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Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873)


As a lawyer and antislavery leader in Ohio, Salmon P. Chase was known as the “attorney general” for runaway slaves. In 1855 he cast his lot with the new Republican party and soon vied with William Henry Seward for its leadership. A candidate for the party’s presidential nomination in 1860, he lost to Lincoln but was named secretary of the treasury in the new cabinet.

Although Chase helped to write the Emancipation Proclamation, his relations with Lincoln became strained. The personal antagonism between him and Secretary of State William Seward weakened the cabinet, and that, combined with Chase's insatiable desire to become President, eventually led to his replacement. In 1864 Lincoln appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court, where he showed political wisdom in handling constitutional problems created by the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Francis B. Carpenter painted this portrait when Chase was in Lincoln’s cabinet. Carpenter, who was active in Washington during the 1860s, painted other members of Lincoln's administration as well as the President himself.


Francis Bicknell Carpenter (1830–1900)
Oil on canvas, 1861
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Gift of David Rockefeller

 

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