Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

by Virginia Tatnall Peacock

In September, 1860, some months before Chase left Ohio, there was unveiled at Cleveland, on the shores of the Lake to which his valor brought fame, a statue of Commodore Perry, many of the States sending deputations to do honor to his memory. At the head of Rhode Island's troops, in the military parade which opened the ceremonies of the day, rode the governor of that State, his alert young figure impressing itself upon all the spectators of the scene. That night, during the ball at the Kennard House which closed the event of the day, Colonel Richard Parsons presented him to Kate Chase. She was twenty years old at the time, and her slender young figure already possessed that beautiful symmetry that later found such unqualified favor in the eyes of Worth, that great modern connoisseur of the proportions of the female figure, drawing from him such commendation as he never accorded to any other woman. In a ball-gown showing the faultless contour of her neck and throat, and the exquisite poise of her lovely head, she was the revelation of a perfection which the human form rarely attains. Hazel eyes, auburn hair, and the marvellous whiteness of skin that usually accompanies this combination, a full, low, broad brow, mobile lips, a small, round chin, and a nose whose suggestion of an upward tilt added its own peculiar touch of piquancy to a face that was altogether charming rather than classically beautiful,—thus to the eye was Kate Chase, whose fame then superseded that of every woman in Ohio, and was shortly to surpass that of every woman of her generation in America. That she should hold the interested attention of not only one but several men for hours at a time was no unusual spectacle to the people among whom her belleship days had dawned early. Governor Sprague's devotion to her, however, on the night that he first met her, because he was a distinguished stranger and a man of prominence in his own State, and because there seemed, perhaps, in the entire situation many of the elements of romance, became at once a subject of interested comment.

The outbreak of the war took him to Washington. Still governor of his State, he had raised a regiment and equipped it at his own expense, for he was a man of immense wealth. His generosity, his patriotism, and his valor at Bull Run, together with his youth and the success of his political career, appealed to the enthusiasm of his countrymen. The news not only that he was to marry, but to marry a woman so universally idolized as was Kate Chase, heightened the effect his achievements had already produced upon the mind of the public. With a delicate sort of beauty and a somewhat clerical appearance that belied his reputation for military prowess, he had at the moment a fame quite equal to that of his bride. Their marriage, which took place at Washington on the 12th of November, 1863, was the social event of that turbulent period. All the details of the ceremony and of the reception which followed it, and which were planned by her, were on a scale of magnificence worthy of the woman whose advent into Washington had marked a new epoch in its social history.

She was the inspiration of the wedding-march composed for the occasion and played by the Marine Band. Under circumstances when a plain woman is an interesting figure, of what moment was not the appearance of one who could not, even on ordinary occasions, enter a church without her presence being in some mysterious way heralded to its remotest recesses so that every head involuntarily turned towards her! To those who beheld her on that day she was the beautiful realization of the ideal bride, and the life opening before her promised every possible happiness. The ceremony was witnessed by many men and women whose names were then household words when the eyes of the whole nation, watching the direction of the war, were fixed on Washington.

The first days of their married life were spent in Rhode Island, where Mr. Sprague built for his bride the beautiful home that was worthy of her lofty conceptions of a magnificent existence, Canonchet. It was one of the first of the palatial homes of that period, and of which this country now possesses so many, and the cost of its construction was unprecedented in the annals of a people incredibly rich in all life's comforts, but with their luxuriant tendencies for the most part still latent.

From the governorship of his State Sprague went into the United States Senate, and Kate Chase appeared in Washington as the wife of the youngest member of that body. The elegance of the new home there over which she presided, her husband's wealth and prominence, her maturer beauty, and the dignity with which she carried a matron's honors, all tended to bring her before the popular imagination in a more enchanting light than even the glories of her girlhood had done.

The birth of her first child, a son, was a matter of national interest, and the press of the day contained lengthy accounts of the dawn of the little life for which fate held in store so forlorn and tragic an ending. His christening robe was as elaborately described as if it had been that of a royal infant, and the figures of the handsome settlement made upon him were widely published.

Chase, however, still loomed the central figure of his daughter's life, for he continued to confide in her and take counsel with her in all that concerned him personally, as well as those measures that hand his name down as that of the greatest Secretary who ever presided in the Treasury Department. He was the intellectual power of Lincoln's cabinet, and though he contributed much to the success of his administration, there was small sympathy between the men personally, and being overruled by the President in some of the details of his department, Chase, in 1864, resigned his position as a member of the cabinet. Donn Piatt, who was one of the many young Ohioans to whom he was a shining example and a high ideal, said of Chase, that though he came in direct and intimate contact with Lincoln for three years, he never appreciated nor understood the man who could clear the heavy atmosphere of a cabinet meeting, called to consider some such stupendous proposition as the emancipation proclamation, by a hearty laugh, induced by the reading of a chapter from Artemus Ward. Lincoln, however, with his keen knowledge of human nature, discerned Chase's character more readily, and justly estimating the judicial qualities of his superior mind, he sent his nomination as Chief Justice of the United States to the Senate. It was immediately and unanimously confirmed by that body, and on the 6th of December, 1864, Chase, already a great man, entered upon the duties of that office, to which, with one exception, no name has given greater renown.

On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives passed a resolution to impeach the President of the United States. During his trial, which terminated on May 26 of the same year, the country passed through a storm of violent political passion. Above the roar of an angry people and the threats which assailed him daily from all sections of the country, rose the august presence of the great Chief Justice, hearing but not heeding, feeling but not fearing their sting. Throughout the country there was no name more frequently heard during those days than that of Chase, and in Washington the President himself was not a more prominent figure. He followed his usual custom of walking to the court in the mornings, being frequently accompanied by the daughter who had so often been his companion in days when there had rested upon him no such burden as the grave question then in hand imposed. She forms one of the bright spots in the memory of that dark period, and he often lifted his eyes during the sessions of the court to refresh them with a glimpse of her face, in whose luminous sympathy there was inspiration. She sat in the gallery of the court chamber every day, surrounded always by men whose names go down in history among those of the foremost of their period and country,—Garfield, Conkling, Sherman, Carl Schurz, with Grant, the military idol of the hour, and Greeley, of editorial eminence.

The chief-justiceship of his country is generally supposed to fill the measure of a man's political aspirations. Upon Chase, however, the honors of his office imposed no such quietus, and in 1868 he again came forward for the Presidential nomination. As a Democrat, who had left his party only on the slavery question, he offered himself as a candidate for the nomination of that party. During the convention, which met in New York, Mrs. Sprague, more ably with her maturer mind and greater resources at her command than she had possessed in 1860, endeavored to bring about the realization of that dream of his whole public life. She was the first, however, to recognize the fact that the only platform on which he could secure the nomination asked more than he could honorably grant. Chase, watching the convention from a distance, confirmed her judgment.

Our history furnishes the names of three men whose ungratified ambition for the Presidency robbed them of their motive in life. Chase, however, survived his disappointment longer than either Webster or Blaine. He was, by nature, profoundly religious, and he endeavored to support with Christian heroism a blow whose crushing force undermined his very vitality. In 1870 he suffered a physical collapse, from which, however, stimulated by his remarkable will-power, he rallied so far as to be able to resume his duties on the Supreme Bench.