Kate Chase
Washington Hostess During the Civil War
Kate Chase was the daughter of Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln and later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Despite her youth, Kate was the reigning social queen of Washington, DC during the Civil War and a strong supporter of her widowed father's presidential ambitions that would have made her First Lady.Katherine Jane Chase was born August 13, 1840, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of famous Ohio politician Salmon P. Chase and his second wife Eliza Ann Smith, who died shortly after Kate's fifth birthday. Kate is best known as a society hostess during the American Civil War, and a strong supporter of her father's political ambitions.
Kate Chase was educated at the Haines School in New York City, where she learned languages, elocution and the social graces along with music and history. Kate witnessed her father's political rise in Ohio, where he established a reputation as an antislavery lawyer. At sixteen, Kate decided that her father should be President of the United States, and dedicated her life to that end.
