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Vol. 26:1 ISSN 0160-8460 March 1998
Salmon P. Chase Papers Project Completed
Portrait of Salmon Portland Chase by James Reid Lambdin. Photograph courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
At its February 1997 meeting, the Commission voted to provide a grant to The Claremont Graduate School in the amount of $7,750 to complete, under the editorship of John Niven, a selective book edition of the journals and correspondence of Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873). With the publication of this five-volume series, scholars and others will have access to the most significant documents written by and to Chase, who served as a Free-Soil senator during the struggles over the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, governor of Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
The first phase of the project was completed in 1987 with the publication on microfilm of approximately 14,500 documents from Chase's journals, correspondence, speeches, and writings. The first volume of the book edition appeared in 1993 and contains the complete journals maintained by Chase from 1829 to 1872. Volumes two through four, published between 1994 and 1997, contain Chase's correspondence during the period 1823 to 1864. The final volume, containing his 1865-1873 correspondence, is scheduled for publication this summer.
Since 1984, the Commission has provided the project with major financial support. Although pleased that the project is soon to be successfully completed, the Commission is also saddened by the fact that the project's editor, John Niven, did not live to see publication of the final volume. His death in August 1997 was a major blow to the project. It is clear, however, that the efforts of the project's Senior Associate Editor, Leigh Johnsen, will maintain the project's high standards through to final publication.
