Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase
Today’s Justice of the Day is: SALMON P. CHASE. The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, which Chief Justice Chase had presided over, ended in an acquittal by the United States Senate on this date, May 16, in 1868.
Chief Justice Chase was born on January 13, 1808 in Cornish, New Hampshire. He grew up the son of a prominent family with roots in America’s colonial era, and graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in 1826.
In 1829 Chief Justice Chase began a 20 years-long career in private practice in Cincinnati, Ohio, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He was deeply involved in the anti-slavery movement, even frequently defending runaway slaves who had to appear before a judge. This in turn lead to Chief Justice Chase’s involvement with the Free Soil Party, on whose ticket he was elected to the U.S. Senate to represent his adopted home state of Ohio in 1849. He served in that office until 1855 (he would briefly return to it in 1861), the year before he was elected as a Republican to be Governor of Ohio. Chief Justice Chase left the governorship in 1860, before moving on to join President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury in 1861, where he would remain until his resignation over difference with President Lincoln (which occurred just a few months before the death of Chief Justice Roger Taney).
Chief Justice Chase was nominated by President Lincoln on December 6, 1864, to a seat vacated by Chief Justice Taney. He was also confirmed by the U.S. Senate and received his commission that day. Chief Justice Chase took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on December 15, and his service was terminated on May 7, 1873, due to his death.
Chief Justice Chase’s appointment signaled the definitive end of Southern interests’ domination of the SCUS, which had been a fact of life for the Court and the nation since the death of Chief Justice John Marshall. He is most well-remembered for having overseen the impeachment proceedings against President Johnson, which opened on February 24, 1868, the day the United States House of Representatives impeached the president. Chief Justice Chase never quite fell out of love with politics, and would later make bids for the presidency in 1868 and 1872.