Salmon P. Chase Quotes
No more slave States and no more slave territory.
Salmon P. Chase, 1808-1873, U. S. Senator (Free-Soil & Republican, OH), Ohio Governor (Free-Soil), U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, Chief Justice, U. S. Supreme Court, Slogan at the Free Soil Party Convention
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
One of the many complaints that many people made at the time about Smith and his Mormons was that they opposed slavery. In fact, Smith not only opposed it be had a plan for compensating the slave owner and a method for paying for it. Smith was not advocating the kinds of personal lifestyle issues of his church the way modern religious leaders do, but was concerned with the much larger issues of expansionism, corruption of the courts and judiciary, and land distribution. He was a classic reform candidate in that sense. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
Lincoln had promised amnesty to Southerners who would pledge loyalty to the Union. What many feared was that this would include slave owners re-enslaving their former "property," or that the government would allow them to do so in order to stop the rebellion.
The issue of slavery which had been suppressed in Congress for the first decades of the nation broke out when Missouri was considered for statehood. By previous agreement, slavery was not even discussed in Congress but the time period elapsed. Tallmadge not only proposed that no more slaves could come into Missouri but most shocking to the Southerners was that every person born in the new state would be free at the age of 25. In a generation, there would be no more slavery in Missouri and there would be no economic compensation for slave owners at all. The House of Representatives accepted the amendment, but it failed in the Senate. At that time, Senators were not elected by voters but were appointed by the state legislators and the Southern slave states had a disproportionate share of the senate from a population point of view. But what this quotation shows clearly that a majority of the country in 1819 were opposed to slavery and were willing to end it without compensation.
The “rupture and revolution” was Southern secession and the Civil War. This quotation is very important because it so clearly states the cause of the Civil War—the threat of the abolition or change of the institution of slavery. During the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th, many historical revisionists—in an effort to promote national unity—began stating and teaching that the cause of the rebellion was a philosophical difference over State’s rights and not something so banal as the greed for and immorality of the benefits of slavery. See {621370} for another Southern quotation illustrating this point.
In April, 1784, the Continental Congress passed a series of laws that Jefferson had drafted for the NorthWest territory—Ohio then being the west and the states that would develop there. However, the quotation is the clause that the Southern States blocked and hence did not become law, as the Soothers states cared little about the status of the area regarding slavery, but feared that the new states wold become a sanctuary for runaway slaves. It was another case where Jefferson attempted to end slavery. It also was yet another example of the unwieldiness of the Continental Congress to manage the new nation which led up to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Ironically, as a price for union, the Southern States demanded and obtained a disproportionate representation in the New House of Representatives by having 60 percent of their slaves counted inzallocating congressional seats. The senate also worked in their favor as there were enough Southern states to block any attack on slavery in the Senate. There was no democratic way to eliminate slavery and the Civil War resulted. However, Jefferson’s proposed law was passed by the last Continental Congress in June, 1787. The difference was that there was also added a proviso that required the return of all runaway slaves from the new territory and states which was lacking in the earlier attempt.
This Civil War recruiting poster was described by the Free Library of Philadelphia as “Civil War recruitment print targeting African Americans by evoking the freedoms granted by the Emancipation Proclamation. Depicts a montage of symbolic scenes centered around an African American Union soldier triumphantly holding up a sword and an American flag with the banner "Freedom to the Slave." He stands near broken shackles upon a tri-color flag adorned with a coiled snake. The flag is tugged upon by one of three joyous slaves freed by an African American soldier. Other scenes depict an African American man reading a newspaper on a rocking chair near a plow and child, African American children entering a "Public School" near a church, and a regiment of "U.S. Colored Troops" marching across a battlefield strewn with dead bodies.”
Salmon Portland Chase was a U.S. politician and jurist who served as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States. He also served as the 23rd Governor of Ohio, represented Ohio in the United States Senate, and served as the 25th United States Secretary of the Treasury. Chase was therefore one of a few U.S. politicians who served in all three branches of the federal government.
