Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [28]
“I would rather be first in Cincinnati than first in Baltimore, twenty years hence,” Chase immodestly confessed to Charles Cleveland. “As I have ever been first at school and college…I shall strive to be first wherever I may be.” Cincinnati had become a booming city in 1830, one of the West’s largest. Less than two decades earlier, when the state was founded, much of Ohio “was covered by the primeval forest.” Chase knew the prospects for a young lawyer would be good in the rapidly developing region, but could not help feeling, as he had upon his arrival in Washington, like “a stranger and an adventurer.”
Despite past achievements, Chase suffered from crippling episodes of shyness, exacerbated by his shame over a minor speech defect that lent an unusual tone to his voice. “I wish I was as sure of your elocution as I am of everything else,” William Wirt cautioned. “Your voice is a little nasal as well as guttural, and your articulation stiff, laborious and thick…. I would not mention these things if they were incurable—but they are not, as Demosthenes has proved—and it is only necessary for you to know the fact, to provide the remedy.” In addition to the humiliation he felt over his speaking voice, Salmon Chase was tormented by his own name. He fervently wished to change its “awkward, fishy” sound to something more elegant. “How wd. this name do (Spencer de Cheyce or Spencer Payne Cheyce),” he inquired of Cleveland. “Perhaps you will laugh at this but I assure you I have suffered no little inconvenience.”
Bent on a meteoric rise in this new city, Chase redoubled his resolve to work. “I made this resolution today,” he wrote in his diary soon after settling in. “I will try to excel in all things.” Pondering the goals he had set for his new life in the West, Chase wrote: “I was fully aware that I must pass thro’ a long period of probation…. That many obstacles were to be overcome, many difficulties to be surmounted ere I could hope to reach the steep where Fame’s proud temple shines,” complete with “deserved honor, eminent usefulness and a ‘crown of glory.’”
Nonetheless, he had made a good beginning. After struggling for several years to secure enough legal business to support himself, he developed a lucrative practice, representing various business interests and serving as counsel for several large Cincinnati banks. At the same time, following Benjamin Franklin’s advice for continual self-improvement, he founded a popular lecture series in Cincinnati, joined a temperance society, undertook the massive project of collecting Ohio’s scattered statutes into three published volumes, tried his hand at poetry, and wrote numerous articles for publication in various magazines. To maintain these multiple pursuits, he would often arise at 4 a.m. and occasionally allowed himself to work on Sundays, though he berated himself whenever he did so.
The more successful Chase became, the more his pious family fretted over his relentless desire for earthly success and distinction. “I confess I almost tremble for you,” his elder sister Abigail wrote him when he was twenty-four years old, “as I observe your desire to distinguish yourself and apparent devotedness to those pursuits whose interests terminate in this life.” If his sister hoped that a warm family life would replace his ambition with love, her hopes were brutally crushed by the fates that brought him to love and lose three young wives.
His first, Catherine “Kitty” Garniss—a warm, outgoing, attractive young woman whom he loved passionately—died in 1835 from complications of childbirth after eighteen months of marriage. She was only twenty-three. Her death was “so overwhelming, so unexpected,” he told his friend Cleveland, that he could barely function. “I wish you could have known her,” he wrote. “She was universally beloved by her acquaintances…. She was gifted with unusual intellectual power…. And now I feel a loneliness the more dreadful, from the intimacy