Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase /

by William Maxwell Evarts

In a just view of the office of President, as framed in the Constitution, which he only, in the whole establishment of the Government, is sworn "to preserve, protect, and defend," and of the rightful demands of this people from its supreme magistracy, I am sure most people will agree that Mr. Chase possessed great qualities for the discharge of its high duties, and for the maintenance of good government in difficult times. These qualifications I have already unfolded from his life. If, indeed, the great hold over the Government, which the Constitution secures to the people by the election of the President, and his direct and constant responsibility to popular opinion, and the full powers, thus safely confided to him, in the name and as the trust of the people at large—if this hold is to be exercised and preserved in its appropriate vigor, it can only be by the election to the presidency of true leaders of the political opinion of the country. In this way alone can power and responsibility be kept in union; and any nation which, in the working of its government, sees them divorced—sees power without responsibility, and responsibility without power—must expect dishonor and disaster in its affairs.

I have, thus, with such success as may be, undertaken to separate the thread of this individual character and action from that woven tapestry of human life, whose conciliated colors and collective force make up one of the noblest chapters of history. I have attempted to present in prominent points, passing per fastigia rerum, the worth, the work, the duty, and the honor which fill out "the sustained dignity of this stately life." From his boyhood on the banks of this fair river—famous as having given birth and nurture to three Chief-Justices of the United States, Ellsworth, Chase, and Waite; through his first lessons in the humanities in beautiful Windsor, his fuller instruction in the lap of this gracious mother, his loved and venerated Dartmouth; through his lessons in law and in eloquence at the feet of his great master, Wirt, his study of statesmen and government at the capital; through, his faithful service to the law, that jealous mistress, and his generous advocacy of the rights, and resentment of the wrongs, of the unfriended and the undefended; through his season of stormy politics with its "estuations of joys and fears;" through the crush and crowd of labors and solicitudes which beset him as minister of finance in the tensions and perils of war; through all this steep ascent to the serene height of supreme jurisprudence, this life, but a span in years, was enough for the permanent service of his country, and for the assurance of his fame. "Etenim, Quirites, exiguum nobis vitæ curriculum natura circumscripsit, immensum gloriæ."

If I should attempt to compare Mr. Chase, either in resemblance or contrast, with the great names in our public life, of our own times, and in our previous history, I should be inclined to class him, in the solidity of his faculties, the firmness of his will, and in the moderation of his temper, and in the quality of his public services, with that remarkable school of statesmen, who, through the Revolutionary War, wrought out the independence of their country, which they had declared, and framed the Constitution, by which the new liberties were consolidated and their perpetuity insured. Should I point more distinctly at individual characters, whose traits he most recalls, Ellsworth as a lawyer and judge, and Madison as a statesman, would seem not only the most like, but very like, Mr. Chase. In the groups of his cotemporaries in public affairs, Mr. Chase is always named with the most eminent. In every triumvirate of conspicuous activity he would be naturally associated. Thus, in the preliminary agitations which prepared the triumphant politics, it is Chase and Sumner and Hale; in the competition for the presidency when the party expected to carry it, it is Seward and Lincoln and Chase; in administration, it is Stanton and Seward and Chase; in the Senate, it is Chase and Seward and Sumner. All these are newly dead, and we accord them a common homage of admiration and of gratitude, not yet to be adjusted or weighed out to each.

Just a quarter of a century before Mr. Chase left these halls of learning, the college sent out another scholar of her discipline, with the same general traits of birth, and condition, and attendant influences, which we have noted as the basis of the power and influence of this later son of Dartmouth. He played a famous part in his time as lawyer, senator, and minister of state, in all the greatest affairs, and in all the highest spheres of public action; and to his eloquence his countrymen paid the singular homage, with which the Greeks crowned that of Pericles, who alone was called Olympian for his grandeur and his power. He died with the turning tide from the old statesmanship to the new, then opening, now closed, in which Mr. Chase and his cotemporaries have done their work and made their fame. Twenty-one years ago this venerable college, careful of the memory of one who had so greatly served as well as honored her, heard from the lips of Choate the praise of Webster. What lover of the college, what admirer of genius and eloquence, can forget the pathetic and splendid tribute which the consummate orator paid to the mighty fame of the great statesman? What mattered it to him, or to the college, that, for the moment, this fame was checked and clouded, in the divided judgments of his countrymen, by the rising storms of the approaching struggle? But, instructed by the experience of the vanquished rebellion, none are now so dull as not to see that the consolidation of the Union, the demonstration of the true doctrine of the Constitution, the solicitous observance of every obligation of the compact, were the great preparations for the final issue of American politics between freedom and slavery.

To these preparations the life-work of Webster and his associates was devoted; their completeness and adequacy have been demonstrated; the force and magnitude of the explosion have justified all their solicitudes lest it should burst the cohesions of our unity. The general sense of our countrymen now understands that the statesmen who did the most to secure the common government for slavery and freedom under the frame of the Constitution, and who in the next generations did the most to strengthen the bonds of the Union, and to avert the last test till that strength was assured; and, in our own latest times, did the most to make the contest at last become seasonable and safe, thorough and unyielding and unconditional, have all wrought out the great problem of our statesmanship, which was to assure to us "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." They all deserve, as they shall all receive, each for his share, the gratitude of their countrymen, and the applause of the world.

To the advancing generations of youth that Dartmouth shall continue to train for the service of the republic, and the good of mankind, the lesson of the life we commemorate, to-day, is neither obscure nor uncertain. The toils and honors of the past generations have not exhausted the occasions nor the duties of our public life, and the preparation for them, whatever else it may include, can never omit the essential qualities which have always marked every prosperous and elevated career. These are energy, labor, truth, courage, and faith. These make up that ultimate WISDOM to which the moral constitution of the world assures a triumph.—"Wisdom is the principal thing; she shall bring thee to honor; she shall give to thy head an ornament of grace; a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee."