by Walter Stahr
A brief progress report on my biography of Salmon Chase.
I have now completed thirteen chapters, about 113,000 words.
I just finished 1859, so I have only a few years left, until his death in 1873.
But the next few years, the Civil War, were busy ones, so those chapters will be longer than the chapters so far.
I estimate that I will finish the book more or less when it is due at the publisher, by this time next year.
Which means that the book will probably be in bookstores by the end of 2021.
by Walter Stahr
It is hard to remember, but the Republican Party, back in the days of Lincoln and Chase, was IN FAVOR of immigration. Not every Republican; there were anti-immigrants, former Know Nothings, who wanted to limit immigration, or deny voting rights to those who had recently become citizens. But not my man Chase; he often talked about the contributions of immigrants.
I am reading this morning a great little speech which Chase gave in August 1859, at the laying of the cornerstone of the Pilgrim Monument in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Chase of course praised the Pilgrims, and he talked about Ohio as the child of New England, founded by men and women who left New England not long after the American Revolution. Here is a long quote:
by Walter Stahr
I am just back from a few days of research at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.
My main purpose in going was to look at newspapers from Illinois from October 1854 and October 1858. In both of those months, Chase campaigned for Republicans in Illinois. 1854 was the anti-Nebraska election, when the North rose up in outrage over the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and elected new members of Congress who called themselves anti-Nebraska or Fusion or in some cases Republican. The Republican party grew out of that election. 1858 was the great Lincoln-Douglas election, in which the Republican Abraham Lincoln challenged the Democrat Stephen Douglas and debated Douglas seven times around the state.
by Walter Stahr
I am speaking next Tuesday to the LA Civil War Roundtable about William Henry Seward. As I wrote the speech, I revisited the question of “Seward’s Folly.” In the book, which I published seven years ago, I said that although there were some critics of the Alaska purchase in 1867, none of them used the phrase “Seward’s folly.” In other words, I argued that it was a myth that that phrase was pinned to the purchase of Alaska from day one, that that phrase was created later.
by Walter Stahr
As I write the Chase biography, I continue research, and interesting details emerge. I am working today on the chapter about 1856. I knew that Chase had dinner with Francis Blair and others in Washington on December 29, 1855, and I knew that Chase gave his inaugural address as governor in Columbus on January 14, 1856. But where was he in between? Did he hasten home to Columbus to get ready to become governor? Or did he remain in Washington, perhaps having quiet conversations about the Republican presidential nomination?
by Walter Stahr
Many claim that, when he became secretary of the treasury, Chase did not know much about banks and banking. This is not true.
From 1832 through 1843, Chase served as the solicitor in Cincinnati for the Second Bank of the United States. At the outset of this period, the Bank was the largest financial institution in the United States; by the end of this time, after Andrew Jackson refused to renew the Bank’s federal charter, and pulled the federal deposits out of the Bank, the Bank was in liquidation. Most of Chase’s work for the Second Bank was collecting debts, or reviewing files to determine whether the Bank could collect on a particular debt.
by Walter Stahr
In a prior post I quoted from the Liberty Man’s Creed, first published by Chase in 1844. In this post I want to put up the whole document, because I find it so interesting, and because it has not been mentioned in prior biographies.
Here it is, from the Cincinnati Weekly Herald and Philanthropist of September 11, 1844:
I believe all men created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I believe that every laborer is entitled to fair wages for honest work.
by Walter Stahr
Anyone who has read any of my books knows that I believe in quoting the subject. If you want to know about William Henry Seward, the best sources are Seward’s letters and speeches and memoirs. One must also find material about Seward, of course, to provide third-party perspective. But in my view a biography should allow the reader to hear the subject not just the biographer.
by Walter Stahr
My grandmother, Dudley Casteel Thompson Stahr, 1902-1986, was married twice, first in 1922 to Clarence Thompson, 1900-1925, and then in 1930 to my grandfather, Roland Stahr, 1901-1969. I knew vaguely that my grandmother had been “married before her marriage” but did not know much about Clarence Thompson until the past few days.
by Walter Stahr
My family is donating its family papers to Chapman University. These are not just papers of my mother, my father and myself. They are papers of my grandparents: Burgess Dempster, Nell McBroom Dempster, Roland Stahr, and Dudley Casteel Stahr. And they are in some cases papers of my great-grandparents, including my namesake Walter Casteel and my adoptive great-grandfather George Edwin Rogers. There are some letters from others in the Rogers family, notably his father, George E. Rogers, born about 1853 and died about 1936. And there are letters from many many others: friends, family, in some cases total strangers.