Chase, Salmon Portland

Chase, Salmon Portland (1808–73) statesman, antislavery leader, and chief justice of the United States, born in Cornish, New Hampshire. A founder of the Republican party, Chase was a four-time presidential candidate, a U.S. senator (1849–55, 1860–1), and governor of Ohio (1855–61). Chase advocated freed slaves' use as soldiers, access to land, and right to vote. As Abraham Lincoln's secretary of the Treasury (1861–64), Chase was responsible for financing a war of unprecedented scale. During his tenure he introduced paper money, established a national banking system, and regulated trade between the Union and the Confederacy. Appointed chief justice by Lincoln (1864–73), Chase supported universal male suffrage and opposed military government in the South.

In 1837 he became interested in the antislavery movement after defending in court the freedom of Matilda, whose master had brought her to Ohio. Chase maintained that slavery depended on local law for its enforcement because the framers of the Constitution had sought not to support it at the national level. On the basis of this analysis, he argued that no law outside of a slave state could support the enslavement of an individual; that is, that once a person had entered free territory, as Matilda had, that person reverted to his or her natural state of freedom. Because of his commitment to the legal defense of slaves, he became known as the “attorney general for fugitive slaves.”