The Tragedy of the Father
Salmon Portland Chase (1808-73), was New Hampshire born. Only nine when his father died, his mother was left with ten children and meager resources, so young Salmon was raised by relatives in Ohio who provided him with a fine education. That included admission to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where he was Phi Beta Kappa.
Upon graduation, he read law, did well, and returned to Ohio, settling in the Cincinnati area. Considered good looking, smart and gregarious, he married three times, but alas for poor Mr. Chase, all three brides died before they reached thirty-five. During those short lived marriages, he also fathered six children, and alas again, only two lived to maturity. Four died in infancy.
Salmon Chase likely gave up on matrimony, although he was known to escort an attractive woman from time to time.
The Glorious Kate
Catherine Jane Chase (1840-1899) was born to the second Mrs. Chase, who died when Kate was five. Perhaps grieving the loss of two young wives, and needing a mother for his daughter, he married again.
Kate was a headstrong girl, destined to grow up tall, slim, and very pretty. And smart as a whip. Unsurprisingly, she did not get on with her new stepmother – and baby sister. To ease tensions, Chase enrolled Kate in a fashionable (and expensive) finishing school in New York City where she thrived. The sophistication, culture and opportunities of cosmopolitan New York appealed to her. She practically inhaled its snobbishness. Between her good looks and good smarts, she insisted on the very best of everything, and her father, growing in stature and wealth, was happy to indulge his elder daughter.
By the time she was sixteen, Kate’s stepmother had died. Her father, wafting and wobbling between being a Democrat and a Free-Soiler, had recently become a member of the newly emerging Republican Party, en route to the Governorship of Ohio. He had also developed an unrelenting ambition to become President.
Kate Chase returned home. She was now old enough to assume the role she was trained for.
The Lady, The Role and The Image
When Salmon Chase became Ohio’s Governor, Kate was in the position she was born to fill. She had learned her finishing school lessons well, and was an accomplished hostess from the start. She was also what could be termed 19th century “arm candy.” Her father was proud to escort the beauteous Kate, and equally proud to let her charm the important men who came to his table. While she could be outspoken and opinionated, the men liked her – mostly for her beauty, but she was also very interesting in table conversation.
On her part, Kate had developed (or perhaps was born with) the politician’s gift for remembering names and faces, and those tidbits of information that make guests feel important. And she loved sharing her “interesting insights” with her father, who understood their value.
Kate and the Civil War
Salmon P. Chase did not receive the Republican nomination for President in 1860, much to his dismay, and eternal belief that he would have been a better choice than Abraham Lincoln. But as Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, he rented a grand mansion in Washington and installed his charming 20-year-old daughter as his hostess. She was a huge hit with everyone – except Mrs. Lincoln, who immediately saw through the finishing school “ploys” of position. After all, Mary Lincoln went to a finishing school, too.
William Sprague, the young Rhode Island Governor and scion to a manufacturing fortune, had enlisted in the Union Army, was immediately made a Colonel, and came to Washington, and was enchanted (maybe) by the beautiful Miss Chase. Short, no Adonis, and masking a dissolute and abusive nature, he wooed Kate. She, perhaps, found him more attractive when he stood on his wallet. The Chases needed financing for her father’s future presidential ambitions, and Kate had ambitions of her own. If Papa was President, she would be de facto First Lady.
The Spragues married in 1863. It was a splashy bash, with the cream of everyone in Washington in attendance, except for Mrs. Lincoln, who couldn’t stand the bride and couldn’t force the smile. The groom presented Kate with a jeweled tiara worth $50,000.
A Mismatched Misery
It was a horrible marriage, despite the infusion of money. Sprague was unfaithful, a chronic alcoholic, and not averse to abusive behavior. Or speculation and illegal profiteering. Kate was happy to spend his money, and despite their four children, was not averse to breaking her own marriage vows.
A decade later, living mostly apart, she began an affair with the flamboyant and also-married NY Senator Roscoe Conkling, whose presidential ambitions matched her father, now Chief Justice and long-in-the-tooth. The Sprague-Conkling scandals made the newspapers. Sprague eventually imprisoned her in their house, but she escaped (through a window) and filed for divorce in 1882. It was messy, and he refused to support her.
The Great Fall
Kate was broke, except for her “personal belongings,” which she periodically sold to make ends meet. She mortgaged the mansion left to her by her father. Her only son, dissolute and snarly like his father, committed suicide. One of her daughters was mentally handicapped. Her other daughters left home. She became reclusive, grateful that some old, wealthy friends paid off her mortgages to ease the burdens.
For the last decade of her life, shortened by Bright’s Disease, then always fatal, the proud Kate Chase, a queen-sans-throne, sold the butter and eggs and vegetables from her property door-to-door to eke out a living – and support her handicapped daughter.
When she died, only her three daughters attended her funeral.
Sources:
Goodwin, Doris Kearns – Team of Rivals – Simon & Schuster, 2015
Ross, Ishbel – Proud Kate: Portrait of an Ambitious Woman – Harper, 1953
https://guides.loc.gov/this-month-in-business-history/january/salmon-p-chase
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/stalwarts-half-breeds-and-political-assassination.htm
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