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CHIEF JUSTICE CHASE AS AN ADVISOR ON PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION Edited by James E. Sefton Andrew Johnson, upon his accession to the presidency in April, 1865, immediately faced the problem of formulating a policy of reconstruction . His predecessor had left him no clear guidelines, save for his well-known spirit of generosity and the controversial "ten-per-cent plan"; the Congress had gone home for the summer without passing any relevant legislation. Many individuáis offered the President advice , as the bulky volumes of incoming correspondence among his papers in the Library of Congress testify. Of these individuáis, perhaps the most prominent was Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the United States, who visited certain coastal areas of the South during May. He conveyed his observations on southern conditions and his suggestions on reconstruction policy to the President through a series of seven letters written as his journey progressed. This series of letters has never been published in full; and historians, in devoting their attention to the tour reports submitted later in 1865 by Benjamin C. Truman, Ulysses S. Grant, and Carl Schurz, have given Chase's letters less notice than the contents warrant. Exactly how Chase's inspection tour originated is a matter of conjecture . Even before the end of hostilities he apparently had been planning a trip to the South when circumstances permitted, perhaps because his judicial circuit included some rebel territory.1 But the question remains, and it cannot be conclusively determined, whether the political aspect of the trip stemmed from Chase's suggestion or the President's request. Whatever the case, several things relevant to the origin of Chase's trip can be established with certainty. First, Chase was in frequent contact with Johnson for two weeks before leaving. Second, the President solicited Chase's views on reconstruction within twenty-four hours after taking office. Third, the Chief Justice ventured southward with strong preconceived ideas of how 1MaTy Merwin Phelps, Kate Chase: Dominant Daughter (New York, 1935), p. 173. 242 reconstruction should be accomplished and what the Negro's role in the process ought to be. Chase administered the oath of office to Johnson on April 15, and during the next eleven days he saw the President on at least four occasions . On April 16, at Johnson's request, Chase penned a draft of a speech on reconstruction for the President's consideration. The mechanics of reconstruction were simple enough to Chase: registration of "loyal citizens" would enable the election of a convention to revise the state constitution; this done, the loyal citizens would choose a state legislature which would in turn provide for the election of other state and national officers. The salient feature of Chase's plan was Negro suffrage, which he regarded as a logical result of emancipation and as a just reward for wartime loyalty.2 Chase had been advocating Negro suffrage for at least two years, and the ideas he embodied in the proposed speech were essentially the same as those he had presented for Lincoln's consideration shortly before the assassination.3 On April 17 Chase called on the President at the Kirkwood House but saw him only briefly. Next morning, after hearing a rumor that the government was planning an "invitation" to the people of North Carolina to reorganize their government, he dashed off a brief note questioning the expediency of beginning reconstruction in North Carolina. *Would it not be far better," he inquired, "to make Florida and Louisiana reaUy free states with universal suffrage and then let other states foUow?"4 Something, perhaps Johnson's receipt of this note, evoked a long interview on the same day. There is no evidence that they discussed a southern tour at this meeting, and Chase noted the session in his diary with the curious remark that the President seemed "thoroughly in earnest and much of the same mind with myself ."5 In view of the reconstruction program Johnson set in motion at the end of May, either Chase misunderstood the President's feelings on Negro suffrage or else Johnson soon changed his mind. The two men met again on April 20 and 26, and on Friday, the twenty-eighth, Chase "made...

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