New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1864-07-01

SALMON p. CHASE has resigned the post OF
Secretary of the Treasury. II the event shall
prove that the country can dispense with his
services as easily as he can dispense with Office,
we shall heartily rejoice. q -i.
Mr.. Chase is one Of the very few great nleri
left in public life since the almost simultaneous
deccase of Messrs. Clay, Webster and Calhoun.
He has been deemed ambitious; but there was
never day when he would not gladly have re-
nounced all prospect or hope of power or dis
tinction if he might thereby have rendered
ours truly and without exception a land Of Lib
erty To secure equal rights, equal opportuni-
ties, and impartial justice to the humblest and
most despiscd as well as to the proudeSt
and most envied of our race, such is his
idea of the chief end of craftsmanship, such his
conception of the purpose and destiny of
Christian Republic. And no man blesses God
more profoundly than he that, through convul'
sion and peril, through suffering and sacrifice
that end is being approached, that conception is
about to be realized by our country.
. Mr. Chase was among the foremost OF our
eminent men to take the ground of uncomprc-
missing hostility to Slavery as the bano and the
peril Of the American Republic. He partici-
pated in the call and the organization in l94l Of
the Liberty party" in Ohio, having long
before ably maintained as a lawyer the PROPOSE
ton that the Fugitive Slave act of 1898 was
unconstitutional and void. He presided over
~. s.H Nat nal ,nn at RufIa In
in 1e4s which nominated Martin Van Buren, for
President and Charles Francis Adams for Vice
President. Elected in 1919 IT, s. Senator,
through coalition of Democrats and Abolition
lists, he opposed the Slave Power through
out his term, especially in its Nebraska-Kan
policy, and, refusing to support Pierce and King
because of their Pro-Slayery platform, he was
supplanted in 1854 by George T.. Pugh. He
was thereupon elected and reelected Governor
of Ohio by the Republicans, and had just en-
tered upon new term of six years as U. 5.
Senator, when he was required and most re-
luctantly consented to accept the Secrctaryship
of the Treasury on the accession of Mr. Lincoln
to the Presidency. Since then, his career is
part of our National history.
Mr.. Chase has acted from the first Oh pro-
found conviction that the Shareholders Rebel
lion required for its suppression greater sacri-
fees and more selcforgetting devotion on the
part Of the loyal States and people than were
generally NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. than many of them
seemed willing to accord. His personal enc
mics assert that he was willing in March, 1861,
to let the seeding Cotton States 60 in peace If
they would but await the indispensable assem-
bling Of q Conventions; and he has never
deigned to contradict them. But, from the
wanton Inauguration Of civil war by the Con-
federate bombardment Of Fort Sumter, Mr..
Chase has been one OF the most strenuous up
holders Of the National integrity, and was one
of the earliest to perceive and to proclaim that
the Rebellion could be most readily and vitality
assaulted through its melting cause, Slavery;
and this conviction has never wayered for an
instant.
Believing that taxation should be promptly
and largely increased and that the entire paper
currency Of tho country should be directly
anu utONculy Duscu VI tuc Citut,
he necessarily came into collision with men,
bers who feared that to vote for heavy taxes
would defeat their own reelection, and bankers
who could not see the beauty of being re-
CURED to redeem their notes in order that
they should give place to a currency based on
the faith and credit Of the Nation. Re-
CURED to provide several hundreds Of millions
of dollars annually, in addition to the accruing
revenue, constantly pressed by the necessity
of providing the ever-incroasing amounts re-
CURED by the gigantic expenditures of the War,
provoking the maledictions of all those whose
avarice he was compelled to resist if not battle,
and the target of malevolent, unoeasng abuse
from the Copperheads whose real impulse Of
hostility was his marvellous success, he has filled
the most difficult and thankless post in Amer.
lea. Now that he has left it, we marvel that
he consented to hold it so long Possibly,
another may be more successful: but no man
lives who can bring larger powers to the work.
or devote them more unreservedly, unselfishly
to the welfare of his country.
OUR ARMIES.