Chase students got a glimpse back in time April 11 when the author of a recent biography of Salmon P. Chase spoke to them about the college’s namesake.
• Walter Stahr makes the case in his 2023 book, Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival, that while Chase rivaled Abraham Lincoln for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination, it was the groundwork Chase had laid over the previous two decades as an anti-slavery lawyer in Cincinnati that allowed for the creation of the Republican Party and the election of Lincoln.
• For the historical record: Chase went from Cincinnati to be Governor of Ohio, a U.S. Senator from Ohio, Secretary of the Treasury in the Lincoln administration and a Chief Justice of the United States.
• Mr. Stahr was at Chase in a program of the recently endowed David and Nancy Wolf Chair in Ethics and Professional Identify. The lesson for students: “Through discussion of Chase’s life as a lawyer, students can be introduced to the type of ethical choices he had to make in order to develop his own identity as a lawyer,” Wolf Chair Professor Jack Harrison says.
To learn more about the David and Nancy Wolf Chair and Program in Ethics and Professional Identity, go to this webpage.
