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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/19165-8.txt b/19165-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d2326d0 --- /dev/null +++ b/19165-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1475 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase, by William M. Evarts + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase + Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of + Dartmouth College, at Hanover + +Author: William M. Evarts + +Release Date: September 3, 2006 [EBook #19165] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EULOGY ON CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + EULOGY + + ON + + CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE, + + + DELIVERED BY + + WILLIAM M. EVARTS, + + + BEFORE THE + + ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, AT HANOVER, JUNE 24, 1874. + + + NEW YORK: + D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, + 549 AND 551 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. + + + + +MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN, THE ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE: When, not +many weeks since, the committee 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 discipline, lawyer, +orator, senator, minister, magistrate, whom living a whole nation +admired and revered, whom dead a whole nation 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 +commemoration, 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 persuasion, all anxious +solicitudes, which otherwise would have oppressed me, lest importunate +and inextricable preoccupations of time and mind should disable me from +presenting as considerable, 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 sepulture, the sobbings of sorrowing +affection, the homage of public grief, the concourse of the great +officers of state, the assemblage 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 reverence. To prolong +or renew this pious office is no part of our duty to-day. Nor is the +maturity 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 completed +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 manifestation 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 undertakings or for notable achievements, ever failed of +exercise or exhibition for want of opportunity, or, being exercised or +exhibited, 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 rendered 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 out these abilities, and to receive +these services. 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 college 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 American 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 Covenanters, but rather harmonious corroboration +of the characteristics 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 principalities 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 ascribe 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 unchecked +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 fanatics. In every stern conflict, in +every vast labor, in every intellectual 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 nationality, 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. Several 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 ignorance 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 generation! 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 +influence 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 capital, 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 Webster, 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 education, 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 instruction 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 +clerical 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 and all human affairs. +He was all his life a great student of the Scriptures, and no modern +speculations ever shook the solid reasons 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 discharging 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 essential traits of his moral and +intellectual character--in his views of life, its value, its just +objects and aims, its social, moral, and religious responsibilities; in +his views of himself, his duties, obligations, 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 controlling +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 adequate 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 apprehension of those whose +opinion or action it behooved him to influence, by methods direct and +sincere, discarding mere ingenuity, and disdaining the subtleness of +insinuation. His education had all been of a kind to discipline and +invigorate his natural 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 pursue 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 unimpaired 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 assumed 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. Whether by interposing +his strong arm to save Mr. Birney from the fury of a mob of Cincinnati +gentlemen, incensed at the freedom 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 revolt; or in his serene predominance, +during the trial of the President, over the rage of party hate which +brought into peril the coördination 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 admission 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 contemporaries, that +they had come upon times when, as Sir Thomas 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 +activities, 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 right." + +Mr. Chase had supported General Harrison for the presidency 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 personal disappointments or +grievances to bias his course, he doubtless 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 conflagration. He found +the range of political thought and action, which either party permitted +to itself or to its rival, compressed 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 was that no party could +maintain 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 which 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. Seward 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 way to the Republican 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 politics 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 world. 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 coöperating or +following in the array and march of events, his plan, his part, his +service, were all for the cause, its prosperity, and its 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 plaudits 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 contemplates the promptness of his choice and +the steadfastness of his perseverance, the impulse and the action seem +to find a parallel in the life of the great Hebrew statesman, who, "_by +faith_, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of +Pharaoh'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, promulgation +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 Democrats, 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 +Massachusetts. 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 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 reëlection +to the Senate. In these high stations he added public authority to his +opinions and purposes, and gained for them wider and wider influence, +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 administration of the +Federal Government, and of meeting the weighty responsibility of the new +political basis, the question of candidates absorbed the attention of +the party, and attracted the interest of the whole country. When a new +dynasty is to be enthroned, the _personality_ of the ruler is an element +of the first importance. In the general judgment of the country, 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 undoubted 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 administration 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 +encourage that darling expedient of our politics, a resort to a _third_ +candidate. This recourse was had, and Mr. Lincoln was nominated 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 supreme juncture of their affairs, +to be the head of the state among its tried and trusted statesmen, to +subordinate and coördinate the pride and ambition of leaders, the +passions and interests of the masses, and to guide the destinies of a +nation whose institutions were all framed for obedience to law and +perpetual domestic peace, through rebellion, revolt, and civil war; and +to the subversion of the very order of society of a vast territory 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 temper 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 vigorous, penetrating, and capacious +intellect, and a noble, generous nature which filled his conduct of 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 rebellion, the +presence or absence of these personal traits in a ruler may make the +turning-point in the balance of its fate. Had Lincoln, in dealing with +the administration of government during the late rebellion, insisted as +George III. did, in his treatment 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 measure 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 under 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 appointments for +critical services, Mr. Lincoln showed at once that nature had fitted him +for a ruler, and accident only had hid his earlier life in obscurity. I +cannot hesitate to think that the presence of Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase +in the great offices of State and Treasury, and their faithful +concurrence in the public service and the public repute of the +President's conduct of the Government, 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 warrant 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 executive 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 exactions of the place knew +no limits. A people, wholly unaccustomed to the pressure of taxation, +and with an absolute horror of a national debt, was to be rapidly +subjected to the first without 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 extreme +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 life. We may have some conception +of the magnitude of these financial operations, by considering one of +the subordinate contrivances 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 transaction, 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 intercourse 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 overwhelming 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 important 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 organization 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 system +as he found it. He said, at the outset of his administration, 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 between these eminent men, and the mischiefs of +competing ambitions 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 gratification, to +personal desires, and the worthiest in public service, and in public +esteem, that our political establishment affords. Fortunate, indeed, is +he who, in the estimate of the profession of the law, and in the general +judgment of his countrymen, combines 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 permanent 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 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 incumbent, 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 determining issues for the +remote and unknown future of a great people." + +_Magistratus ostendit virum_--the magistracy shows out the man. A great +office, by its great requirements and great opportunities, calls out and +displays the great powers and rare qualities 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 responsibilities was already +established. Great repute, as well as essential 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 community at large. + +Both these preparations easily furnished the Chief-Justice with the +requisite aptitude for the three relations, of prime importance, upon +which his adequacy must finally be 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 coördinate 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 coöperative 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 supported, and general conformity of +political feeling, if not opinion, 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 proper 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 observation, 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 presence 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 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 private 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 investigation, 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 +overlooked 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 presided, as well as the larger and +widely-diffused body of lawyers who give competent and responsible study +to the reports, recognize 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 jurisprudence 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 +exploration, and require accurate and circumspect adjustment; in its +final arbitrament on all conflicts and encroachments by which the great +coördinate departments of the Government are to be confined to their +appropriate spheres; in that delicate and superb supremacy of judicial +reason whereby the Constitution confides to the deliberations of this +court the determination, even, of the legality of legislation, and +trusts it, nevertheless, to abstain itself 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 unexampled in any judicature in the world. To name these +conspicuous 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 consideration 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 Constitution had +assigned this high jurisdiction. Beyond the injunction that the Senate, +when sitting for the trial of impeachments, 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 distribution 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 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, showing 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 suffrages 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 +administration of the President of 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 acquitted. 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 resentments 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 personal fortunes of the +President, but upon the maintenance of its character as a trial--upon +the prevalence of law, and the supremacy 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 trying 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 visited 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 +character 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 expedients 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 +immeasurable 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 bearings should be +thoroughly explored, and upon the same peremptory 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 Treasury, with a reluctance and repugnance which +enhanced the weight of his counsels, approved the measure, as one of +necessity 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 unconstitutional, as not +within the discretion of the political departments 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 administrative measure and in its +judicial condemnation. But soon, a new phase of the unsettled agitation +on the merits of the constitutional 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 +temporary 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, involving 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 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 government. + +Confessing to a firm approval of the final disposition of the +constitutional question by the court, I concede it to be a subject 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 difficulty in discarding +all suggestions which would mix up political calculations with his +judicial action. The error of the Chief-Justice, 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 departments of the Government in that +direction, to the point of concluding 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 usefulness, and yet the +survey and the lesson are incomplete without 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 mischief, nor to attempt +to point out the escape from them, if indeed the problem be not, in +itself, too hard for solution. To Mr. Chase, as to all the great +leaders of opinion in the present and perhaps the last generation of our +public men, this disappointment 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 employments 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 flood of any tide, in the restless sea of our +politics, 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 paramount considerations of absolute +supremacy, which dictated the reëlection of Mr. Lincoln, would endure no +competition of candidates in the Republican party. In 1868, when each +party seemed, in an unusual degree, free to seek and find its candidates +where it would, Mr. Chase was Chief-Justice, and no issue of the public +safety existed, which alone, in the settled convictions 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, in the whole establishment of the +Government, is sworn "to preserve, protect, and defend," and of the +rightful demands of this people from its supreme magistracy, I am sure +most people will agree that Mr. Chase possessed 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 President, +and his direct and constant responsibility to popular opinion, and the +full 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 political 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 rerum_, 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 government 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 undefended; through his season of stormy politics with its +"estuations 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, exiguum nobis vitæ curriculum natura circumscripsit, +immensum gloriæ._" + +If I should attempt to compare Mr. Chase, either in resemblance 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 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 independence 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 preliminary agitations which prepared +the triumphant politics, it is Chase and Sumner and Hale; in the +competition for the presidency 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 homage 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 discipline, 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 Pericles, who alone was called Olympian for his grandeur and his +power. He died with the turning tide from the old statesmanship 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 +consummate orator paid to the mighty fame of the great statesman? 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 consolidation 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 associates 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 cohesions 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 ornament of grace; a +crown of glory shall she deliver to thee." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase, by William M. 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Evarts + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + visibility: hidden; + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase, by William M. Evarts + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase + Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of + Dartmouth College, at Hanover + +Author: William M. Evarts + +Release Date: September 3, 2006 [EBook #19165] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EULOGY ON CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>EULOGY</h2> + + <h4>ON</h4> + + <h1>CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE,</h1> + + <h4>DELIVERED BY</h4> + + <h3>WILLIAM M. EVARTS,</h3> + + <h4>BEFORE THE</h4> + + <h3>ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, AT HANOVER, JUNE 24, 1874.</h3> + + <p class='center'>NEW YORK:<br /> + D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,<br /> + 549 AND 551 BROADWAY.<br /> + 1874.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p> + + + + + +<p class='center'> +<span class="smcap">Entered</span>, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by<br /> +D. APPLETON & CO.,<br /> +In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h2>EULOGY</h2> + +<h4>ON</h4> + +<h1>CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE.</h1> +<p><br /><br /></p> +<p>MR. PRESIDENT <span class="smcap">and Gentlemen, the Alumni of Dartmouth College</span>: +When, not many weeks since, the committee 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 discipline, +lawyer, orator, senator, minister, magistrate, whom living a whole +nation admired and revered, whom dead a whole nation 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 +commemoration, 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 persuasion, all anxious +solicitudes, which otherwise would have oppressed me, lest importunate +and inextricable preoccupations of time and mind should disable me from +presenting as considerable, and as considerate, a survey of the eminent +character and celebrated career of Mr. Chase as should comport with +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>them, or satisfy the just exigencies of the occasion.</p> + +<p>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 sepulture, the sobbings of sorrowing +affection, the homage of public grief, the concourse of the great +officers of state, the assemblage 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 reverence. To prolong +or renew this pious office is no part of our duty to-day. Nor is the +maturity 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 completed +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.</p> + +<p>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 manifestation 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 undertakings or for notable achievements, ever failed of +exercise or exhibition for want of opportunity, or, being exercised or +exhibited, 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 rendered were the most +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>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 out these abilities, and to receive +these services. 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.</p> + +<p>The simple office, then, which seems to me marked out for one who +assumes this deputed service in the name of the college 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. <i>Vera non verba</i> 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.</p> + +<p>Born of a lineage, which on the father's side dates its American 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 Covenanters, but rather harmonious corroboration +of the characteristics 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 principalities and +powers. Nothing could be less consonant with a just estimate of the +strong traits of this lineage, than which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> neither Hebrew, nor Grecian, +nor Roman nurture has wrought for its heroes either a firmer fibre or a +nobler virtue, than to ascribe 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 unchecked +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 fanatics. In every stern conflict, in +every vast labor, in every intellectual 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 nationality, theirs +be the praise which belongs to such well-doing.</p> + +<p>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. Several 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 ignorance 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> in college without the +deepest emotion. How many such women were there, in the plain ranks of +New England life, in her generation! 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.</p> + +<p>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 +influence 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 capital, 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 Webster, 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 education, and his +love, to the ruder but equally strenuous and more expansive society of +the West.</p> + +<p>While yet of tender years, following up the earlier pious instruction 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 +clerical 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> and all human affairs. +He was all his life a great student of the Scriptures, and no modern +speculations ever shook the solid reasons 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 discharging 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.</p> + +<p>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 essential traits of his moral and +intellectual character—in his views of life, its value, its just +objects and aims, its social, moral, and religious responsibilities; in +his views of himself, his duties, obligations, 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.</p> + +<p>What, then, shall we assign as the decisive elements, the controlling +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?</p> + +<p>These were simple, but, in combination, powerful, and adequate to fill +out worthily the life of large opportunities which, though not yet +foreseen to himself, was awaiting him.</p> + +<p>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 apprehension of those whose +opinion or action it behooved him to influence, by methods direct and +sincere, discarding mere ingenuity, and disdaining the subtleness of +insinuation. His educa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>tion had all been of a kind to discipline and +invigorate his natural powers; not to encumber them with a besetting +weight of learning, or to supplant them by artificial training.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 pursue it.</p> + +<p>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 unimpaired and unimpeded he feared nothing for his +countrymen or their government, and he made constant warfare upon every +assault or menace that endangered them.</p> + +<p>It was with these endowments and with this preparation of spirit, that +Mr. Chase confronted the realities of life, and assumed 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</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">"Such as raised</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To height of noblest temper heroes old</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Arming to battle."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>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.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> Whether by interposing +his strong arm to save Mr. Birney from the fury of a mob of Cincinnati +gentlemen, incensed at the freedom 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 revolt; or in his serene predominance, +during the trial of the President, over the rage of party hate which +brought into peril the coördination 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.</p> + +<p>In the ten years of professional life which followed his admission 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 <i>magnum opus</i>, 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."</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>If it had seemed ever to Mr. Chase and his youthful contemporaries, that +they had come upon times when, as Sir Thomas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> 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 +activities, 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 right."</p> + +<p>Mr. Chase had supported General Harrison for the presidency 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 personal disappointments or +grievances to bias his course, he doubtless 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 conflagration. He found +the range of political thought and action, which either party permitted +to itself or to its rival, compressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> 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 was that no party could +maintain 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 which 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. Seward 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 way to the Republican 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 politics in twain, and took possession of the +Government by the election of its candidate, Mr. Lincoln.</p> + +<p>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 world. 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 coöperating or +following in the array and march of events, his plan, his part, his +service, were all for the cause, its prosperity, and its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> 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 plaudits 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 contemplates the promptness of his choice and +the steadfastness of his perseverance, the impulse and the action seem +to find a parallel in the life of the great Hebrew statesman, who, "<i>by +faith</i>, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of +Pharaoh's daughter," and "<i>by faith</i>, forsook Egypt, not fearing the +wrath of the king."</p> + +<p>The first half of this period of twenty years witnessed only the +preliminaries, equally brave and sagacious, of agitation, promulgation +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 Democrats, 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 +Massachusetts. 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> 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 reëlection +to the Senate. In these high stations he added public authority to his +opinions and purposes, and gained for them wider and wider influence, +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.</p> + +<p>As the presidential election approached and the Republican party took +the field with an assurance of assuming the administration of the +Federal Government, and of meeting the weighty responsibility of the new +political basis, the question of candidates absorbed the attention of +the party, and attracted the interest of the whole country. When a new +dynasty is to be enthroned, the <i>personality</i> of the ruler is an element +of the first importance. In the general judgment of the country, 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 undoubted 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 administration 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 +encourage that darling expedient of our politics, a resort to a <i>third</i> +candidate. This recourse was had, and Mr. Lincoln was nominated and +elected.</p> + +<p>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 supreme juncture of their affairs, +to be the head of the state among its tried and trusted statesmen, to +subordinate and coördinate the pride and ambition of leaders, the +passions and interests of the masses, and to guide the destinies of a +nation whose institutions were all framed for obedience to law and +per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>petual domestic peace, through rebellion, revolt, and civil war; and +to the subversion of the very order of society of a vast territory 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 temper 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 vigorous, penetrating, and capacious +intellect, and a noble, generous nature which filled his conduct of 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 rebellion, the +presence or absence of these personal traits in a ruler may make the +turning-point in the balance of its fate. Had Lincoln, in dealing with +the administration of government during the late rebellion, insisted as +George III. did, in his treatment 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 measure 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 under 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.</p> + +<p>By the arrangement of his Cabinet, and his principal appointments for +critical services, Mr. Lincoln showed at once that nature had fitted him +for a ruler, and accident only had hid his earlier life in obscurity. I +cannot hesitate to think that the presence of Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase +in the great offices of State<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> and Treasury, and their faithful +concurrence in the public service and the public repute of the +President's conduct of the Government, 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 warrant 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.</p> + +<p>The general importance, under a form of government where the confidence +of the people is the breath of the life of executive 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."</p> + +<p>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 exactions of the place knew +no limits. A people, wholly unaccustomed to the pressure of taxation, +and with an absolute horror of a national debt, was to be rapidly +subjected to the first without 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 extreme +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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> life. We may have some conception +of the magnitude of these financial operations, by considering one of +the subordinate contrivances 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 transaction, 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 intercourse 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 overwhelming 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.</p> + +<p>A somewhat persistent discrepancy of feeling and opinion between the +President and the Secretary, in regard to an important 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 organization 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> system +as he found it. He said, at the outset of his administration, 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 between these eminent men, and the mischiefs of +competing ambitions 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.</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that Mr. Chase greatly desired this office, its +dignity and durability both considered, the greatest gratification, to +personal desires, and the worthiest in public service, and in public +esteem, that our political establishment affords. Fortunate, indeed, is +he who, in the estimate of the profession of the law, and in the general +judgment of his countrymen, combines 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 permanent 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—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Like a great sea-mark, standing every flaw,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And saving them that eye it."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>In this disposition, Mr. Lincoln appointed Mr. Chase to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> vacant +seat, and the general voice recognized the great fitness of the +selection.</p> + +<p>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 incumbent, 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 determining issues for the +remote and unknown future of a great people."</p> + +<p><i>Magistratus ostendit virum</i>—the magistracy shows out the man. A great +office, by its great requirements and great opportunities, calls out and +displays the great powers and rare qualities 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.</p> + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>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 responsibilities was already +established. Great repute, as well as essen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>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 community at large.</p> + +<p>Both these preparations easily furnished the Chief-Justice with the +requisite aptitude for the three relations, of prime importance, upon +which his adequacy must finally be 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 coördinate department of the +Government.</p> + +<p>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 coöperative working of its members, will not be doubted. +For more than sixty years, at least, this court had felt this +authority—<i>potens et lenis dominatio</i>—in the presence of the two +celebrated Chief-Justices who filled out this long service. Their great +experience and great age had supported, and general conformity of +political feeling, if not opinion, on the bench, had assisted, this +relation of the Chief-Justice to the court.</p> + +<p>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 proper 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 observation, and Mr. Justice Clifford, +speaking for the court, has shown it in a most amiable light:</p> + +<p>"Throughout his judicial career he always maintained that dignity of +carriage and that calm, noble, and unostentatious presence 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."</p> + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> 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 private 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 investigation, 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 +overlooked 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 presided, as well as the larger and +widely-diffused body of lawyers who give competent and responsible study +to the reports, recognize 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.</p> + +<p>But, in the most imposing part of the jurisdiction and jurisprudence 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 +exploration, and require accurate and circumspect adjustment; in its +final arbitrament on all conflicts and encroachments by which the great +coördinate departments of the Government are to be confined to their +appropriate spheres; in that delicate and superb supremacy of judicial +reason whereby the Constitution confides<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> to the deliberations of this +court the determination, even, of the legality of legislation, and +trusts it, nevertheless, to abstain itself from law-making—in all these +transcendent functions of the tribunal the preparation and the adequacy +of the Chief-Justice were unquestioned.</p> + +<p>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 unexampled in any judicature in the world. To name these +conspicuous causes merely, without unfolding them, would carry no +impression; and time fails for any demonstrative criticism upon them.</p> + +<p>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 consideration at your +hands.</p> + +<p>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 Constitution had +assigned this high jurisdiction. Beyond the injunction that the Senate, +when sitting for the trial of impeachments, 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 distribution 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> 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, showing 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 suffrages 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 +administration of the President of the Senate—the creature, thus, of +the very court invested with the duty of trial and the power of +conviction.</p> + +<p>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 acquitted. 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 <i>judicial</i>, and not <i>political</i>. It was this sacred +interposition that stayed this plague of political resentments which, +with their less sober and intelligent populations, have thwarted so many +struggles for free government and equal institutions.</p> + +<p>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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>sonal fortunes of the +President, but upon the maintenance of its character as a trial—upon +the prevalence of law, and the supremacy 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 trying an +impeachment—is not to be doubted.</p> + +<p>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 visited 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 +character 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.</p> + +<p>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 expedients 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>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 bearings should be +thoroughly explored, and upon the same peremptory 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 Treasury, with a reluctance and repugnance which +enhanced the weight of his counsels, approved the measure, as one of +necessity 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.</p> + +<p>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 unconstitutional, as not +within the discretion of the political departments of the Government, +Congress, and the Executive, to determine this very question of the +necessity of the juncture, as justifying their enactment.</p> + +<p>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 administrative measure and in its +judicial condemnation. But soon, a new phase of the unsettled agitation +on the merits of the constitutional 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 +temporary 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, involving 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> 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 government.</p> + +<p>Confessing to a firm approval of the final disposition of the +constitutional question by the court, I concede it to be a subject 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 difficulty in discarding +all suggestions which would mix up political calculations with his +judicial action. The error of the Chief-Justice, 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 departments of the Government in that +direction, to the point of concluding that the final wisdom of this +great question—<i>inter apices juris</i>, 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 <i>law-making</i>, which, overpassed, must react to cripple, +in turn, the essential judicial power. The past, thus, was not +discredited, nor the future disabled.</p> + +<p>I have now carried your attention to the round of public service which +filled the life of Mr. Chase with activity and usefulness, and yet the +survey and the lesson are incomplete without 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 mischief, nor to attempt +to point out the escape from them, if indeed the problem be not, in +itself, too hard for solution. To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> Mr. Chase, as to all the great +leaders of opinion in the present and perhaps the last generation of our +public men, this disappointment 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.</p> + +<p>That the range and dignity of Mr. Chase's public employments 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 flood of any tide, in the restless sea of our +politics, 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 paramount considerations of absolute +supremacy, which dictated the reëlection of Mr. Lincoln, would endure no +competition of candidates in the Republican party. In 1868, when each +party seemed, in an unusual degree, free to seek and find its candidates +where it would, Mr. Chase was Chief-Justice, and no issue of the public +safety existed, which alone, in the settled convictions of this people, +would favor a political canvass by the head of the judiciary.</p> + +<p>In a just view of the office of President, as framed in the +Constitution, which he only, in the whole establishment of the +Government, is sworn "to preserve, protect, and defend," and of the +rightful demands of this people from its supreme magistracy, I am sure +most people will agree that Mr. Chase possessed 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>dent, +and his direct and constant responsibility to popular opinion, and the +full 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 political 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.</p> + +<p>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 <i>per fastigia rerum</i>, 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 government 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 undefended; through his season of stormy politics with its +"estuations 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. +"<i>Etenim, Quirites, exiguum nobis vitæ curriculum natura circumscripsit, +immensum gloriæ.</i>"</p> + +<p>If I should attempt to compare Mr. Chase, either in resemblance 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<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> 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 independence 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 preliminary agitations which prepared +the triumphant politics, it is Chase and Sumner and Hale; in the +competition for the presidency 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 homage of admiration +and of gratitude, not yet to be adjusted or weighed out to each.</p> + +<p>Just a quarter of a century before Mr. Chase left these halls of +learning, the college sent out another scholar of her discipline, 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 Pericles, who alone was called Olympian for his grandeur and his +power. He died with the turning tide from the old statesmanship 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 +consummate orator paid to the mighty fame of the great statesman?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> 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 consolidation 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.</p> + +<p>To these preparations the life-work of Webster and his associates 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 cohesions 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.</p> + +<p>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 ornament of grace; a +crown of glory shall she deliver to thee."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase, by William M. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase + Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of + Dartmouth College, at Hanover + +Author: William M. Evarts + +Release Date: September 3, 2006 [EBook #19165] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EULOGY ON CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive/American +Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + EULOGY + + ON + + CHIEF-JUSTICE CHASE, + + + DELIVERED BY + + WILLIAM M. EVARTS, + + + BEFORE THE + + ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE, AT HANOVER, JUNE 24, 1874. + + + NEW YORK: + D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, + 549 AND 551 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. + + + + +MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN, THE ALUMNI OF DARTMOUTH COLLEGE: When, not +many weeks since, the committee 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 discipline, lawyer, +orator, senator, minister, magistrate, whom living a whole nation +admired and revered, whom dead a whole nation 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 +commemoration, 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 persuasion, all anxious +solicitudes, which otherwise would have oppressed me, lest importunate +and inextricable preoccupations of time and mind should disable me from +presenting as considerable, 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 sepulture, the sobbings of sorrowing +affection, the homage of public grief, the concourse of the great +officers of state, the assemblage 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 reverence. To prolong +or renew this pious office is no part of our duty to-day. Nor is the +maturity 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 completed +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 manifestation 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 undertakings or for notable achievements, ever failed of +exercise or exhibition for want of opportunity, or, being exercised or +exhibited, 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 rendered 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 out these abilities, and to receive +these services. 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 college 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 American 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 Covenanters, but rather harmonious corroboration +of the characteristics 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 principalities 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 ascribe 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 unchecked +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 fanatics. In every stern conflict, in +every vast labor, in every intellectual 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 nationality, 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. Several 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 ignorance 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 generation! 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 +influence 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 capital, 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 Webster, 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 education, 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 instruction 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 +clerical 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 and all human affairs. +He was all his life a great student of the Scriptures, and no modern +speculations ever shook the solid reasons 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 discharging 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 essential traits of his moral and +intellectual character--in his views of life, its value, its just +objects and aims, its social, moral, and religious responsibilities; in +his views of himself, his duties, obligations, 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 controlling +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 adequate 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 apprehension of those whose +opinion or action it behooved him to influence, by methods direct and +sincere, discarding mere ingenuity, and disdaining the subtleness of +insinuation. His education had all been of a kind to discipline and +invigorate his natural 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 pursue 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 unimpaired 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 assumed 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. Whether by interposing +his strong arm to save Mr. Birney from the fury of a mob of Cincinnati +gentlemen, incensed at the freedom 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 revolt; or in his serene predominance, +during the trial of the President, over the rage of party hate which +brought into peril the cooerdination 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 admission 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 contemporaries, that +they had come upon times when, as Sir Thomas 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 +activities, 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 right." + +Mr. Chase had supported General Harrison for the presidency 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 personal disappointments or +grievances to bias his course, he doubtless 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 conflagration. He found +the range of political thought and action, which either party permitted +to itself or to its rival, compressed 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 was that no party could +maintain 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 which 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. Seward 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 way to the Republican 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 politics 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 world. 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 cooeperating or +following in the array and march of events, his plan, his part, his +service, were all for the cause, its prosperity, and its 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 plaudits 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 contemplates the promptness of his choice and +the steadfastness of his perseverance, the impulse and the action seem +to find a parallel in the life of the great Hebrew statesman, who, "_by +faith_, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of +Pharaoh'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, promulgation +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 Democrats, 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 +Massachusetts. 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 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 Senate. In these high stations he added public authority to his +opinions and purposes, and gained for them wider and wider influence, +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 administration of the +Federal Government, and of meeting the weighty responsibility of the new +political basis, the question of candidates absorbed the attention of +the party, and attracted the interest of the whole country. When a new +dynasty is to be enthroned, the _personality_ of the ruler is an element +of the first importance. In the general judgment of the country, 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 undoubted 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 administration 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 +encourage that darling expedient of our politics, a resort to a _third_ +candidate. This recourse was had, and Mr. Lincoln was nominated 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 supreme juncture of their affairs, +to be the head of the state among its tried and trusted statesmen, to +subordinate and cooerdinate the pride and ambition of leaders, the +passions and interests of the masses, and to guide the destinies of a +nation whose institutions were all framed for obedience to law and +perpetual domestic peace, through rebellion, revolt, and civil war; and +to the subversion of the very order of society of a vast territory 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 temper 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 vigorous, penetrating, and capacious +intellect, and a noble, generous nature which filled his conduct of 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 rebellion, the +presence or absence of these personal traits in a ruler may make the +turning-point in the balance of its fate. Had Lincoln, in dealing with +the administration of government during the late rebellion, insisted as +George III. did, in his treatment 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 measure 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 under 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 appointments for +critical services, Mr. Lincoln showed at once that nature had fitted him +for a ruler, and accident only had hid his earlier life in obscurity. I +cannot hesitate to think that the presence of Mr. Seward and Mr. Chase +in the great offices of State and Treasury, and their faithful +concurrence in the public service and the public repute of the +President's conduct of the Government, 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 warrant 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 executive 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 exactions of the place knew +no limits. A people, wholly unaccustomed to the pressure of taxation, +and with an absolute horror of a national debt, was to be rapidly +subjected to the first without 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 extreme +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 life. We may have some conception +of the magnitude of these financial operations, by considering one of +the subordinate contrivances 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 transaction, 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 intercourse 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 overwhelming 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 important 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 organization 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 system +as he found it. He said, at the outset of his administration, 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 between these eminent men, and the mischiefs of +competing ambitions 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 gratification, to +personal desires, and the worthiest in public service, and in public +esteem, that our political establishment affords. Fortunate, indeed, is +he who, in the estimate of the profession of the law, and in the general +judgment of his countrymen, combines 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 permanent 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 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 incumbent, 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 determining issues for the +remote and unknown future of a great people." + +_Magistratus ostendit virum_--the magistracy shows out the man. A great +office, by its great requirements and great opportunities, calls out and +displays the great powers and rare qualities 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 responsibilities was already +established. Great repute, as well as essential 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 community at large. + +Both these preparations easily furnished the Chief-Justice with the +requisite aptitude for the three relations, of prime importance, upon +which his adequacy must finally be 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 cooerdinate 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 cooeperative 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 supported, and general conformity of +political feeling, if not opinion, 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 proper 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 observation, 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 presence 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 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 private 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 investigation, 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 +overlooked 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 presided, as well as the larger and +widely-diffused body of lawyers who give competent and responsible study +to the reports, recognize 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 jurisprudence 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 +exploration, and require accurate and circumspect adjustment; in its +final arbitrament on all conflicts and encroachments by which the great +cooerdinate departments of the Government are to be confined to their +appropriate spheres; in that delicate and superb supremacy of judicial +reason whereby the Constitution confides to the deliberations of this +court the determination, even, of the legality of legislation, and +trusts it, nevertheless, to abstain itself 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 unexampled in any judicature in the world. To name these +conspicuous 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 consideration 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 Constitution had +assigned this high jurisdiction. Beyond the injunction that the Senate, +when sitting for the trial of impeachments, 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 distribution 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 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, showing 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 suffrages 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 +administration of the President of 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 acquitted. 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 resentments 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 personal fortunes of the +President, but upon the maintenance of its character as a trial--upon +the prevalence of law, and the supremacy 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 trying 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 visited 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 +character 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 expedients 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 +immeasurable 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 bearings should be +thoroughly explored, and upon the same peremptory 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 Treasury, with a reluctance and repugnance which +enhanced the weight of his counsels, approved the measure, as one of +necessity 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 unconstitutional, as not +within the discretion of the political departments 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 administrative measure and in its +judicial condemnation. But soon, a new phase of the unsettled agitation +on the merits of the constitutional 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 +temporary 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, involving 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 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 government. + +Confessing to a firm approval of the final disposition of the +constitutional question by the court, I concede it to be a subject 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 difficulty in discarding +all suggestions which would mix up political calculations with his +judicial action. The error of the Chief-Justice, 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 departments of the Government in that +direction, to the point of concluding 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 usefulness, and yet the +survey and the lesson are incomplete without 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 mischief, nor to attempt +to point out the escape from them, if indeed the problem be not, in +itself, too hard for solution. To Mr. Chase, as to all the great +leaders of opinion in the present and perhaps the last generation of our +public men, this disappointment 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 employments 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 flood of any tide, in the restless sea of our +politics, 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 paramount considerations of absolute +supremacy, which dictated the reelection of Mr. Lincoln, would endure no +competition of candidates in the Republican party. In 1868, when each +party seemed, in an unusual degree, free to seek and find its candidates +where it would, Mr. Chase was Chief-Justice, and no issue of the public +safety existed, which alone, in the settled convictions 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, in the whole establishment of the +Government, is sworn "to preserve, protect, and defend," and of the +rightful demands of this people from its supreme magistracy, I am sure +most people will agree that Mr. Chase possessed 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 President, +and his direct and constant responsibility to popular opinion, and the +full 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 political 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 rerum_, 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 government 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 undefended; through his season of stormy politics with its +"estuations 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, exiguum nobis vitae curriculum natura circumscripsit, +immensum gloriae._" + +If I should attempt to compare Mr. Chase, either in resemblance 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 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 independence 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 preliminary agitations which prepared +the triumphant politics, it is Chase and Sumner and Hale; in the +competition for the presidency 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 homage 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 discipline, 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 Pericles, who alone was called Olympian for his grandeur and his +power. He died with the turning tide from the old statesmanship 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 +consummate orator paid to the mighty fame of the great statesman? 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 consolidation 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 associates 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 cohesions 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 ornament of grace; a +crown of glory shall she deliver to thee." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase, by William M. 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