An episode we’ve been waiting to do for a long while, Alex examines the consequential life of Cincinnati’s own, Salmon P. Chase. Chase, the namesake for Chase Bank, served as a Senator and Governor from Ohio, the Secretary of the Treasury during the Lincoln Administration and the 6th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. We sit down with award-winning historian and biographer Walter Stahr to discuss the impact of Salmon P. Chase’s important life, Chase’s passionate leadership of the country that helped bring an end to slavery and Walter’s new book Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival (Simon & Schuster, 2021). Click the link below to purchase this great new book https://walterstahr.com/books/salmon-p-chase/

We follow Chase’s story from his arrival as a child to the new State of Ohio, his early career in DC to his successful legal career in Cincinnati. Chase’s unorthodox path to power does not follow the normal two-party system, from his leaving the Whig Party in 1840 to the joining of little known Liberty and Free Soil parties. We experience pre-war racial strife in the border metropolis of Cincinnati as the Queen City’s straddling of the Mason-Dixon Line molds Chase into a leading anti-slavery political figure in the North.

Walter takes us through the tumultuous 1850s in the Senate, Governor Chase’s two terms in Columbus (1856-1860) and the historic 1860 Election campaign in which Lincoln won the nomination of the new Republican Party over Chase. Walter shares with our audience Secretary Chase’s deft stewardship of the nation’s economy during the Civil War, his multiple failed attempts to win the presidency and his important 9 years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during Reconstruction.

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