great powers, and hoping rather against his own convictions that once upon the bench he would see in what direction his best prospects of usefulness and fame rested, he concluded to take all risks, and on the 6th of December nominated him to the Senate for Chief-Justice. He communicated his intention to no one, and wrote out the nomination in full with his own hand. It was confirmed at once without reference to a committee. Mr. Chase on reaching home the night of the same day was saluted at his door under his new title by his daughter, Mrs. Sprague. He at once sent the President a note, saying:

Before I sleep I must thank you for this mark of your confidence, and especially for the manner in which the nomination was made. I will never for

get either, and trust you will never regret either. Be assured that I prize your confidence and goodwill more than any nomination to office.

The appointment was received with the greatest satisfaction throughout the Union. Although the name of Mr. Chase had been especially pressed upon the President by the public men who represented the most advanced antislavery sentiment of the North, the appointment when once made met with little opposition from any quarter. Mr. Chase, in a long life of political prominence and constant controversy, had won the universal respect of the country, not only for his abilities, but also for his courage, his integrity, and a certain solid weight of character of which his great head and massive person seemed a fitting embodiment. He had placed his portrait on the lower denominations of the legal-tender notes, saying with his customary heavy pleasantry, "I had put the President's head on the higher priced notes, and my own, as was becoming, on the smaller ones." His handsome face and features had thus become more familiar in the eyes of the people than those of any other man in America; and though neither then nor at any other period of his life did he become what could be called universally popular, the image of him became fixed in the general instinct as a person of serious importance in the national life. The people who gave themselves the trouble to reason about the matter said it was impossible that an original abolitionist should be untrue to the principles of freedom, or that the father of the national currency should ever disown his own offspring; while those who thought and spoke on impulse took it for granted that such a man as Mr. Chase should never for any length of time be out of the highest employment.

After all, the fears of the President in regard to the Chief-Justice were better founded than his hopes. Mr. Chase took his place on the

bench with a conscientious desire to do his whole duty in his great office, to devote his undoubted powers and his prodigious industry to making himself a worthy successor of the great jurists who before him had illustrated the bench, but he could not discharge the political affairs of the country from his mind. He still considered himself called upon to counteract the mischievous tendencies of the President towards conciliation and hasty reconstruction. His slighting references to him in his letters and diaries continued from the hour he took his place on the bench. When the fighting had ended around Richmond, and on the capitulation of Lee the fabric of the Southern Confederacy had fallen about the ears of its framers like a house of cards, the Chief-Justice felt himself called on to come at once to the front, and he wrote from Baltimore to the President:

about the principles which are to govern reconI am very anxious about the future, and most struction, for as these principles are sound or unsound so will be the work and its results. You have no time to read a long letter nor have I time to write one, so I will be brief. And first as to Virginia. 1

He advised the President to stand by the Peirpoint government. As to the other rebel States, he suggested the enrollment of the loyal citizens without regard to complexion.

This, you know [he said], has long been my opinion. . . . The application of this principle to Louisiana is made somewhat difficult by the organization which has already taken place, but happily the right of suffrage. ... What reaches me of the Constitution authorizes the legislature to extend the condition of things in Louisiana impresses me strongly with the belief that this extension will be of the greatest benefit to the whole population.

He advised, as to Arkansas, an amendment of the Constitution, or a new convention, the members to be elected by the loyal citizens, without distinction of color. "To all the other States," he said, "the general principle may be easily applied." He closed by saying: "I most respectfully, but most earnestly, commend these matters to your attention. God gives you a great place and a great opportunity. May he guide you in the use of them." But the same day the President delivered from a window of the White House that final speech to the people which he had prepared without waiting for the instructions of the Chief-Justice, and the day after Mr. Chase wrote again from Baltimore reviewing the record of both, reminding the President of his former errors from which Mr. Chase had tried to save him, discussing 1 Chase to Lincoln, April 11, 1865.

in full the Louisiana case, of which the President had made so masterly and luminous a presentation in his speech, insinuating that if the President were only as well informed as he was he would see things very differently. Almost before the ink was dry on this unasked and superfluous sermon the President was dead. The Chief-Justice, writing to a friend in Ohio, said: "The schemes of politicians will now adjust themselves to the new conditions. I want no part in them." He retained his attitude at the head of the extreme Republicans until about the time of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Over this famous trial he presided with the greatest dignity and impartiality; with a knowledge of law which was never at fault, and with a courage which rose superior to all the threats and all the entreaties of his friends. But his action during

the trial and its result alienated him at once from the great body of those who had been his strongest supporters, while it created a momentary appearance of popularity among his life-long opponents. His friends began to persuade him, and he began to think, that he might be the candidate of the Democratic party for the Presidency. He commenced writing voluminous letters to leading Democrats expressing his indifference to the nomination, but at the same time saying he had always been a Democrat, was a Democrat still, and that the course which the Democracy ought to adopt would be to embrace true Democratic principles and declare for universal suffrage in the reconstruction of the Union. He did not flinch for an instant from his position on this important question. He said: "I believe I could refuse the throne of the world if it were offered me at the price of abandoning the cause of equal rights and exact justice to all men." Following his inveterate habit of taking a subjective view of the world of politics, he thought it possible that the Democratic party might be converted in the twinkling of an eye by virtue of his broad and liberal views. He cherished this pleasant delusion for several months. Whenever an obscure politician called upon him or wrote to him from some remote corner of the country, expressing a desire that he should be the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, he would say, "Such indications . . . afford ground for hope that a change is going on in the views and policy of the Democratic party which warrants good hopes for the future." There was for a moment a vague

1 "I most earnestly wish you could have read the New Orleans papers for the past few months. Your duties have not allowed it. I have read them a good deal; quite enough to be certain that if you had read what I have your feelings of humanity and justice would not let you rest till all loyalists are made equal

impression among the leading Democrats that as it was hopeless to make a campaign with one of their own party against the overwhelming popularity of General Grant, it might be worth while to try the experiment of nominating the Chief-Justice with the hope of diverting a portion of the Republican vote, and a correspondence took place between August Belmont and Mr. Chase in relation to that subject. Mr. Chase wrote:

in my political views and sentiments, a Democrat, and 1still think that upon questions of finance, commerce, and administration generally, the old Democratic principles afford the best guidance.5

For more than a quarter of a century I have been,

But he stoutly asserted, even in the face of this temptation, his belief in universal suffrage, though he coupled it with universal amnesty,

and said:

If the white citizens hitherto prominent in affairs will simply recognize their [the negroes'] right of suffrage, and assure them against future attempts to take it from them, I am sure that those citizens will be welcomed back to their old lead with joy and Southern States may be carried for the Democratic acclamation, . . . and a majority, if not all, the candidates at the next election.

He repeated this sanguine statement in his correspondence with other leading Democrats, but the negotiation came to nothing; the Democratic convention met in New York, and Mr. Chase's name, mentioned by accident, gained a roar of cheers from the assembly and one-half of one vote from a California delegate. He professed his entire indifference to the result, and took no further interest in the canvass. An injudicious Republican politician in New York asked him to address a Grant meeting. He declined, of course, stating that he could not unreservedly support the Republican ticket, and that this was not the time for discrimination in a public address. "The action of the two parties has obliged me to resume with my old faith my old position, . . . that of Democrat, by the grace of God, free and independent." When his old enemy, General Blair, came to the front in the progress of the canvass and rather overshadowed the more conservative Seymour, the Chief-Justice intimated that men of his way of thinking would be constrained to the support of General Grant.

But if the political attitude of Mr. Chase in his later years was a subject of amazement