The Chase Room

Salmon P. Chase

As the Cincinnati YMCA Law School prepared to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 1943, law students requested that the name of the school be changed to the Salmon P. Chase College of Law. In May of that year the name change was approved by the Board of Directors.

Salmon Portland Chase, the ninth of eleven children, was born in Cornish, New Hampshire on January 13, 1808. Chase’s father died when Chase was nine years of age. An uncle, Philander Chase, the first Episcopal bishop of Ohio, offered to educate his young nephew. In 1820 the young Salmon P. Chase moved to his uncle’s farm in Worthington, Ohio, just outside Columbus. After a few years he moved with his uncle to Cincinnati.

Salmon P. Chase graduated from Dartmouth College at the age of 18 in 1826. He studied law in Washington, D.C., under U.S. Attorney General William Wirt. He returned to Cincinnati in March of 1830, was admitted to the Ohio bar in June, and by September had opened his law practice in an office in a new brick building on Third Street. (Link)

In the early days of his practice Salmon P. Chase began collecting and annotating all of the laws of Ohio from 1788. This resulted in the publication of the three volume set of the Statutes of Ohio in 1833.

While practicing law in Cincinnati Salmon P. Chase became active in the abolitionist movement. From his defense of escaped slaves he was dubbed the “Attorney General for Fugitive Slaves”.

In 1849 Salmon P. Chase was elected to the United States Senate from Ohio on the Free Soil Party. In 1855 he was elected governor of Ohio and reelected in 1857. In 1861 Salmon P. Chase began serving as the Secretary of the Treasury under Abraham Lincoln. His portrait appeared on the $10,000 bill (printed from 1928-1946). In 1864 he was appointed Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. (Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Chase, Salmon Portland)

Salmon P. Chase died in 1873 at his daughter’s home in New York City. After a formal state funeral he was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery near Washington, D.C. His body was moved to Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati in 1886.

The “Chase Room” at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law houses a desk and chair used by Salmon P. Chase, the family Bible, a first edition of the Statutes of Ohio, and the cornerstone from Chase’s Cincinnati office imprinted with “S. P. Chase and F. Ball. Attorneys at Law.” The Law Library also owns the microfilm edition of the Salmon P. Chase Papers which reproduces 14,500 documents written by or addressed to Salmon P. Chase.