2 Grants Awarded for Historical Project

The Claremont Graduate School has received two financial awards to support editorial work on the papers of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase.

The first is a renewal grant from the National Historical Publications and Records, a division of the National Archives, for $69,000 in 1992-93. In addition, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded $60,000 in outright grants for 1992-94 and $25,000 in matching funds.

Since its inception in 1984, the Chase Papers project has received more than $575,000 in federal grants and $30,000 from private sources.

The project, led by John Niven, an authority on 19th-Century American politics and biography, completed a microfilm edition of selected Chase papers in 1987. It is currently preparing the second volume of a selective print edition.

Salmon Portland Chase (1808-1873) was a U.S. senator, governor of Ohio and secretary of the Treasury during the Civil War before becoming chief justice of the Supreme Court. Chase, one of the most prominent members of the Liberty, Free Soil and Republican parties before the Civil War, entered politics through his involvement as a lawyer in the antislavery cause of the 1830s and ‘40s.