heartrending and desperate character. One of the most noted of these was the Van Zandt case, in which an honest and well-meaning farmer who had succored nine fugitive slaves was concerned. The fugitives were sought to be wrested from the custody of Van Zandt by two volunteer ruffians who did not pretend to have any authority of law. In the legal fracas which followed, Chase became involved as counsel for the defendant, Van Zandt. The case went from court to court, and finally was appealed to the United States Supreme Court, where Chase appeared before the tribunal of last resort associated with William H. Seward. Chase's argument before the United States Supreme Court has passed into history as one of the boldest and most powerful pleas for human liberty under the Constitution of the United States ever made by any lawyer. Of Mr. Seward's assistance in this matter Chase wrote: "I regard him as one of the very first public men of our country. Who but himself would have done what he did for the poor wretch Freeman? His course in the Van Zandt case has been generous and noble, but his action in the Freeman case, considering his own personal position and the circumstances, was magnanimous in the highest degree!" Chase at this time was known as the "Attorney-General for negroes;" but when he had occasion to go into the slave-holding ground of Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati, as he often did, he was invariably treated with marked respect and cordiality. Even the slave-holders paid tribute to his inflexible sense of justice and his dignified resolution to do what he conceived to be his whole duty by his fellow-men. The Liberty party, in 1845, began to show its head. The call for its first convention in Ohio was written by Salmon P. Chase and bore his signature among others. He had generally been identified with the Democratic party, and in later years, although his continuance with that party was neither intimate nor long, men were accustomed to refer to him as having been early affiliated with the Democracy. In an address made in February, 1845, he said: "True democracy makes no inquiry about the color of the skin or the place of nativity, or any similar circumstance or condition. Wherever it sees a man it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original unalienable rights. In communities of men it recognizes no distinctions founded on mere arbitrary will. I regard, therefore, the exclusion of the colored people as a body from the elective franchise as incompatible with true democratic principles." This utterance in later years returned to plague the speaker; but to his everlasting honor be it said, he never for an instant deviated from the fundamental principle here laid down. Ohio Democrats were earlier impregnated with the idea that human slavery was wrong and must pass away than were their brethren in some of the Middle and Eastern States. It was comparatively easy, therefore, in 1849, to form a coalition by which Salmon P. Chase should be elected to the United States Senate. As in Sumner's case in Massachusetts, later on, it was a coalition of Free-Soilers and Democrats against the Hunkers and Whigs. Mr. Chase declared his intention to act with the Independent Democrats in all State issues so long as they stood by the principles which were the basis of the coalition. It may be said here that he was twice elected for Governor and twice for Senator, and one of the important results of the upheaval which had made his election possible was a repeal of the infamous Black Laws of the State. These laws required colored people to give bonds for good behavior as a condition of residence in the State, excluded them from the schools, denied them the right of testifying in the courts when a white man was party on either side, and subjected them to various other unjust and degrading disabilities. With one exception (the right to sit on juries) these laws were swept from the statute-book. In the Senate, into which Chase now made his entry, the contest was over the proposition to open to slavery the whole of the vast territory acquired by the annexation of Texas, the Gadsden purchase, and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The people of California had already framed a form of government for themselves, excluding slavery, and now awaited Federal action. It is not necessary now to dwell upon the long debate that ensued, but it must be said that Senator Chase's arguments, when he ventured into the discussion, at once commanded attention and respect. greatly extended. His remarks were never They were always concise and to the point. For example, when Daniel Webster proposed that physical law excluded slavery from a portion of the new territory, Senator Chase asked: "Is it true that any law of physical geography will protect the new Territories from the curse of slavery? Peonism was there under the Mexican law, and if peonism were not there to warn us, what may be expected if slavery be not prohibited?" In the debate over the Fugitive Slave law, he pleaded earnestly for some amelioration of the iron statute which the slaveholders insisted upon forcing upon the country. The right of trial by jury, he urged, ought at least to be embodied into the law. "If the most ordinary controversy," he said, "involving a contested claim to $20, must be decided by a jury, surely a controversy which involves the right of a man to his liberty should have a similar trial." The repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill was another. opportunity which Chase readily embraced to disclose his immovable position on the general subject of human rights. He pleaded only that the people of the Territories, acting through their proper representatives in the Territorial Legislature and subject to the limitations of the Constitution, should be able to protect themselves against slavery by prohibiting it. This principle was steadfastly denied by the proslavery Senators. When the battle was won for |