"In 1847, Mr. Chase was a member of the Second National Liberty Convention, and opposed the making of any national nomination at that time, urging that a more general movement against slavery extension and denomination, was likely to grow out of the agitation of the Wilmot Proviso, and the action of Congress and political parties in reference to slavery. In 1848, anticipating that the conventions of the Whig and Democratic parties would probably refuse to take grounds against the extensions of slavery, he prepared a call for a free territory state convention at Columbus, which was signed by more than 3,000 voters of all political parties. The convention thus called was largely attended, and invited a national convention to meet at Buffalo in August. The influence of Mr. Chase was conspicuous in the state convention, and no less so in the national convention, which assembled upon its invitation, and nominated Mr. Van Buren for President. An immense mass meeting was held at Buffalo at the same time. Mr. Chase was president of the national convention, and also a member of its committee on resolutions. The platform was substantially his work. On February 22d, 1849, Mr. Chase was chosen a senator of the United States from Ohio, receiving the entire vote of the Democratic members of the Legislature, and of those freesoil members who favored Democratic views. The Democratic party of Ohio, by the resolutions of its state convention, had already declared slavery an evil; and practically, through its press and the declarations of its leading men, had committed itself to the denationalization of slavery. Mr. Chase, therefore, coinciding with the Democrats in their general views of the state policy, supported their state nominees, distinctly announcing his intention, in the event of the party's desertion of its anti-slavery position, in state or national conventions, to end at once his connection with it. When the nomination of Mr. Pierce by the Baltimore convention of 1852, with a platform approving the compromise acts of 1850, and denouncing the further discussion of the slavery question, was sanctioned by the Democratic party in Ohio, Mr. Chase, true to his word, withdrew from it, and addressed to the Hon. B. F. Butler, of New York, his associate in the Buffalo convention, a letter in vindication of an independent Democratic party. He prepared a platform, which was substantially adopted by the convention of the independent Democracy at Pittsburg in 1852. Having thus gone into a minority rather than compromise his principles, Mr. Chase gave a cordial and energetic support to the nominees and measures of the independent Democracy, until the Nebraska bill gave rise to a new and powerful party, based substantially upon the ideas he had so long maintained. As a senator of the United States, Mr. Chase delivered on March 26 and 27, 1850, a speech against Mr. Clay's compromise bill, reviewing thoroughly all the questions presented in it. He moved an