SALMON P. CHASE¹Salmon Portland Chase (1808–73) served as a U.S. senator, cabinet officer, and chief justice of the US. Supreme Court. He taught school briefly in Washington, D.C., before settling in Cincinnati and beginning a legal career. There, he defended a number of fugitive slaves and acted as legal counsel for abolitionist James G. Birney. Initially a Whig, Chase joined the Liberty party in 1840, and presided at the Buffalo Convention of the Free Soil party in 1848. A coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats in the Ohio legislature sent Chase to the US. Senate in 1849, where he remained until 1854. He strongly opposed the Compromise of 1850 and favored restriction of slavery by federal law. In the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Chase joined the Republican party and won the govemorship of Ohio in 1855. After resuming his US. Senate seat in 1861, he resigned to become Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the Treasury. Closely aligned with radical Republicans in Congress, Chase became the focus of opposition to Lincoln within the Republican party. Although he resigned from his cabinet post and challenged Lincoln for the 1864 presidential nomination, the latter appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court. Throughout his political career, Chase was a strong proponent of black suffrage and the radical program of Reconstruction. Chase sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1868, but attracted little support. Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P. Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, Ohio, 1987); James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970), 116–18, 153m54; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 90; Reinhard H. Luthin, “Salmon P. Chase’s Political Career before the Civil War,” MVHR, 29:517–40 (March 1943); DAB, 4:27–34. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Washington, [D.C.] 4 May 1850.

DGLS,

I enclose my mite, which was carelessly omitted from my last.²Salmon P. Chase’s previous letter to Douglass has not been located.

I should be glad to learn your views as to the probable destiny of the Africo-American race in this country.³Because Chase was unfamiliar with the editorials concerning colonization that Douglass wrote in the 16 November 1849 issue of the North Star, Douglass sent Chase copies of them. Salmon P. Chase, The Salmon P. Chase Papers, ed. John Niven, 5 vols. (Kent, Ohio, 1993–98), 2:296–97. My own opinion has been that the Black & White Races, formed adapted to different latitudes & countries by the influences of climate and other circumstances, operating through many generations, to different latitudes, would never have been mingled brought together in one community, except under the constraint of powerful of force, such as that of slavery.⁴Although Chase opposed slavery, he did not believe that the races could live together peacefully. Therefore, he supported colonization as early as the 1830s. He also opposed the extension of slavery into the new western territories because such a plan would only perpetuate the coexistence of the races. Nevertheless, in 1848 and 1849 Chase fought for the repeal of Ohio’s Black Laws. Blue, Salmon P. Chase, 28–29, 79–82; Chase, Chase Papers, 2:216, 234, 261. I have regarded, therefore, the coexistence of the two races in the United States latitudes within the degrees of latitude which mark the southern & northern limits of the United States, as coerced, &, therefore, not likely or permanent, or to endure for a much longer period, than the coercing force, namely slavery. While, therefore, I have been utterly opposed to any unjust discrimination in legislation against the our colored people population, and have uniformly maintained the equal rights of all men to life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness,⁵Three of the unalienable rights recognized in the Declaration of Independence as bestowed on all men are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. and to all the securities against the [illegible] of either, I have, always, looked forward to the separation of the races, as a result likely to be brought about by the operation of natural causes, whenever those causes should be left free to operate, by the removal of Slavery. I have thought it not unlikely that a large emigration the Islands of the West Indies & the northern portions of South America would be peopled from the United States by the Black Race,⁶One of the proposals for the voluntary emigration of African Americans suggested that the United States arrange passage, and provide homesteads and financial aid for farms and businesses, to attract African Americans to the West Indies and Latin America. Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 268–70.—that, by them, civilization would be carried back into Africa, not under the constraints of any colonization system, but by their own of choice & by & with free will. At the present moment it seems to me that the British West Indies offer a most inviting field for colored enterprize. Jamaica, with her cheap & fertile soil, cheap lands, and delicious climate, offers is especially attractive.

I shall be glad to learn your views on this on question subject pleased to know what you think of these matters as they have which have doubtless attracted your attention.

Yrs

S. P. CHASE