Perhaps the wisdom of his
judgment was never better exemplified than in his purchase from Russia
of the great territory known as Alaska, for the sum of $7,200,000.
Alaska was regarded at the time as an icy desert of no economic value,
but time has changed that estimate, and the discovery of gold there made
it one of the richest of the country's possessions.
Outside of Seward, Sumner and Stevens, the most prominent public man of
the time was Salmon P. Chase, an Ohioan who had for many years taken an
important part in the anti-slavery controversy. Although sent to the
Senate in 1849 as a Democrat, he left the party on the nomination of
Pierce in 1852, when it stood committed to the support and extension of
slavery. Three years later, he was elected governor of Ohio by the
Republicans. He was Lincoln's secretary of the treasury, and financed
the country during its most trying period in a way that compelled the
admiration even of his enemies. He served afterwards as Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court, dying in 1873. He was another man whose life was
embittered by failure to attain the prize of the presidency. Three times
he tried for it, in 1860, in 1864, and in 1868, but he never came within
measurable distance of it. For he lacked the capacity for making
friends, and repelled rather than attracted by a studiously impressive
demeanor, a painful decorousness, and an unbending dignity, which was,
of course, no true dignity at all, but merely a bad imitation of it.
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