Salmon P. Chase was one of the preeminent men of nineteenth-century America. A majestic figure, tall and stately, Chase was a leader in the fight to end slavery, a brilliant administrator who as Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury provided crucial funding for a vastly expensive war. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the turmoil of Reconstruction, he was the presiding officer of the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. Yet he was also a complex figure.

As John Niven reveals in this magisterial biography, Chase was a paradoxical blend of idealism and ambition. If he stood for the highest moral purposes - the freedom and equality of all mankind - these lofty motives failed to mask a thirst for power so deeply ingrained in his character that it drove away many who shared his principles, but invariably mistrusted his motives.

1. What emerges is a portrait of a tragic figure, whose high qualities of heart and mind and whose many achievements were ultimately tarnished by an often unseemly quest for power. It is a striking look at an eminent statesman as well as a revealing glimpse into political life of nineteenth-century America, all set against a background of the antislavery movement, the Civil War, and the turmoil of Reconstruction.