Youthful Anguish at the Start of a Remarkable Career

CHASE, SALMON P.]. ALS, 3 pp., 4to, in ink, very legible (one small hole, all text present). Dated 8 April 1829, to John Halliburton [probably Haliburton] in Nova Scotia. Washington: 1829. $425.00

An fascinating episode in the early adult life of Lincoln's future Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court during Reconstruction. Chase demonstrates great sensitivity and strong feelings of friendship as well as a Romantic view of Nature, all expressed in beautiful prose.

Graduated from Dartmouth in 1826, at the age of 18, Chase moved to Washington, D.C. where he conducted a school for boys and at one time had under his charge sons of all but one of the members of John Quincy Adams' cabinet, including those of William Wirt, who mentored him in the law, and whose home Chase often visited. "...his otherwise sombre diary glows with youthful romance and sprightliness as it records the evenings spent in the company of the charming Wirt daughters." --DAB.

Our letter records Chase's feelings of dejection at the Wirt daughters' departure in 1829 when William Wirt lost his position as attorney general. Chase's journal for the day our letter is written states: "Today the loveliest part of Mr. Wirt's family left Washington for Richmond. They had constituted almost the while of my society and their absence was sensibly felt." Our letter never mentions the Wirts by name, but this personal letter is far more expressive of his loss than the journal, and the references to William's two daughters leaving for Richmond clearly identify them. Chase laments: "They are gone...I look around me and see everywhere inferiority." Chase pleads with his freind to forgive his "diffusive eulogy" for he can think of "nothing but them." He xpresses hopes that he will see the Wirt girls in Baltimore.

Later in the letter Chase describes a spectacular thunder storm in highly Romantic prose, concluding how amazing it is to make "metaphysical" and "moral" remarks on a thunderstorm.