Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase | Page 4

being vast or surprising. It seized the sensible and practical relations of
all subjects submitted to it, and firmly held them in its tenacious grasp;
it exposed these relations to the apprehension of those whose opinion
or action it behooved him to influence, by methods direct and sincere,
discarding mere ingenuity, and disdaining the subtleness of insinuation.
His education had all been of a kind to discipline and invigorate his
natural powers; not to encumber them with a besetting weight of
learning, or to supplant them by artificial training.
His oratory was vigorous, with those "qualities of clearness, force, and
earnestness, which produce conviction." His rhetoric was ample, but
not rich; his illustrations apposite, but seldom to the point of wit; his
delivery weighty and imposing.
His force of will, whether in respect of peremptoriness or persistency,
was prodigious. His courage to brave, and his fortitude to endure, were
absolute. His loyalty to every cause in which he enlisted--his fidelity in
every warfare in which he took up arms--were proof against peril and
disaster.
His estimate of human affairs, and of his own relation to them, was
sober and sedate. All their grandeur and splendor, to his apprehension,
connected themselves with the immortal life, and with God, as their
guide, overseer, and ruler; and the sum of the practical wisdom of all
worthy personal purposes seemed to him to be, to discern the path of
duty, and to pursue it.
His views of the commonwealth were essentially Puritan. Equality of
right, community of interest, reciprocity of duty, were the adequate,
and the only adequate, principles with him to maintain the strength and

virtue of society, and preserve the power and permanence of the State.
With these principles unimpaired and unimpeded he feared nothing for
his countrymen or their government, and he made constant warfare
upon every assault or menace that endangered them.
It was with these endowments and with this preparation of spirit, that
Mr. Chase confronted the realities of life, and assumed to play a part
which, whether humble or high in the scale and plane of circumstance,
was sure to be elevated and worthy in itself; for the loftiness of his
spirit for the conflict of life was
"Such as raised To height of noblest temper heroes old Arming to
battle."
Such a character necessarily confers authority among men, and that Mr.
Chase was ready, on all occasions arising, to assert his high principles
by comporting action was never left in doubt. Whether by interposing
his strong arm to save Mr. Birney from the fury of a mob of Cincinnati
gentlemen, incensed at the freedom of his press in its defiance of
slavery; or by his bold and constant maintenance in the courts of the
cause of fugitive slaves in the face of the resentments of the public
opinion of the day; or by his fearless desertion of all reigning politics to
lead a feeble band of protestants through the wilderness of anti-slavery
wanderings, its pillar of cloud by day, its pillar of fire by night; or as
Governor of Ohio facing the intimidations of the slave States, backed
by Federal power and a storm of popular passion; or in consolidating
the triumphant politics on the urgent issue which was to flame out into
rebellion and revolt; or in his serene predominance, during the trial of
the President, over the rage of party hate which brought into peril the
coördination of the great departments of Government, and threatened
its whole frame--in all these marked instances of public duty, as in the
simple routine of his ordinary conduct, Mr. Chase asked but one
question to determine his course of action, "Is it right?" If it were, he
had strength, and will, and courage to carry him through with it.
In the ten years of professional life which followed his admission to the
bar, Mr. Chase established a repute for ability, integrity, elevation of
purpose and capacity for labor, which would have surely brought him

the highest rewards of forensic prosperity and distinction, and in due
course, of eminent judicial station. In this quieter part of his life, as in
his public career, it is noticeable that his employments were never
common-place, but savored of a public zest and interest. His
compilation of the Ohio Statutes was a magnum opus, indeed, for the
leisure hours of a young lawyer, and possesses a permanent value,
justifying the assurance Chancellor Kent gave him, that this surprising
labor would find its "reward in the good he had done, in the talents he
had shown, and in the gratitude of his profession."
But this quiet was soon broken, never to be resumed, and though the
great office of Chief-Justice was in store for him, it was to be reached
by the path of statesmanship and not