The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1859-04-27
From the Mt Vernon Natiosai.
BIOGRAPHY OF A DEMA0oeUE.
SALMON PORTLAND CHASE.

Prominent among the names of those thrown
to the surface by the Slavery agitation in this
country, is that which heads this article
The prominence of Mr.. Chase in the politics
of Ohio seems to require atour hands as faith
full journalists, a short review of his career.
A Yankee by birth, he was ffty-one years
old on the 18th of January last. He came to
Ohio an adventurer in the law from the East,
settled in Cincinnati in the year 1880, and was
soon after his arrival there retained by the Uni
ted States Bank and one of the City Banks in
Cincinnati, as their attorney. It was at the
time of the contest between the Bank and the
Governmentof the United States,-Biddle and
his Hank on one side, jackson and the people
on the other. The Bank with its long array
OF Stockholders and Stockholders, both Brit
ish and American,-its pensioned orators and
politicians, and bank-bought attorneys on the
one side, and on the other the governmentw.th
its millions of freemen, who asked no favors
and demanded onlythat they might be protect
ed in the honest wages of their toll against the
rebberies of the Banks. Among this horde of
Bank knaves making war upon old Hickory at
that time we find this promising, ambitious
young man, but no sooner did. the people
triumph, than Chase deserted his old client and
former associates and became an ultra hard
money man, making speeches and writing arti-
cles against all banks, State and National
AAAo wac AhS hicC ItlOn u II pTlDClDleS ne
professed and associates with whom he had
acted. Subsequently We find him attaching
himself to every party that would tolerate him,
and then betraying them.
In 1887, we find him defending James G..
Birney, indicted for his underground railroad
operations, and denouncing as unconstitutional
the fugitive law passed by the first Congress
assembled under the Constitution, and approved
and signed by Washington himself.
" 1929 NO al H. -. 81 -
in organizing the old Abolition Liberty party.
In 1910, we find him abandoning Birney
and the Liberty organization, becoming a regu-
lar hard cider brawler and supporting .Tippe-
canoe and Tyler too without a why or where
fore. For a year or two he supported the Slave
holder Tyler and his administration, when he
suddenly disappeared and next turned up as
an active member of the National Liberty Cor
vention which assembled in the year lS43 in
Buffalo and passed resolutions of the Garrison
order, one of which declared their purpose to
regard and treat the third clause of the Con-
whenever applied to the case of a
slave, as utterly null and void, and
consequently as forming no part of the Consti-
tuition of the United States whenever we are
called upon or sworn to support it."
We next find this restless renegade project
ing a Western Sectional Convention, to meet in
Ci%nciDnst Some six or eight hundred disun-
ALoi Hon oeleSates under the
'all in June, 1915, and Mr.. Chase as Chairman
If the Committee, prepared an address which
vas adopted, denouncing both the old parties
Wing and Democratic, as too national in their
and policy-too much welded to the
of our country, and concluded by
recommending a separate organization, having
10 bond of union but war upon our Southern
He next appeared in 184S as the President
# the National Convention which assembled
n Buffalo, and nominated Van Buren, whom
lie had so bitterly denounced as a dough-face a
ew years before, in the great log cabin cam
We next find him in the lobby of the Ohio
legislature, a conspirator to cheat the people
fire State out of a fair representation of their
rs in the Tn ted States Sena . and to eff. at
his he formed a partnership with one John G..
,reslin.