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. In
a word, he lacked the saving sense of humor--the quality which endeared
Abraham Lincoln to the whole nation.

Another Ohioan who loomed large in the history of the time was John
Sherman, a lawyer like all the rest, a member of Congress since 1855,
not at first a great opponent of slavery, but drawn into the battle by
his allegiance to the Republican party, forming an alliance with
Thaddeus Stevens, and collaborating with him in the production of the
reconstruction act. He was appointed secretary of the treasury by
President Hayes, in 1876, and his great work for the country was done in
that office, in re-establishing the credit which the Civil War had
shaken. He, also, was bitten by the presidential bacillus, and was a
candidate for the nomination at three conventions, but each time fell
short of the goal--once when he had it seemingly within his grasp. A
stern, forceful, capable man, he left his impress upon the times.

* * * * *

Of the men who guided the fortunes of the Confederacy, only two need be
mentioned here--Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens; for, rich as
the Confederacy was in generals, it was undeniably poor in statesmen.
The golden age of the South had departed; with John C. Calhoun passed
away the last really commanding figure amon