The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-08-05
WHEN KATE CHASE WAS
QUEEN WITHOUT A RIVAL
From the Philadelphia Times.

From the Philadelphia Times.
Mrs. Kate Chase Sprague, wife of
former governor of Rhode Island, and
the daughter of the late Salmon P.
Chase, governor of Ohio, United States
senator and chief justice of the United
States supreme court died at her
homestead, Edgewood, in Washington's
suburbs, early this morning. She was
SO years old.
For three months she had been suf-
fering with a complication of liver and
kidney troubles, but had consented to
medical treatment only 10 days ago.
She grew steadily worse, and the end
came few minutes after o'clock this
morning. At the bedside were her
three daughters, Miss Kittie Sprague.
who lived with her mother: Miss Por-
tia Sprague of Nara gansett Pier and
Mrs. Donaldson of Brooklyn, N. Y.
The funeral arrangements have not
been completed, but the remains will
probably be inferred at Columbus,
Ohio, her fathers Old home.
Some one has said that Kate Chase
Sprague was the Nine. de Stael of
America, but later years will have to
furnish the perspective necessary to
set proper seal upon that likeness.
Those that have known her in her
day will always speak of her as a
brilliant, ambitious, spirited and dar-
ing woman, intense in her purposes,
indefatigable in her efforts. She had
great personal beauty and a ready wit,
an ability that enabled her to reign in
the social world She inherited much
r.f t1E - fnt Ia1Y
p. Chase. Lincoln's secretary of the
treasury, which, combined with an
intimate and practical knowledge of
governmental workings in the days of
the war, gave her a political power
such as probably no other woman in
this country has ever possessed.
She was born in OHIO in 1910, and
was barely more than 20 when she
went to Washington with her father,
who was to take his place in the cab
met Young as she was, she had seen
service in public life. While her father
was governor of Ohio she had been his
confidential secretary, and by constant
association with him had taken on
many of his manners and habits of
life and thought. He was imperious
and high tempered, and so was she.
His self esteem was one of his great
est intirmities, and the daughter was
not a step behind him.
1t was the dream of her young life
that she should some time see her
father president of the country, and it
is certain she subordinated many of
her life plans to this one overpowering
idea. Her beauty and her fathers
place in the cabinet placed her in the
front rank of society in Washington.
and it was not long before she was
using her power to attract the leading
men of the capital to her. Those in
public life We'd for her favor and she
accorded it in proportion to their po-
sition and influence, immediate or
prospective. For the men that came
to her in a marrying mood she had
no thought in those early days, and
passed them away with freezing i'm
periousness. They had no place in the
plan of her campaign.
The women of the capital she never
needed. She considered them as use
less as the love-lorn men, and could not
see how they could ever help her to
the realization of her dream. But the
enemies she then made were never lost
to her, and surely counted against her
in the days that came.
When she was "a however, there ap-
peared as a sutton for her hand Gov
ernor William Sprague of Rhode ISL
and. He was a man of great wealth,
had served with honor in the battles
of the war, and there was that about
him which made the young woman
believe he might be of great use to
her. She married him as a mere step
forward in the furtherance of her am
bition, and not with any thought of
love, as events were made to show.
This marriage proved to be the mis-
take of her life, and it was not many
years before she realized it. Her hus-
band, governor then and senator after
ward, brought no addition to her
power and helped her not at all in
the campaign in her fathers favor.
But she was not cast down to the