CHIEF JUSTICE SALMON P. CHASE - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 09/18/1869 - HFSID 46909

SALMON P. CHASE. ALS: "S P Chase", 2p, 5x8. Washington, 1869 September 18. To W. Prescott Smith, Esq. In full: "A week ago, coming from New York I & my daughter took seats in your compartment car, & paid our two dollars with much satisfaction. We left the train near Philadelphia, Mr Gatzman having kindly ordered that it should be stopped, and we let off near [illegible] Cooke's residence, with whom we spent some pleasant days. Today we took the car at Philadelphia bound for Washington. At Baltimore the car we were in was left and we went into the next, & finding no seat unoccupied, passed on to the next, which happened to be the compartment car from New York, & finding seats vacant, took them. The conductor acting as he said under your direction (the same who took our two dollars last Saturday) required the extra payment again. The money is nothing, but it seemed to me like carrying matters rather far to require this payment from passengers obliged to leave the car in which they were seated, & only availing themselves of vacant seats for the C.C. fast train to Washington, all which was known to the conductor, as he himself may so cite and only acting under his instructions. I think you should know the circumstance. This note needs no answer." Chase represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate as a Free-Soil Democrat from 1849-1855, when he was elected Governor of Ohio as a Free Soil Democrat in 1855. He was reelected as a Republican in 1857. Chase returned to the Senate on March 4, 1861, but resigned two days later to become President Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury. During his term in the Treasury Department, Chase and Lincoln frequently disagreed, and Chase regularly offered to resign. In February 1864, a group of radical Republicans proposed Chase for President. Chase did nothing to stop the movement. At the June 7-8, 1864 convention, Lincoln was nominated on the first ballot. After another quarrel with the President three weeks later, Chase once again submitted his resignation. To his surprise, on June 30, 1864, Lincoln accepted it. In another surprise move, President Lincoln appointed Chase Chief Justice on December 6, 1864. In that position, which he occupied until his death in 1873, Chase was dedicated to the rights of Black Americans and supported the Reconstruction Acts. In 1868, his impartial conduct of President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial angered his Radical Republican friends. Some Democrats suggested Chase as their 1868 presidential candidate, to no avail.