1 Fall 1993 Number 1 a Symposium on Salmon P
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NORTHERN KENTUCKY LAW REVIEW Volume 21 Fall 1993 Number 1 A Symposium on Salmon P. Chase and the Chase Court: Perspectives in Law and History ARTICLES From Right to Left: The Political Conversion of Salmon P. Chase ........................................................................................ F rederick J. Blue 1 Salmon Portland Chase: Reluctant Antislavery Reformer: Comment on Frederick Blue's From Right to Left ............... Stephen Middleton 23 Commentary on Presentation by Professor Frederick J. Blue on Chase and the Antislavery Movement ..................... W. Frank Steely 33 Reconstructing the Constitutional Jurisprudence of Salmon P. Chase .............................................................................. G. Edward W hite 41 Deep-Conviction Jurisprudence and Texas v. White: A Comment on G. Edward White's Historicist Interpretation of Chief Justice Chase ...................................................................................... Herm an Belz 117 Salmon P. Chase as Jurist and Politician: Comment on G. Edward White, Reconstructing Chase's Jurisprudence....................................... .................................................................................. M ichael Les Benedict 133 The Chase Court and Fundamental Rights: A Watershed in Amer- ican Constitutionalism ....................................... Robert J. Kaczorowski 151 Comment on Robert Kaczorowski's Paper, The Chase Court and FundamentalRights .................................................. Harold M. Hyman 193 A Comment on the Chase Court and Fundamental Rights .................................................................................... Lowell F . Schechter 203 An Uneasy Partnership: The Political Relationship Between Salmon Chase and Abraham Lincoln ........................................ Susan J. Court 215 Salmon P. Chase and the Great Lincoln Biographers ................................................................................ R oger D . Billings, Jr. 225 NOTE Personal Policy and Judicial Reasoning: Salmon P. Chase and Hepburn v. Griswold ....................................................... James A. Dietz 235 Salmon Portland Chase ARTICLES FROM RIGHT TO LEFT: THE POLITICAL CONVERSION OF SALMON P. CHASE by Frederick J. Blue* The conversion experience was common in nineteenth-century American politics, perhaps as much so as the more familiar religious conversions of the age. In part, this was because the boundaries between parties were not rigid and candidates and voters moved frequently from one organization or ideology to another. Such a phenomenon was not unique to the nineteenth century, and those familiar with the history of the 1950s and 1960s are well aware of the change seen in Lyndon Johnson as he moved from a segregationist Texas senator to a civil rights- oriented president. While we might debate the motivation of this dramatic switch, it remains a classic conversion. Students of nineteenth-century America will cite the equally stunning political reversals of John C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster which occurred in opposite directions and almost simultaneously in the decade after the War of 1812. Calhoun was a nationalist and supporter of strong central government into the early 1820s; by the end of the decade he became the classic states' rights advocate as he formulated his nullification theory as a means to protect slavery. Webster began his political career as a defender of New Hamp- shire shipping interests and thus an opponent of protective tariffs and other strong central government measures. By the mid-1820s, however, he represented Massachusetts textile manufacturers and became the leading advocate of, high tariffs and central government in general. For Johnson, Calhoun, and Webster, political expediency as well as principle played some role in their conversions. In each case there was a price paid in moving to the new stance; both psychic and political wounds resulted from pulling away from old * Professor of History, Youngstown State University. 2 NORTHERN KENTUCKY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 21:1 constituencies and positions. Each assumed a new identity in the process and acquired a new family of political supporters. Each gave the public signals of the change as it was occurring. Each strongly defended the newly-held stance with the same vehe- mence as the one he deserted. Each of the three was already well-established in his political career before the reversal was complete- Johnson as president and Calhoun and Webster as vice president and senator, respectively. In the case of our subject today, Salmon P. Chase, the transformation came much earlier in his political life, but it was equally traumatic. Chase also paid a price and revealed his conversion with tell-tale signals as it was happening. For him the change was from right to left-from a conservative Whig attorney to a defender of fugitive slaves and member of a despised third party dedicated to the eradication of slavery. For him, like Johnson, Calhoun, and Webster, it was a difficult path filled with setbacks and accomplishments, as well as expediency and stern principle. Nothing in the early life of Salmon P. Chase suggested a career of antislavery leadership and later prominence among Republi- cans championing the cause of racial equality. Born in rural New Hampshire in 1808, Chase experienced little in his first twenty- five years to indicate he would live a life other than one in the schoolroom or before the bar. His father farmed the rock-strewn New England soil and dabbled in local Federalist politics. With the elder Chase's premature death in 1817, young Salmon was raised for a time by his authoritarian uncle, the aristocratic Episcopal Bishop of Ohio, Philander Chase. Returning to New Hampshire after four years in Ohio, Chase enrolled at Dartmouth College while teaching school in a small nearby town. Graduating from college at eighteen, he moved first to Washington, D.C. There he opened his Select Classical School for young boys, determined to earn enough money to pursue his chosen career as an attorney.1 A protege of Attorney General William Wirt, Chase found his already conservative views reinforced by his mentor, who became his model as both lawyer and politician. In 1829, when the attorney general left Washington following the election of An- 1. For a description of Chase's early years, see FREDERICK J. BLUE, SALMON P. CHASE: A LIFE IN POLITICS 1-13 (1987). 1993] FROM RIGHT TO LEFT drew Jackson, Chase was forced to ponder his own uncertain future. To a budding aristocrat, the Jacksonians represented all that was wrong with society-an unwelcome intrusion of the lower classes on his previously secure world. Wrote Chase: "A more savage spirit breathes" in the Jackson administration, for a new "purse proud vulgar" crowd had replaced the "pure and gentle and refined and cultivated circle" of William Wirt.2 As Chase prepared to leave Washington to seek his fortune in Cincinnati in 1830, his elitism and pompous nature, along with a degree of smugness- characteristics which later associates would find so disconcerting- were already revealing themselves. Nor did his early years in Cincinnati give any hint of the political conversion to come. As a rising young attorney, he held true to his Whiggish politics and espoused traditional causes even as he struggled to secure clients. He became active in the temperance crusade and in religious affairs, both within and outside his Episcopal church. Highly ambitious and hard-working, he wanted so to make his mark that he even considered changing his own name to fit more closely with the conservative goals he sought. He explained only half-jokingly that he had been thinking about changing "my awkward fishy" first name, as well as the spelling of his last name, "so as to disconnect us from the world a little more than we are." The new names he considered were "Spencer De Cheyce or Spencer Payne Cheyce"! As Chase told Alexis de Tocqueville during his visit to Cincin- nati in 1831, universal suffrage had led to the election of some highly unqualified city and state officials. In Chase's view, the evils resulting from the ascendancy of the Jacksonians in Wash- ington might spread to Ohio politics as well. Only by maintaining strict property qualifications for voting and office-holding rights could such dangers be avoided.' Chase's conservative tendencies thus remained as strong as they had ever been. Various factors pointed toward a career as a traditional Whig attorney, including marriage in 1834 to the daughter of a prominent Cincinnati family, 2. Salmon P. Chase, Diary (Jan. 10, Apr. 14, 1829), in CHASE PAPERS, Library of Congress [hereinafter LC]. 3. Letter from Salmon P. Chase to Charles D. Cleveland (Feb. 9, 1830), in CHASE PAPERS, LC. 4. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, JOURNEY TO AMERICA 84-86 (J.P. Mayer ed. & George Lawrence trans., Doubleday & Co. 1971) (1959). 4 NORTHERN KENTUCKY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 21:1 a developing legal practice which included being named solicitor of the Cincinnati branch of the Bank of the United States, and friendship with Nicholas Longworth, one of the wealthiest and most influential businessmen in the city. Yet there were also some early signs of a growing interest by Chase in the slavery controversy and a vague awareness of the plight of black Americans. Before coming to Cincinnati, he had shown a passing concern for abolition in the District of Columbia. In 1831, he had expressed admiration for the role of Henry Brougham in the English abolition movement.5