Senate Chamber
April 11th [1868]
I have your note of
the 7th and am much obliged
to you for it.1
The newspapers are full of rumors
about Mr. Chase,2 but I cannot
think there is the least foundation
for them. I have had too much
experience in these matters not to
know how almost universally false
such stories are, and I have known
Mr. Chase too long and well to
imagine that he has been governed
by any unworthy motives, in the course
he has taken.
I am pained to be obliged to differ
from him so widely & to find that
he is, as it seems to me, so much
mistaken, but that he is going
to prove false to the principles
he has supported through life,
I do not for an instant believe.
Faithfully yours
Charles Sumner
Col. T. W. Higginson
Newport
R.
I.
Source: New-York Historical Society. Not to be copied, quoted, or used in any manner without written permission from the New-York Historical Society.
1. On March 31, 1868, after Chase expressed his right as presiding judge to rule on questions of evidence in the impeachment trial, Sumner proposed two motions protesting such right. Both motions were defeated (Congressional Globe, 40th Cong., 2nd sess., supp. 59, 63). Higginson wrote to thank Sumner for his recent opinion "The Chief Justice, Presiding in the Senate, Cannot Rule or Vote." Higginson to Sumner, April 7, 1868, Beverly Palmer, Papers of Charles Sumner, 41:476; Charles Sumner, Works, 16:98-133).
2. Higginson asked Sumner if he had heard the story that Chase had earlier consulted certain Democrats about the presidential nomination, and advised checking out the story. The New York Tribune (April 1, 1868) and the New York Evening Post (March 23, 1868) printed reports about Chase's possible candidacy in 1868.