• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

In the summer of 1846, Stanton spent several days with Chase at his Cincinnati home. The wide-ranging conversations they enjoyed left a lasting impression on Stanton. “Since our pleasant intercourse together last summer,” Stanton wrote Chase, “no living person has been oftener in my mind;—waking or sleeping,—for, more than once, I have dreamed of being with you. The strength of my regard and affection for you, I can, thus, tell more freely than were we face to face.”

More than sorrow bound Chase and Stanton together. At the time of their acquaintance in the mid-1840s, both men were trying to find a footing in quick-shifting political currents. Chase had already taken his stand with the Liberty Party. Stanton, though intrigued by the newly formed party, remained a loyal Democrat. Over the course of many hours, in conversation and then by letter, they debated the merits of the new Liberty Party. Responding to Chase’s worry about the narrowness of the party’s platform, Stanton cited examples of single ideas that had achieved great triumphs: most notably, “Taxation & Representation,” the slogan that guided the American Revolution. “I go for one idea in party,” he wrote, “and in friendship my one idea is strong & sincere love for you.” With Chase, Stanton felt free to criticize the Democratic Party, which had gravely disappointed him in a recent election when its candidate for governor came out in favor of the discriminatory Black Laws.

Chase tried to involve Stanton in the Van Zandt appeal, but Stanton declined, fearing he had neither the “physical nor intellectual strength sufficient to engage in the cause. Events of the past summer have broken my spirits, crushed my hopes, and without energy or purpose in life, I feel indifferent to the present, careless of the future.” Chase apparently did not reply to this letter. “Many weeks have gone by,” Stanton wrote in January 1847, “but your voice reaches me no more. Why is it? The question arises, as I move slowly & disappointed from the post office each day.”

The correspondence picked up again in the spring, when Chase sent Stanton his argument in the Van Zandt case. “Rejoicing, as I do, to call you friend,” Stanton wrote after reading through the lengthy document, “it gives me pleasure to acknowledge its intellectual merit.” Rather than discuss it in writing, he hoped that he and Chase could soon meet and “spend two or three days” together. “I want to hear from you,” Stanton concluded, “and so may as well confess it at once & throw myself upon your mercy.”

They finally met in Cincinnati in July, but the visit was too abbreviated to satisfy Stanton. The desire for his friend’s company had been lodged in his heart for so long, Stanton explained to Chase upon returning home to Steubenville, that the visit, while enjoyable, had left him ungratified. In the months that followed, however, they saw each other on a number of occasions and opened their hearts in correspondence. After receiving a particularly affectionate letter from Chase, Stanton fervently replied that it “filled my heart with joy; to be loved by you, and be told that you value my love is a gratification beyond my power to express.” He went on to downplay reports Chase had heard that he had developed a “magnetic attraction” for a new woman. “I wish it were so,” he admitted. “To love, and to be loved, is a necessary condition of my happiness…I have met with no one that exercises upon me the least attraction beyond the general qualities of the sex.”

In the meantime, his friendship with Chase, and his memories of their time together, sustained him. “Allow me my dear friend again this evening to enter your study—you know I like it better than the parlor even without fire—but the fire is blazing there—let me take you by the hand throw my arm around you, say I love you, & bid you farewell.”

As their friendship grew, Chase urged Stanton to involve himself more deeply in the struggle against slavery. He promised Stanton, who remained a Democrat, that