less." Chase's nomination was sent in to the Senate December 6th, in a message written in Lin

coln's own hand. His confirmation was immediate, and in the noble place of Chief Justice the ex-Secretary, ex-Governor, and ex-Senator filled the highest expectations of his friends and

covered his enemies with confusion. He presided over the deliberations of the Senate, as required by law, when that body sat as a High Court of Impeachment, listening to the charges preferred by the House in the matter of Andrew Johnson's alleged illegal proceeding in the attempt to remove Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. In the midst of the excitements and factional heats that circled about the Capitol, only one man seemed immovable, calm, and unimpressible. That was the Chief Justice, who in imperturbable dignity presided over the High Court. To his wisdom, his calmness, and ju dicial firmness that now historical tribunal owes its highest claim to the respect and gratitude of our people.

As Chief Justice, Chase's labors were arduous and excessive. He had borne a tremendous strain while he held the office of Secretary of the Treasury, during the most trying period of American history. He came to the duties of the Supreme Bench with a consciousness that his later activities had unfitted him for a judicial post, but no one could ever see that he lacked any of the qualities requisite for his duties. He overcame any obstacles that he might himself have seen by dint of the severest labor, and by studies the extent of which probably not even the members of his family fully realized. He was a good judge, an honest jurist, and a stern, severe patriot.

Undoubtedly the heavy tax upon his physical strength, great though that strength was, hast

ened the catastrophe in which his powers were finally involved in ruin. After one or two warnings in the form of slighter shocks, he was finally laid on the bed of sickness by a severe stroke of paralysis, from which he never recovered; and he died on the 7th of May, 1873, having passed the age of seventy years.

Chase's character was grave, serious, serene. He had little or no sense of humor, and, as his biographers have said, never told a story but to spoil it. He took life seriously and with a certain severity of conscientiousness which to many seemed excessive Puritanism. He was methodical, systematic, a rigid disciplinarian, punctilious in regard to all the forms of official and social intercourse, and he exacted of every subordinate the same loyalty to duty and the same exactness of statement which he himself rendered as a matter of conscience and of habit. His personal appearance was majestic and noble. His commanding figure, six feet two inches high, was admirably proportioned. His head was massive; his face wore an impress of dignity which was sometimes awful. He lacked the magnetism of Henry Clay and the godlike majesty of Daniel Webster; but none who ever saw his towering form moving through the corridors of the Treasury Department, or clad in the robes of the Chief Justice, can ever forget the almost oracular appearance which inspired the veneration and respect of those who looked upon his figure or heard the slow, calm utterances of his voice. He was respected, even venerated,

but he was never "popular" in the sense with which Americans use that word. His friends were devoted to his fortunes, but they were not reckoned as Clay and Webster reckoned theirs -by hosts. His tastes were simple, his habits domestic, and his private and public character stainless.

Demarest Lloyd, in an admirable sketch of Chase, printed in the Atlantic Monthly soon after the death of the Chief Justice, says: "His will was his great power. This faculty in him probably more than any other contributed to his success. It was dominating and indomitable. It yielded to no man and to no force. Its persistency was measured only by the length of the task to be accomplished, and its firmness increased with the weight of interests that depended upon it; and while it no doubt shortened his life, it again prolonged it. . . . All through these exciting and arduous periods he held himself firmly to his post. Then came the first shock that prostrated him, and first set the term beyond which he could hardly endure; at this the will turned to repair its own ravages." Of Salmon P. Chase it may be truly said that his whole life was formed upon the moral inculcated in his earliest youth—"Where there is a will there is a way."

VII.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

It is difficult to see how anyone who believes in God and in His watchful interest in the affairs of nations and individuals, can study the story of Abraham Lincoln and not be impressed with the idea that here was a man divinely appointed and trained for a certain work. In the earlier chapters of this book we have seen how persistently the political power of slavery in the United States asserted itself. Good and patriotic men on both sides of the question had tried to put aside slavery and all that hung on that institution, so that it should no longer appear in public affairs. Again and again they had, as they fondly thought, buried the whole matter so completely out of sight that it never would be heard of again; but, like an uneasy ghost, it continually came stalking in where it was neither expected nor desired. This could not be otherwise, in the very nature of things. Slavery was restless and aggressive. It could not be confined to the States in which it had existed for so many years unquestioned. It was not the fault of the slave-holding States that human bondage was first made lawful within their borders; and now that it was there, it could not be got rid of.