"
The movement thus conducted by Mr. Chase was slow and tremendously
laborious, but it was effective. In the presidential elections of 1844
and 1848 it held the balance of power and turned the scale to further
its purposes. In 1852 it shattered and destroyed one of the old
pro-slavery parties, and became the second party in the country
instead of the third. In eight years more it was the first.
The charge has been made against Mr. Chase that, while a member of
Lincoln's Cabinet, he aspired to supersede his chief in the
Presidency. But did he not have a right to seek the higher office,
especially when the policy pursued by its incumbent did not meet his
full approval? He merely shared the sentiment that was then
entertained by nearly all the radical Anti-Slavery people of the
country. It is not unlikely that Chase felt somewhat envious of
Lincoln. After, as he stated in his letter of congratulation to Mr.
Lincoln on his first election, he had given nineteen years of
continuous and exhausting labor to the freedom movement, it would be
but natural that he should feel aggrieved when he saw that the chief
credit of that movement was likely to go to one who had, to his own
exclusion, come up slowly and reluctantly at a later day to its
support.
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