Salmon P. Chase (1808 – 1873)
American politician and jurist in the Civil War era who served as U S Senator from Ohio and Governor of Ohio; as Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln; and as Chief Justice of the United States.
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True democracy makes no enquiry about the color of skin, or the place of nativity, whereever it sees man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights.
No more slave States; no slave Territories.
The way to resumption is to resume.
The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.
Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens and all unable to take its prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of despotic military governments for the States and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions; no classes excluded from suffrage; and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the Constitution and laws, and of sincere attachment to the constitutional Government of the United States.
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