During his lifetime, Salmon Portland Chase served in
all three branches of the Federal Government. Before the
Civil War, he was an antislavery U.S. Senator, and during
most of the war, he served as Secretary of the Treasury.
In 1864 President Abraham Lincoln appointed him Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Less
than 6 months later Chase administered the Presidential
oath of office to Andrew Johnson, and in 1868 he presided
fairly over the Johnson impeachment trial. Also, during
his 9 years on the Supreme Bench, Chase wrote opinions for
many important cases concerning both Reconstruction and
American fiscal policy. Despite his place on the High
Court, Chase was eager for either the Republican or the
Democratic Presidential nomination in 1868. Four years
later he showed interest in the Liberal Republican Party
candidacy. In fact, he was a perennial Presidential
candidate, and he suffered repeatedly from disappointed
hopes and bruised dignity. "Chase could never have been a
father of his country," writes his biographer Albert
Bushnell Hart, but "his life was sincerely given to [its]
service."
In 1808 Chase was born in a Colonial-style, 2 1/2-story
framehouse, where apparently he lived for 8 years. Set in
the rugged New Hampshire hills close by the Connecticut
River, the farm residence has undergone alteration through
the years, and about 1848 it was moved across the road to
make way for a railroad line. Today, the house lies slightly
more than 1 mile south of the Cornish-Windsor Covered
Bridge and 3 miles south of Saint-Gaudens National Historic
Site in a portion of New Hampshire that is rich in American
history. It is the only known extant structure associated
with the life of Salmon Portland Chase.
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