The Salmon P. Chase Papers. Volume 5: Correspondence, 1865-1873.

The Salmon P. Chase Papers. Volume 5: Correspondence, 1865-1873. Edited by John Niven and others. (Kent, Ohio, and London: Kent State University Press, c. 1998. Pp. xxvi, 401. $45.00, ISBN 0-87338-567-5.)

This is the last volume of selected correspondence of Salmon P. Chase, drawn from the forty-three reel microfilm edition edited by the late John Niven and others (Frederick, Md., 1987) and covering the period during which Chase, formerly senator and governor of Ohio and secretary of state in the Lincoln administration, served as chief justice of the Supreme Court until his death in 1873. There are some signs of haste with a few factual and typographical errors uncharacteristically escaping the editorial process.

The surrounding explanatory material is minimal. Readers usually must turn to earlier volumes for biographical references. While the letters are well edited, contexts in which they were sent and received are often only sketchily explained, with only limited guidance to secondary sources. Therefore the letters are useful primarily as source materials for those undertaking research in the history of Reconstruction or of the Supreme Court during the Civil War era.

The correspondence consists of significant letters both sent and received. Most deal with politics and a number concern judicial matters, especially Chase's refusal to sit as circuit court judge in the South while martial law continued. (For part of each year, Supreme Court justices were supposed to join with district court judges to constitute circuit courts.) Although there is some information about Court administration and Chase's relations with other judges, there is disappointingly little discussion of legal and constitutional issues before the Court. A few link his positions on key Reconstruction and financial cases to his commitments to state rights and hard money. A number of letters, mostly in 1869 and after, relate to Chase's family, conveying the conventional, sincere piety that Chase hoped would sustain himself and his daughter Kate as her marriage to Senator William Sprague began to break apart. Another few shed light on other private matters. This distribution seems to reflect the makeup of the material from which they are drawn.

Letters written in 1865 indicate Chase's support for equal suffrage as the basis of Reconstruction. Despite his reputation for radicalism, Chase's correspondence suggests a retreat from that position in 1866, by which time he had become far more timid politically than his Republican colleagues. Unfortunately, the letters do not illuminate the sources of his concerns. Chase appears to have corresponded little about Ohio politics even though it was crucial to his aspiration for the 1868 Republican presidential nomination. The letters belie Chase's later claim always to have stood for a Reconstruction program of universal suffrage and universal amnesty, a commitment that he did not articulate until Democratic politicians put him forward for their party's nomination instead.

The prospect of a Democratic nomination grew out of Chase's quite public break with his party over the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Chase made sure that his correspondents were aware that he opposed conviction--a serious breach of judicial ethics, as his concern over leaks from the Supreme Court about other cases make clear. A large number of letters deal with Chase's effort to secure the Democratic nomination, considered quixotic by most historians. Although he denied further political ambitions, in 1869 and 1870 Chase was building upon lais 1868 campaign to position himself as the leading advocate of a Democratic new departure on the Reconstruction issue. His debilitating stroke in September 1870 clearly reduced the volume of his correspondence. Nonetheless, the indefatigable Chase retained hopes for 1872.

In sum, the letters offer important insights into the politics of Reconstruction and some illumination of other matters as well. The volumes should be acquired by any library that maintains a research collection in United States history.

MICHAEL LES BENEDICT 

Ohio State University