Salmon P. Chase
Ohio antislavery senator who became Treasury Secretary during the Civil War and Chief Justice.
Overview
After defending fugitive slaves in court, Chase was elected to the Senate in 1849 as a Free Soil Democrat, broke with his party over the Compromise of 1850, and helped found the Republican Party in the 1850s, summing up its creed as free soil, free labor, free men. He served as Ohio governor, as Lincoln's Treasury Secretary, where he financed the Civil War, introduced the first federal paper currency and the income tax, and nationalized the banking system, and finally as the sixth Chief Justice, where he presided over Johnson's impeachment trial.
Related Topics
Henry Clay
Elected Speaker on his first day in the House in 1811, Clay transformed the office into a position of real power, stacking committ...
Daniel Webster
Webster served New Hampshire and then Massachusetts in both chambers across four decades, from 1827 to 1841 and 1845 to 1850 in th...
John C. Calhoun
Calhoun served as representative, Secretary of War, Vice President under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Senator from 1832 t...
John Quincy Adams
Defeated for re-election in 1828, Adams shocked observers by winning election to the House in 1830, where he served from 1831 unti...