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[60] funds held out. Everything depended on the treasury. Failure there meant irretrievable disaster. It would not answer to have any serious mistakes in that quarter, and in fact no fatal mistakes were there made. In all other departments there were failures and blunders, but the financial department met every emergency and every requisition. Chase's financial policy it was that carried the country majestically through the war, and that afterwards paid the nation's debts.

There is a circumstance that has not been mentioned, as far as the writer knows, by any of Mr. Chase's biographers, which seems to him to be significant and worth referring to. During the Civil War, Walter Bagehot was editor of the Economist, the great English financial journal. His opinion in financial matters was regarded as the highest authority. It was accepted as infallible. He discussed the plans of Mr. Chase with great elaborateness and great severity. He predicted that they were all destined to failure, and proved this theoretically to his own satisfaction and the satisfaction of many others. The result showed that Mr. Chase was right all the time, and the great English economist was wrong.

The entrance of such a man into the Abolitionist movement marked an era in its history. It was the thing most needed. He gave it a leader who, of all men then living, was most competent for leadership. From that time he was its Moses.

The greatest service rendered to the Abolition cause by Salmon P. Chase was in pushing it forward on political lines. There was a contest for the mastery

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