ren was nominated for the
presidency. His object, however, was not to establish a permanent new
party organization, but to bring pressure to bear upon Northern
Democrats to force them to adopt a policy opposed to the further
extension of slavery.

In 1849 he was elected to the United States Senate as the result of a
coalition between the Democrats and a small group of Free-Soilers in the
state legislature; and for some years thereafter, except in 1852, when
he rejoined the Free-Soilers, he classed himself as an Independent
Democrat, though he was out of harmony with the leaders of the
Democratic party. During his service in the Senate (1849-1855) he was
pre-eminently the champion of anti-slavery in that body, and no one
spoke more ably than he did against the Compromise Measures of 1850 and
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska legislation, and
the subsequent troubles in Kansas, having convinced him of the futility
of trying to influence the Democrats, he assumed the leadership in the
North-west of the movement to form a new party to oppose the extension
of slavery. The "Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the
People of the United States," written by Chase and Giddings, and
published in the New York _Times_ of the 24th of January 1854, may be
regarded as the earliest draft of the Republican party creed. He was the
first Republican governor of Ohio, serving from 1855 to 1859. Although,
with the exception of Seward, he was the most prominent Republican in
the country, and had done more against slavery than any other
Republican, he failed to secure the nomination for the presidency in
1860, partly because his views on the question of protection were not
orthodox from a Republican point of view, and partly because the old
line Whig element could not forgive his coalition with the Democrats in
the senatorial campaign of 1849; his uncompromising and conspicuous
anti-slavery record, too, was against him from the point of view of
"availability." As secretary of the treasury in President Lincoln's
cabinet in 1861-1864, during the first three years of the Civil War, he
rendered services of the greatest value. That period of crisis witnessed
two great changes in American financial policy, the establishment of a
national banking system and the issue of a legal tender paper currency.
The former was Chase's own particular measure. He suggested the idea,
worked out all of the important principles and man