So Fell the Angels

Thomas Graham Belden, Marva Robins Belden

• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781839742880
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

This is the biography of three of the most fascinating personalities of Civil War America. They were Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a man obsessed with the ambition to become President; Chase's daughter Kate, who was Washington's reigning beauty and America's most influential political hostess; and Kate's husband William Sprague, the young millionaire Senator from Rhode Island.Chase was a man of talent, even of potential greatness. This classic figure of a statesman had fought his way up through the jungle of mid-nineteenth-century American politics to a place of leadership. He was among the most powerful spokesmen of the uncompromising Radical wing of the Republican Party. Chase was bitterly disappointed when the Republican convention of 1860 passed him by, deciding in favor of a compromise candidate, Abraham Lincoln. He was determined that 1864 would not see him unsuccessful again. With his portrait engraved on the nation's greenbacks, his name and face were continuously before the country.

Epilogue

WILLIAM SPRAGUE seemed unmoved by Kate’s death. He and his second wife made occasional trips abroad, and when he returned to the United States, he was greeted by reporters, respectful of his opinions on world affairs. Mr. Sprague answered their questions judiciously, and his words appeared in the New York Tribune.{773} When a prospective biographer of the Chase family wrote asking him for pictures of his family, he spoke equally judiciously, referring to the children as Kate’s. “When Kate left here, 1879 I think it was, she took all her pictures with her. Her youngest daughter Portia Chase Sprague is at Washington, D.C....Ethel the elder is at a sanatorium in Washington. Dr. Donaldson of Baltimore [Ethel’s husband] is dead.” (Kitty died shortly after Kate.)

He reminisced about the Republican convention of 1860, a turning point of history that had had an incalculable effect on his own life. Chase might have had the presidential nomination then had Lincoln been willing to accept the Vice-Presidency, said Sprague. “His wife declined saying: ‘He takes first place or none.’” As Sprague knew, that ultimatum might have been delivered by Kate, speaking for her father. Had Chase, instead of Lincoln, been nominated and elected in 1860, Kate probably would have been satisfied to do without the Boy Governor and his twenty-five million dollars. Perhaps that thought was in Sprague’s mind when he said, “Thus, straws turn great occasions.”{774}

Sprague delivered his judgments on history from Canonchet, which he had succeeded in wresting from his creditors by livelier methods than his ex-wife had used to save Edgewood. With his celebrated shotgun he managed to keep marauding officers of the law off the premises until the rightful owner died. His widow appealed to the courts; but by the time her claim was validated, she, too, was dead. Giving in to Sprague’s lawless obstinacy with surprisingly go...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• Acknowledgments
• BOOK ONE
• BOOK TWO
• Epilogue