The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1864-07-01
iREsIGNAT1oN OF GOVERNOR CHASE.

From the Tribune t.'"
Salmon P. Chase has resigned the post OF
Secretary of the Treasury. If the event shall
prove that the country can dispense with his
services as easily as he can dispense with office
we shall heartily rejoice.
Mr.. Chase is one of the very few great men
left in public life since the almost simultaneous
decease of Messrs. Clay, Webster, and Calhoun.
He has been deemed ambitious; but there was
never a day when he would not gladly have re-
nounced all prospect or hope of power or distinc-
tion If he might thereby have rendered ours truly
and without exception land of Liberty.
To secure equal rights, equal opportunities,
and impartial justice to the humblest and most
despised, as well as to the proudest and most
envied Of our race such is his idea Of the chief
end of statesmanship, such his conception of the
purpose and destiny of Christian republic. And
no man blesses God more profoundly than he
that, through CONFUSION and peril through suf-
feriDg and sacrifice that end is being approached,
that conception is about 20 be realized, by our
country.
Mr.. Chase was among the foremost of our emf
nent men to take the ground of incorporating
hostility TO slavery the bane and the peril OF
the American Republic. He participated In the
call and the organization in lS4l, OF the "Iliberty
party in Ohio, having long before ably mail-
tanned as q lawyer the proposition that the Fugi-
tive Slave act of 1913 was unconstitutional and
void.
He presided over the Free Soil National Con-
vention at Buffalo, In lS4S, which nominated
Martin Van Buren for President, and Charles
Francis Adams for Vice. President. Elected in
l649 United States Senator, through coalition
Of Democrats and Abolltionists, he opposed the
slave power throughout his term, especially in its
Nebraska Kansas policy, and refusing to support
Pierce and king, because of their pro slavery
platform, he was supplanted in 1854 by George
y. Pugh.
pa 80 ,b.-o,,ro,, .Ioo,aa o,,a -. .,....a =, -.
ernor Of Ohio by the Republicans, and had just
entered upon new term of six years as United
States Senator, when he was required and most
reluctantly consented to accept the Secretaryshp
OF the Treasury on the accession of Mr.. Lincoln
20 the Presidency. Since then, his career is
part Of our national history.
Mr.. Chase has acted from the first on pro-
found conviction that the Sayehoders' Rebel
lion required for It's suppression greater sacri es
and more self-forgetting devotion on the part
of the loyal States and people than were generally
anticipated-more than many Of them seemed
willing TO accord. His personal enemies assert
that he was willing, in 1851, 10 let the Seeding
Cotton States go in peace II they would but await
the indispensable assembling of a convention;
and he has never deigned to contradict them.
But, from the wanton Inauguration of civil war
BY the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sum-
yer, Mr.. Chase has been one of the most streuu-
Gus upholders of the national integrity, and was
one Of the earliest to perceive and to proclaim
That the Rebellion could be most readily and
vitality assaied through lis melting cause
slaveryi and this conviction has never wayered
itOr an instant.
Believing that taxation should be promptly
and largely increased, and that the entire paper
currency Of the country shonld be directly and
Ayowedly based on the national credit, he neces-
sarily came into collision with members who
Feared that TO vote for heavy taxes would defeat
their own reelection, and bankers who could not
see the beauty OF being required to redeem their
notes In order that they should give place 10 a
currency based on the faith and credit OF the
nation
Required TO provide several hundreds of mill
lions OF dollars annually, In addition 10 the
accruing revenue, constantly pressed by the me-
-cessity OF providing the ever-inereasing amounts
required BY the gigantic expenditures OF the war,
pfovokingthe maledicti0ns of all those whose
ayar1ce he was compelled 10 resist II not battle,
and the target of malevOlent unceaslng abuse
nom the Copperhrads, whose real impulse of hos
Utility Was his marvellous success, he has filled the
most dithcult and thankless post In America.
Now that he has left Ii, we marvel that he con
Sented 10 hold II so long. Possibly, another may
pe more successfuli but no man lives who can
bring larger powers 20 the work, or devote them
~ s0pRtEy,