
for Abraham Lincoln, nor for any of the distinguished
members of his Cabinet, is intended or implied.
Inferiority to Salmon P. Chase was not a disgrace.
Physically he rose above all his official associates,
which was no discredit to them, and in much the same
way he towered intellectually and administratively.
His was the most trying, the most difficult position,
in the entire circle of public departments. It
was easy to get men to fight the battles of the Union
if there was money to pay them. It was easy to
furnish ships and arms and supplies in sufficient
quantity, notwithstanding the terrible drain of the
greatest of civil wars, as long as the funds held out.
Everything depended on the treasury. Failure
there meant irretrievable disaster. It would
not answer to have any serious mistakes in that quarter,
and in fact no fatal mistakes were there made.
In all other departments there were failures and blunders,
but the financial department met every emergency and
every requisition. Chase’s financial policy
it was that carried the country majestically through
the war, and that afterwards paid the nation’s
debts.
There is a circumstance that has not been mentioned,
as far as the writer knows, by any of Mr. Chase’s
biographers, which seems to him to be significant
and worth referring to. During the Civil War,
Walter Bagehot was editor of the Economist,
the great English financial journal. His opinion
in financial matters was regarded as the highest authority.
It was accepted as infallible. He discussed the
plans of Mr. Chase with great elaborateness and great
severity. He predicted that they were all destined
to failure, and proved this theoretically to his own
satisfaction and the satisfaction of many others.
The result showed that Mr. Chase was right all the
time, and the great English economist was wrong.
The entrance of such a man into the Abolitionist movement
marked an era in its history. It was the thing
most needed. He gave it a leader who, of all
men then living, was most competent for leadership.
From that time he was its Moses.
The greatest service rendered to the Abolition cause
by Salmon P. Chase was in pushing it forward on political
lines. There was a contest for the mastery of
the Government from the hour he took command.
The movement was to be slow, sometimes halting and
apparently falling back, in some respects insignificant,
in all respects desperate, but there was to be no
permanent defeat and no compromise.
