for Salmon Chase

Kathleen Diffley, University of Iowa

Abstract

In the decade before the Civil War began, Salmon Portland Chase was instrumental in accelerating sectional tensions and driving the North and the South apart. When Stephen A. Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854 and thereby tied the fate of slavery in the territories to the vote of local residents, Chase was among the first to rouse the free North, to capitalize on fear of the Slave Power, and to prompt the formation of the Republican Party in a broadening antislavery campaign. Born in Hardscrabble, New Hampshire in 1808, Chase had been reared in Ohio where he eventually practiced law, increasingly on behalf of fugitive slaves. During the 1840s, he was active in the Liberty and Free Soil parties; it was Chase who crafted the Constitutional argument for containing slavery by declaring "freedom national, slavery sectional" to be the nation's founding policy. Elected to the Senate in 1849, he went on to serve Ohio as governor for two terms before being reelected to the Senate in 1860. On the eve of civil war, he wanted to be President.

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Iowa Journal of Communication

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Recommended Citation

Diffley, Kathleen (1993) "for Salmon Chase," Iowa Journal of Communication: Vol. 25: No. 3, Article 21.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ijc/vol25/iss3/21

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