From an acclaimed, New York Times bestselling biographer, a timely reassessment of Abraham Lincoln's indispensable Secretary of the Treasury: a leading proponent for black rights both before and during his years in cabinet and later as Chief Justice of the United States. Salmon P. 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 vital groundwork Chase laid over the previous two decades. Starting in the early 1840s, long before Lincoln was speaking 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, and he furthered his reputation as an outspoken federal senator and progressive governor of Ohio. 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 emancipate the country's slaves and 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 sheds new light on a complex and fascinating political figure, as well as on the pivotal events of the Civil War and its aftermath. Salmon P. Chase tells the forgotten story of a man at the center of the fight for racial justice in 19th century America.

A biography of Salmon P. Chase, one of the principal political figures in the American Civil War period. A rival to Abraham Lincoln for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1860, he subsequently became Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln's war-time cabinet.

From one of our most acclaimed new biographers--the first full life of the leader of Lincoln's "Team of Rivals"--William Henry Seward, one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century.

The New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker and Canary Girls reveals Mary Todd Lincoln’s very public social and political contest with Kate Chase Sprague in this astute and lively novel of the politics of state—set against the backdrop of Civil War Era Washington. Beautiful, intelligent, regal, and entrancing, young Kate Chase Sprague stepped into the role of establishing her thrice-widowed father, Salmon P. Chase, in Washington society as a Lincoln cabinet member and as a future presidential candidate. For her efforts, The Washington Star declared her “the most brilliant woman of her day. None outshone her.” None, that is, but Mary Todd Lincoln. Though Mrs. Lincoln and her young rival held much in common—political acumen, love of country, and a resolute determination to help the men they loved achieve greatness—they could never be friends, for the success of one could come only at the expense of the other...

This book explores the treason trial of President Jefferson Davis, where the question of secession's constitutionality was debated.

The vivid, lucid and extremely illuminating diary of Salmon P. Chase remained scattered until 1954 when they were published under the editorship of eminent Civil War historian David H. Donald. Chase served as Secretary of the Treasury in President Lincoln’s cabinet from 1861 to 1864, during the Civil War, despite the crisis he instituted the establishment of a national banking system and the issue of paper currency. Ambitious, talented and underhand, his diaries reveal the Civil War at its highest level on the Union side. “SOME of the best American diaries record the turbulent years of the Civil War... Of the important Northern Civil War diaries, one has been unduly neglected—the journals of Salmon Portland Chase, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury....For a good many years I have hoped to edit Chase’s Civil War diaries, believing that the importance both of the man and of his position warranted publication, I have tried to present the diaries just as Chase wrote them. Beyond standardizing the dates which head each entry, I have not tampered with the text.”-David H. Donald.