Civil War Roundtable, February

THIS IS A ZOOM ONLY PROGRAM

For the February Roundtable, Walter Stahr looks at the rivalry between Abraham Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase. Chase is best remembered as a rival of Lincoln’s for the Republican nomination in 1860. But there would not have been a national Republican Party, and Lincoln could not have won the presidency, were it not for the groundwork Chase laid over the previous two decades.

Starting in the early 1840s, long before Lincoln spoke out against slavery, Chase was forming and leading antislavery parties. He represented fugitive slaves so often in his law practice that he was known as the attorney general for runaway negroes. Tapped by Lincoln to become Secretary of the Treasury, Chase would soon prove vital to the Civil War effort, raising the billions of dollars that allowed the Union to win the war while also pressing the president to recognize Black rights. When Lincoln had the chance to appoint a chief justice in 1864, he chose his faithful rival because he was sure Chase would make the right decisions on the difficult racial, political, and economic issues the Supreme Court would confront during Reconstruction.

Drawing on previously overlooked sources, Walter Stahr’s 2022 book “Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival” offers an impressive account of a complex forgotten man at the center of the fight for racial justice in 19th-century America. Stahr has authored several other well-received biographies, practiced law for many years and is an honors graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School.

ZOOM REGISTRATION LINK COMING SOON