Kate Chase
Encyclopedia
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
politician Salmon P. Chase
Salmon P. Chase
Salmon Portland Chase was an American politician and jurist who served as U.S. Senator from Ohio and the 23rd Governor of Ohio; as U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and as the sixth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.Chase was one of the most prominent members...
, Treasury Secretary during President Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
's first administration and later Chief Justice of the United States
Chief Justice of the United States
The Chief Justice of the United States is the head of the United States federal court system and the chief judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Chief Justice is one of nine Supreme Court justices; the other eight are the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States...
. She was a Washington society hostess during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, a strong supporter of her widowed father's presidential ambitions that would have made her First Lady
First Lady
First Lady or First Gentlemanis the unofficial title used in some countries for the spouse of an elected head of state.It is not normally used to refer to the spouse or partner of a prime minister; the husband or wife of the British Prime Minister is usually informally referred to as prime...
, and wife of Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
Governor William Sprague
William Sprague (1830-1915)
William Sprague IV was the 27th Governor of the U.S. state of Rhode Island from 1860–1863, and U.S. Senator from 1863-1875. He participated in the First Battle of Bull Run during the American Civil War.-Early years:...
.
Early life
Kate was born in Cincinnati, OhioCincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
, the daughter of Salmon Chase and his second wife Eliza Ann Smith. Eliza Chase died shortly after Kate's fifth birthday; Chase later married a woman with whom Kate had a difficult stepmother/stepdaughter relationship. Kate Chase was educated at the Haines School in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where she learned languages, elocution and the social graces along with music and history. After nine years of schooling, Kate returned to Columbus, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
, to serve as official hostess for her father, the newly elected Governor of Ohio, and by now widowed a third time. Beautiful and intelligent, Kate impressed such friends of her father as Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and Reconstruction,...
, the Massachusetts senator and fellow anti-slavery champion; James Garfield
James Garfield
James Abram Garfield served as the 20th President of the United States, after completing nine consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Garfield's accomplishments as President included a controversial resurgence of Presidential authority above Senatorial courtesy in executive...
, the future President; and Carl Schurz
Carl Schurz
Carl Christian Schurz was a German revolutionary, American statesman and reformer, and Union Army General in the American Civil War. He was also an accomplished journalist, newspaper editor and orator, who in 1869 became the first German-born American elected to the United States Senate.His wife,...
, the German-born American politician, who described her as follows:
Life in Washington
Marriage and divorce
Kate Chase married Rhode IslandRhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
Governor William Sprague
William Sprague (1830-1915)
William Sprague IV was the 27th Governor of the U.S. state of Rhode Island from 1860–1863, and U.S. Senator from 1863-1875. He participated in the First Battle of Bull Run during the American Civil War.-Early years:...
, a textile magnate, in 1863.
They had four children: William (b. 1865), Ethel (b. 1869), Catherine (b. 1872) (who was mentally disabled) and Portia (b. 1873). Sprague had problems with alcohol
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, had affairs with other women, and lost huge sums of money in poorly-conceived business ventures. Some evidence also suggests that he engaged in illegal cotton trading activities during the war.
William Sprague
William Sprague (1830-1915)
William Sprague IV was the 27th Governor of the U.S. state of Rhode Island from 1860–1863, and U.S. Senator from 1863-1875. He participated in the First Battle of Bull Run during the American Civil War.-Early years:...
became a U.S. Senator in 1863. During the 1868 impeachment
Impeachment
Impeachment is a formal process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as other punishment....
trial of President Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
, presided over by Salmon Chase as Chief Justice, Sprague kept his intentions to himself but ended up voting with most Republican senators for conviction. This may have furthered his rift with Kate, whose father's chances for the 1868 Republican Presidential nomination would have been damaged had Johnson been removed from office. Next in line to the Presidency, under the law at the time, was radical Republican President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, Benjamin Wade
Benjamin Wade
Benjamin Franklin "Bluff" Wade was a U.S. lawyer and United States Senator. In the Senate, he was associated with the Radical Republicans of that time.-Early life:...
, who could have then run as an incumbent. In the end, Johnson was acquitted by a single vote.
The marriage ended in divorce in 1882. Before the divorce, Kate was accused of having an affair with the flamboyant and powerful New York Senator Roscoe Conkling
Roscoe Conkling
Roscoe Conkling was a politician from New York who served both as a member of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate. He was the leader of the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party and the last person to refuse a U.S. Supreme Court appointment after he had...
. According to a well-known story, buttressed by contemporaneous press reports, Sprague confronted the philandering couple at Sprague's Rhode Island summer home and pursued Conkling with a shotgun and threatened to throw Kate out of a second story window.
Willie Sprague continued to live with his father, while the daughters went with Kate Chase, who took back her maiden name after the divorce.
Political action
Kate worked behind the scenes to foster her father's calculated efforts to wrest the 1864 Republican Party nomination for President from Lincoln, but the plot blew up in Chase's face when it became public, requiring Chase to settle back into his Treasury Secretary position. One of Chase's many perfunctory offers of resignation from the Cabinet was accepted by Lincoln (much to Chase's surprise and consternation) in 1864, but the cunning President appointed Chase Chief Justice upon the death of Roger Taney that year. The evidence conflicts as to whether Kate welcomed this prestigious appointment or rued it as an attempt to put her father "on the shelf" so as to preempt any hope of his attaining his true goal of the highest office in the land.Despite his position on the Supreme Court, Chase let it be known in 1868 that he was available as a candidate for the Presidency. He switched parties from the Republicans (of whom he had been an important early member) to the Democrats, hoping they would nominate him. In that summer of 1868, Kate ran her father's campaign for the Democratic nomination from their hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York City, where the convention was being held in famed Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society...
. Although tradition prevented her appearance, as a woman, on the convention floor, she did much of the back-room maneuvering with the goal of winning the nomination after the first ballot. At times the prize seemed within their grasp, but the convention ended up nominating Horatio Seymour
Horatio Seymour
Horatio Seymour was an American politician. He was the 18th Governor of New York from 1853 to 1854 and from 1863 to 1864. He was the Democratic Party nominee for president of the United States in the presidential election of 1868, but lost the election to Republican and former Union General of...
, the Democratic Governor of New York, whom Kate and other Chase operatives had been counting on to place her father's name in nomination. Kate placed the blame for the defeat on a conspiracy of New York politicians including Samuel Tilden. Kate wrote her father after the convention: "You have been most cruelly deceived and shamefully used by the man [Tilden] whom you trusted implicitly and the country must suffer for his duplicity." Kate would reputedly have her revenge on Tilden eight years later when her paramour Conkling, the most powerful member of the Senate, maneuvered to throw the disputed 1876 election to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th President of the United States . As president, he oversaw the end of Reconstruction and the United States' entry into the Second Industrial Revolution...
over the Democrat Tilden, who had won the popular vote.
Chase would make one final bid for the presidency in 1872, with Kate's full support, but by then he was physically weakened and a political has-been; then he ran as a Liberal Republican, challenging the incumbent Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
. The effort went nowhere and Chase died a year later, with Kate (and Sprague, her husband in name only) at his bedside.
Later years
In 1873, following her father's death, Kate moved onto the “Edgewood” estate, which later became the neighborhood of Edgewood, Washington, D.C.Edgewood, Washington, D.C.
Edgewood is a neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C Edgewood is bounded by Lincoln Road and Glenwood Cemetery to the west; the tracks for the Red Line of the Washington Metro to the east; Rhode Island Avenue NE to the south; and the combination of Irving Street, Michigan Avenue, and Monroe...
(Her father purchased the bulk of the estate in 1863, and he had constructed a mansion upon it.). She lived a quiet, sometimes reclusive life with her three daughters (according to the 1880 federal census), Ethel Sprague, Kitty Sprague, and Portia Sprague. After her son Willie committed suicide in 1890 at the age of 25, Kate became a recluse. She died in poverty in 1899, at age 58, of Bright's disease
Bright's disease
Bright's disease is a historical classification of kidney diseases that would be described in modern medicine as acute or chronic nephritis. The term is no longer used, as diseases are now classified according to their more fully understood causes....
(a kidney disease).
The New York Times wrote, on her death, that "the homage of the most eminent men in the country was hers." The Washington Post called her "The most brilliant woman of her day. None outshone her." The Cincinnati Enquirer, the paper of her birthplace, said about her funeral:
And yet, the Enquirer recognized her legacy: "No Queen has ever reigned under the Stars and Stripes, but this remarkable woman came closer to being Queen than any American woman has."
Kate Chase's presence in Washington DC would be fictionally recreated in the 1990s TV series "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer
The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer
The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer is an American sitcom that aired on UPN in 1998. Before it was even debuted, the series set off a storm of controversy because of a perceived light-hearted take on the issue of American slavery.-Story:...
." She is prominent in Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
's historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
Lincoln
Lincoln (novel)
Lincoln is a historical novel, part of the Narratives of Empire series by Gore Vidal.Set during the American Civil War, the novel describes the presidency of Abraham Lincoln through the eyes of several historical figures, including presidential secretary John Hay, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln,...
and is also portrayed in the 1988 made-for-TV movie.
Further reading
- The Belle of Washington, by Eleanor Harper Shumaker
- Kate Chase and William Sprague: Politics and Gender in a Civil War Marriage, by Peg A. Lamphier
- Kate Chase for the Defense, by Alice Sokoloff
- Kate Chase, Dominant Daughter: The Life Story of a Brilliant Woman and her Famous Father, by Mary Merwin Phelps
- Proud Kate, Portrait of an Ambitious Woman, by Ishabel Ross
- So Fell the Angels, The Story of Chase, Lincoln's ambitious Chief Justice, his bold designing daughter, and the husband who could finance her plans, by Thomas Graham Belden and Marva Robins Belden
- LincolnLincoln (novel)Lincoln is a historical novel, part of the Narratives of Empire series by Gore Vidal.Set during the American Civil War, the novel describes the presidency of Abraham Lincoln through the eyes of several historical figures, including presidential secretary John Hay, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln,...
, by Gore VidalGore VidalGore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
- The author uses Kate Chase as a major character in his novel - FreedomFreedom (Safire novel)Freedom is a historical novel by American essayist William Safire, set in the early years of the American Civil War. It concludes with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863....
by William SafireWilliam SafireWilliam Lewis Safire was an American author, columnist, journalist and presidential speechwriter....
- Kate Chase appears in several chapters of this novel - Two Moons a novel by Thomas Mallon, includes a fictional account of the Kate Chase/Roscoe Conkling extramarital affair
- Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham LincolnTeam of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham LincolnTeam of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a book by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin published in 2005. The book is a biographical portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his Cabinet from 1861 to 1865...
by Doris Kearns GoodwinDoris Kearns GoodwinDoris Kearns Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American biographer and historian, and an oft-seen political commentator. She is the author of biographies of several U.S...
, who provides comprehensive biographical information about Kate Chase
External links
- Kate Chase memorial at Find a GraveFind A GraveFind a Grave is a commercial website providing free access and input to an online database of cemetery records. It was founded in 1998 as a DBA and incorporated in 2000.-History:...
.