ofessional work in their behalf, more particularly in pleading
without fee or other reward the cases of escaped fugitives in the
courts. So numerous were his engagements in this regard that his
antagonists spoke of him sneeringly as the "Attorney-General for
runaway niggers." Upon some of his Anti-Slavery cases he bestowed an
immense amount of work. His argument in the case of Van Zant--the
original of Van Tromp in Mrs. Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_,--an old man
who was prosecuted and fined until he was financially ruined for
giving a "lift" in his farm wagon to a slave family on its way to
Canada, was said at the time to have been the most able so far made
in the Supreme Court of the United States. That and other similar
utterances by Mr. Chase were published for popular reading, and were
widely distributed by friends of the cause.

It is possible that, in performing this arduous labor, Mr. Chase, who
was not without personal ambition, was able, with his great native
sagacity, to foresee, although it must have been but dimly, the
possibilities of political development and official promotion, but at
the same time, for the same reason, he could the more clearly realize
the wearisome, heart-breaking struggle that was before him.

It was an enormous sacrifice that he made. Journeymen printers and
saddlers, like Garrison and Lundy, who had never had as much as one
hundred dollars at one time in their lives, and who had no social
position and no influential kinsfolks, had little to lose. But it was
very different with Chase. He had a profession that represented great
wealth. He had distinguished and aristocratic family connections. He
had a high place in society. All these he risked and largely lost.

In speaking of his sacrifices at that time in a subsequent letter to a
friend, he wrote:

"Having resolved on my political course, I devoted all the time
and means I could command to the work of spreading the principles
and building up the organization of the party of constitutional
freedom then inaugurated. Sometimes, indeed, all I could do seemed
insignificant, while the labors I had to perform, and the demand
upon my very limited resources by necessary contributions, taxed
severely all my abilities."

The writer hereof was a witness to one incident that showed something
of the loss that Mr. Chase sustained in a business way because of his
principles. While a law student in a country village he was sent down