“Spur Up Your Pegasus”: Family Letters of Salmon, Kate, and Nettie Chase, 1844–1873 (review)

Salmon P. Chase, politician and statesman, has often emerged as the subject of historical works within the context of his government offices: as senator, governor, secretary of the treasury under Abraham Lincoln, presidential candidate, and chief justice of the Supreme Court. This work edited by James P. McClure (senior associate editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson), Peg A. Lamphier (author of Kate Chase and William Sprague: Politics and Gender in a Civil War Marriage, 2003), and Erika M. Kreger reveals a more intimate and cherished role of Salmon Chase: father.

Following the tragic early deaths of three wives and several children, the surviving one-parent family unit was made up of Salmon Chase and his daughters Catharine (Kate) and Janet (Nettie). The book’s title, derived from one of Chase’s own letters to daughter Nettie in which “he alluded to the mythical winged horse Pegasus as the carrier of a writer’s inspiration” (vii), captures the lovingly instructive nature of the careful parent revealed through the family’s letters to one another. Since the family was often separated by Chase’s political life and the girls’ schooling and, later, marriages, the letters provided a link between them wherein they expressed tender feelings against the backdrop of the volatile time in which they all lived.

Editors McClure, Lamphier, and Kreger included letters from Chase that illustrate the many facets of his parental role, among which include interest in the health of his family, writing and educational instruction, religion, and the culture and traditions of society. The scope of the correspondence runs until the death of Salmon Chase and includes all of the letters of Kate and Nettie to their father and to each other during this time. Within the editorial method, the editors reveal the selection of 155 of Salmon Chase’s letters that best illuminate his educational and religious instructions to his daughters and tender feelings of fatherhood. A welcome addition to the letters of Salmon, Kate, and Nettie are a few from their respective mothers, Lizzie and Belle, who died soon after their marriages to the girls’ father.

The lengthy introduction acquaints the reader with the historical context and provides background information on the writers and those surrounding them. Without a previous knowledge of nineteenth-century politics and society, a reader could gain an expansive picture of the world of Salmon Chase and his family through the information provided within the introduction.

The letters themselves were rendered faithfully with an eye to maintaining the integrity of meaning intended by the author. The annotations included provide insight into the subjects discussed in the letters that may not be apparent to modern readers. The result allows the text to be viewed without interruption and with the added delight of increased insight into the family connections shared by the Chase family.

The addition of these family letters into the historical discourse of the nineteenth century provides not only another facet to the life of Salmon P. Chase, that of devoted father and husband, but also adds to the history of family life in the nineteenth century, especially during a period of turmoil for the young nation. Modern audiences can gain much from the intimacies shared by the Chase family through the lost art of letter writing.