Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Swamp Fox
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.johnollernyc.com/
CITY: New York
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
Not same as John W. Oller Jr. * http://www.johnollernyc.com/author/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 97036159
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n97036159
HEADING: Oller, John
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100 10 |a Oller, John
670 __ |a His Jean Arthur, 1997: |b t.p. (John Oller) t.p. verso (John R. Oller) bk. jkt. (native of Huron, Ohio; journalism degree, Ohio State Univ. and law degree, Georgetown Univ.; attorney in NYC)
953 __ |a pv02
PERSONAL
Born in Huron, OH.
EDUCATION:Ohio State University, B.A. (summa cum laude); Georgetown University, J.D. (magna cum laude).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and attorney. Willkie Farr & Gallagher, New York, NY, associate, partner, retired 2011.
AVOCATIONS:Golf, traveling, attending theater performances, watching films.
MEMBER:Biographers International Organization, Dramatists Guild.
WRITINGS
Also author of One Firm: A History of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, 2004, and An All-American Murder.
SIDELIGHTS
John Oller is a writer and attorney who lives in New York City and California. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Ohio State University. Oller studied journalism and interned for a congressman in Washington, DC, and for publications, including the Rochester Times-Union and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He went on to attend law school at Georgetown University. After graduating, Oller became an associate at Willkie Farr & Gallagher, a law firm based in New York City. He worked in the firm’s litigation department, eventually earning the title of partner.
Oller retired from the firm in 2011 and has since focused on writing. He has written books of nonfiction, including An All-American Murder and One Firm: A Short History of Willkie Farr & Gallagher. In the former, he discusses a murder that occurred in 1975 in Columbus, Ohio. A man was accused of the homicide at the time, but no one was convicted of the crime. Oller’s book instigated an investigation into the cold case by the Columbus Police Department. The police discovered that the man accused of the murder was not the killer.
American Queen
Oller profiles a colorful figure in nineteenth-century East Coast politics in his 2014 book American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War “Belle of the North” and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal. Sprague was known for her great beauty and fashion sense and became an important figure in political society at the young age of twenty. Her father, Salmon Chase, was serving as Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury. Because Sprague’s mother had died, she was responsible for hosting parties in Washington, DC. Salmon Chase is described as an ambitious schemer who hoped to outshine Lincoln and had aspirations of becoming president himself. He regularly gathered members of the press, government employees, and diplomats, encouraging them to further his influence. In 1863 Kate Chase was married to William Sprague, the young governor from Rhode Island. Her husband came from a wealthy family in the textile business and became a senator. Chase hoped to use the Sprague’s money to finance his presidential campaign. Sprague supported her father’s political campaigns, but they were all unsuccessful. Eventually, Chase was named Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Sprague’s marriage began to crumble. Her husband was an alcoholic and was having an affair with a woman named Mary Viall. Also, his behavior as a senator was inappropriate. His speeches were aimless and sometimes veered into the divulging of salacious details about his romantic relationships. Sprague began having an affair, as well, with Roscoe Conkling. Conkling, who was also married, was a New York senator. He and Sprague did not hide their relationship and were spotted together in public regularly. Eventually, Sprague’s husband learned of the affair and threatened the couple with a gun. Finally, the Spragues divorced. Sprague attempted to use her influence to get Conkling a high government office, but she discovered that her power had waned. Another blow to her ego was that Conkling never divorced his wife for her. Sprague and her developmentally disabled daughter, Kitty, went on to live together in poverty until Sprague’s death in 1899.
American Queen received mixed reviews. Amanda Vaill, contributor to the New York Times Online, suggested: “In other hands such a story might have had more dimension; but although Oller has explored previous biographies (none recent) and a plethora of archives and family testimony, his account is too full of anachronistic clichés, … too cumbered by undigested political minutiae, too hampered by explicatory backtracking to develop the kind of narrative sweep and psychological depth that make for fully satisfying biography.” Vaill added: “I wish, too, that Oller had confronted the great unanswered question of Kate Chase’s life: what she might have done if not bound by what George Eliot called ‘the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women.'” A Publishers Weekly critic remarked: “The book’s analysis may not be well enough grounded in fact, … but otherwise, Oller offers an accessible, attention-grabbing work.” “Well written, fast paced, and with a compelling attention to detail, this work should be a fascinating read,” asserted Laura Marcus in Library Journal. Patrick T. Reardon, reviewer on the Chicago Tribune Web site, described the volume as “nuanced and finely balanced.”
The Swamp Fox
In The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution, Oller chronicles the life of the important American military figure. Born in 1732, Marion acquired property in South Carolina. Oller notes that he owned slaves and that he fought in battles against the Cherokee tribe. As tensions between the American colonists and the British rose, Marion became the leader of a South Carolina militia and an officer in the Continental Army. He employed battle tactics that he observed in his clashes with the Cherokees. His guerrilla maneuvers often proved to outwit his militia’s enemies. Marion led his militia into many battles and almost always won. Oller provides details involving many of the battles. Marion is said to have been committed to enforcing discipline among the members of his militia. He barred his men from looting the towns through which they traveled. Those who did were punished. Oller profiles other leaders who supported Marion, including Nathanael Greene, as well as those who fought against him, including Thomas Sumter. He suggests that Marion and his militia stopped the British from completing their “Southern strategy” plan of attack. Their actions also allowed George Washington’s troops to focus on fighting in the North. The book includes a map depicting the locations of the battles in which Marion and his troops fought. Oller also offers details on Marion’s personal life, noting that he did not marry until the Revolutionary War concluded.
Jacob Sherman, a reviewer in Library Journal, described the book as “highly recommended for military aficionados and students of Southern U.S. History or the American Revolution.” A Kirkus Reviews critic noted: “The author’s strategy is conventional and chronological. He acknowledges the difficulty of separating fact from legend in Marion’s case.” The same critic called the volume “a thoroughly researched biography, if a tad tendentious.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Library Journal, October 15, 2014, Laura Marcus, review of American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War “Belle of the North” and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal, p. 105; November 1, 2016, Jacob Sherman, review of The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution, p. 89.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2016, review of The Swamp Fox.
Publishers Weekly, September 29, 2014, review of American Queen, p. 88.
ONLINE
Chicago Tribune Online, http://www.chicagotribune.com/ (November 6, 2014), Patrick T. Reardon, review of American Queen.
John Oller Home Page, http://www.johnollernyc.com (July 14, 2017).
New York Times Online, https://www.nytimes.com/ (January 9, 2015), Amanda Vaill, review of American Queen.*
John Oller, a lawyer, is the author of five books, including, most recently, The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution (Da Capo Books, 2016). His American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague—Civil War “Belle of the North” and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal, was published by Da Capo in 2014. It has been praised by Pulitzer prize-winning author Debby Applegate as “a terrific work of historical research and reconstruction” which tells “the story of the Civil War and its scandalous aftermath—its assassinations, impeachments and sexual hijinks—from an entirely fresh perspective.” His first book, Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew (Limelight Editions, 1997), was lauded by film critic Leonard Maltin, who called it “an exceptional piece of work” and “an outstanding biography . . . among the best I’ve read in years.”
Born in Huron, Ohio, John is a graduate of The Ohio State University with a B.A. in journalism (summa cum laude), having written and edited for the daily student newspaper, the Lantern, and interned as a reporter for such newspapers as the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Rochester Times-Union. His undercover exposé on the infiltration of the Ohio State campus by the “Moonies” religious cult led to his selection as a congressional journalism intern in Washington, D.C., where he wrote press releases for a Michigan congressman.
After college he obtained his law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. (magna cum laude), and joined the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York as an associate in the litigation department. For many years he represented Major League Baseball in many high-profile cases, including the celebrated George Brett “Pine Tar” case and the Pete Rose gambling case. As a partner in the firm, he went on to specialize in complex commercial and securities litigation, and was a principal author of the Audit Committee Report for Cendant Corporation (at the time, the most massive fraud in American corporate history); the New York Times called the report a definitive case study in the area of accounting irregularities and fraud. He taught legal writing as part of his firm’s continuing legal education program for many years, and is the author of One Firm – A Short History of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, 1888 - (2004). He holds the record as a four-time winner of the firm’s annual golf tournament in Florida.
At the end of 2011, John retired from active legal practice to concentrate on his writing career. Since then, in addition to The Swamp Fox and American Queen, he has published an e-book, An All-American Murder, a true crime story of an unsolved cold case murder in Columbus, Ohio in 1975. It led to the reopening of the case and a renewed investigation by Columbus Police that identified the killer as someone other than the man accused 40 years earlier. The e-book has been called “a tragic, fascinating story well-told,” and “an exceptionally well written, insightful look into the angst that people can carry for decades when the criminal justice system is unable/unwilling to provide closure.”
John is a member of Biographers International Organization and the Dramatists Guild.
When not writing, John pursues his hobbies of golf, theater, film, museums, aimless walking, and travel (especially France and Italy, in close competition for his favorite). In the US, he divides his time between New York City and a home in California wine country.
QUOTED: "highly recommended for military aficionados and students of Southern U.S. HISTory or the American Revolution."
Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved
the American Revolution
Jacob Sherman
Library Journal.
141.18 (Nov. 1, 2016): p89.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution. Da Capo: Perseus. Oct. 2016.400p. maps, notes, bibliog.
index. ISBN 9780306824579. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9780306824586. HIST
In his latest work, Oiler (American Queen) details how during the American Revolution South Carolina forces led by Continental Army officer
Francis Marion ensnared the British Army into guerilla-style warfare that alleviated pressure on George Washington's troops in the North. Marion
used his militia to outwit the British by fighting unconventional battles. Oiler effectively describes these conflicts along with Marion's leadership
style, which included not allowing his soldiers to partake in any reprisals; if they did, there would be harsh discipline. Oiler's exemplary
knowledge about South Carolina's forgotten tussle during the revolution will engage readers interested in works such as Walter B. Edgar's
Partisans and Redcoats, John W. Gordon's South Caro lina and the American Revolution, and Henry Lumpkin's From Savannah to Yorktown.
VERDICT Highly recommended for military aficionados and students of Southern U.S. HISTory or the American Revolution.--Jacob Sherman,
John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas at San Antonio
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Sherman, Jacob. "Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution." Library Journal, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 89.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467830397&it=r&asid=2e029e91741ba060417ffda2a1ee8405. Accessed 12 June
2017.
6/12/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A467830397
---
QUOTED: "The author's strategy is conventional and chronological. He acknowledges the difficulty of separating fact from legend in Marion's case."
"A thoroughly researched biography, if a tad tendentious."
6/12/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1497296966036 3/6
John Oller: THE SWAMP FOX
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
John Oller THE SWAMP FOX Da Capo/Perseus (Adult Nonfiction) 26.99 11, 1 ISBN: 978-0-306-82457-9
An admiring biography of Francis Marion (1732-1795), a military hero of the American Revolution.As Oller (American Queen: The Rise and
Fall of Kate Chase Sprague—Civil War "Belle of the North" and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal, 2013, etc.) notes, readers of a certain
age will remember Marion, the “Swamp Fox,” as the subject of a Disney TV series that ran from 1959 to 1961, and he also
reminds us that the 2000 Mel Gibson film, The Patriot, was based loosely on Marion’s exploits. The author’s strategy is
conventional and chronological. He acknowledges the difficulty of separating fact from legend in Marion’s case, but the author is
resolute. He teaches us about Marion’s family (he did not marry until after the war) and the determination of the British to employ a
Southern strategy as the war progressed. A slaveholder in South Carolina, he became a militia leader and quickly established himself as a slippery
foe, one who, the author declares, borrowed from the guerrilla tactics of the Cherokee, whom he’d fought earlier. Oller takes us through
each of the two dozen or so of Marion’s engagements, virtually all of which were successful; sometimes the detail is daunting, but the
maps help clarify matters. Oller shows us a man who was a stickler for discipline but who also refused to allow his men to plunder and commit
other overly punitive acts. We meet, as well, his military supporters and antagonists—Nathanael Greene among the former, Thomas
Sumter among the latter. Oller is generous in his praise for Marion—his efforts did thwart the Southern strategy—but he seems a
bit uncomfortable discussing the Swamp Fox as a slave owner. Although the author periodically alludes to slavery, he does not discuss it in much
detail until the final pages, where he states it’s “safe to assume [Marion] was not a cruel master.” A thoroughly
researched biography, if a tad tendentious.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"John Oller: THE SWAMP FOX." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463216054&it=r&asid=0d235cdb4fb178cdb35b588a6e4c6337. Accessed 12 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463216054
---
QUOTED: " The book's analysis may not be well enough grounded in fact, ... but otherwise, Oller offers an accessible, attentiongrabbing
work."
6/12/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague,
Civil War "Belle of the North" and Gilded Age Woman of
Scandal
Publishers Weekly.
261.39 (Sept. 29, 2014): p88.
COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War "Belle of the North" and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal
John Oller. Da Capo, $25.99 (416p) ISBN 9780-306-82280-3
"Behind every great man, there's a great woman," goes the saying, and Kate Chase Sprague, the "American Queen" of the Gilded Age, was just
such a woman. Daughter of Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln's secretary of the treasury, Sprague was a politically savvy and fiercely ambitious woman at
a time women were expected to remain in the background. Despite never actually being first lady, Sprague was almost a de facto one: she was
host of some of the best parties and salons in D.C., a frequent subject of the news, and was at the edge of most of the scandals of the time (she
was suspected of having an affair with Sen. Roscoe Conkling). After her marriage to textile tycoon and politician William Sprague collapsed, she
went bankrupt, ending her life peddling eggs and milk. Oller (Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew) details Sprague's fascinating life,
introducing readers to an inspiring woman in spite of her faults: haughtiness; personal, rather than ideological, politics; financial profligacy. The
book's analysis may not be well enough grounded in fact, verging on the speculative at times, but otherwise, Oller offers an accessible, attentiongrabbing
work. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War 'Belle of the North' and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal." Publishers
Weekly, 29 Sept. 2014, p. 88. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA384541978&it=r&asid=fd76f21bdfa1e84fda381f643b6cf01c. Accessed 12 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A384541978
---
QUOTED: "Well written, fast paced, and with a compelling attention to detail, this work should be a fascinating read."
6/12/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Oiler, John. American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate
Chase Sprague, Civil War "Belle of the North" and Gilded
Age Woman of Scandal
Laura Marcus
Library Journal.
139.17 (Oct. 15, 2014): p105.
COPYRIGHT 2014 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* Oiler, John. American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War "Belle of the North" and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal. Da
Capo. Oct. 2014.416p. notes, bibliog. ISBN 9780306822803. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9780306822810. HIST
In the wake of the recent resurgence of interest in the Civil War era comes a biography of a once-formidable figure in the world of Washington
whose fame is finally being rekindled. Oiler (lawyer and journalist; Jean Arthur) writes sympathetically of Kate Chase Sprague (1840-99), the
daughter of Treasury Secretary and Chief Justice Salmon Chase. The author takes us through his subject's life as she moves from a high-class
social butterfly who rubs elbows with political elite, has designs on becoming first lady via her father's ascent to the presidency, and butts heads
with Mary Todd Lincoln, to a poverty-stricken divorcee whose scandalous affair with a senator helped end her unhappy marriage to a volatile
governor. Though some may view this as a sad tale, Oiler depicts Chase as a headstrong, resilient, and ultimately content woman. VERDICT Well
written, fast paced, and with a compelling attention to detail, this work should be a fascinating read for Civil War buffi, fans of Doris Kearns
Goodwin's Team of Rivals (in which Salmon Chase is a main character), and Jennifer Chiaverini's Mrs. Lincoln's Rival.--Laura Marcus, Odenton,
MD
Marcus, Laura
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Marcus, Laura. "Oiler, John. American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War 'Belle of the North' and Gilded Age Woman
of Scandal." Library Journal, 15 Oct. 2014, p. 105. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA384541793&it=r&asid=55373496d6dbc8c2b7e10dc130610463. Accessed 12 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A384541793
QUOTED: "In other hands such a story might have had more dimension; but although Oller has explored previous biographies (none recent) and a plethora of archives and family testimony, his account is too full of anachronistic clichés, ... too cumbered by undigested political minutiae, too hampered by explicatory backtracking to develop the kind of narrative sweep and psychological depth that make for fully satisfying biography."
"I wish, too, that Oller had confronted the great unanswered question of Kate Chase’s life: what she might have done if not bound by what George Eliot called 'the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women.'"
SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW
‘American Queen,’ by John Oller
By AMANDA VAILLJAN. 9, 2015
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In the prelude to her great novel “Middlemarch,” George Eliot meditates on the fate of heroic women “who found for themselves no epic life” equal to their passion and intellect, but instead “only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity.” One wonders what Eliot would have made of Kate Chase Sprague — daughter of a Civil War-era American cabinet minister, wife of a governor, mistress of a senator — whose career as a behind-the-scenes kingmaker is chronicled in John Oller’s “American Queen.” Beautiful, wealthy and clever, she could dazzle a Washington salon or (said one historian) “scheme like a cigar-chewing convention rigger.” But her horizons were limited by the same constraints that tied Eliot’s heroine Dorothea Brooke, and the results for her bordered on the tragic.
Kate Chase became a notable Washington hostess at 20, when her widowed father, Salmon Chase, was named secretary of the Treasury by the newly elected Abraham Lincoln. As one of the cabinet’s “team of rivals” (the term is the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s) Chase had presidential aspirations himself, and continually schemed to put himself ahead of his boss; his daughter, whom he was grooming to “ornament any society in our own country or elsewhere,” set up a salon where newspaper editors (Horace Greeley), diplomats (the British ambassador Lord Lyons) and government employees (Lincoln’s own secretary, John Hay) were courted, pumped for information and pressed to advance Chase’s influence.
Kate’s marriage, in 1863, to the former“boy governor” of Rhode Island, William Sprague, seemed like a strategic move. Then a senator, Sprague was also a wealthy textile-mill heir whose fortune could bankroll any number of Chase-for-president campaigns. But all Kate’s efforts to win her father the nomination — and she tried in 1864 and 1868, lobbying delegates and counting heads through successive ballots, like a hardened ward-heeler — were unsuccessful; he had to content himself with the office of chief justice of the Supreme Court, given him by Lincoln in an effort to put him on the sidelines.
Nor was Kate luckier in love than in politics. Her husband turned out to be a moody, intellectually stunted, womanizing drunk, already entangled in a yearslong affair with a free-love advocate named Mary Viall, who would write an eye-popping roman à clef about their relationship. Once married, he sent Kate letters seeking permission to romance other women; gave rambling speeches in the Senate, while Kate was in the gallery, insinuating that his wife was an adulteress; and continued to cheat on her with Mary Viall until 1878, when — in what Kate called a “disgraceful orgy” — the two were evicted from a Massachusetts beachfront hotel for being drunk and disorderly.
Kate sought consolation in an affair of her own, with the handsome, dynamic and married Roscoe Conkling, senator from New York and controller of a powerful political patronage system. Newspapers gleefully reported sightings of the romantic couple until, in a “notorious outbreak” that made headlines across the country, Sprague reportedly threatened his wife and her lover with a shotgun. The marriage ended in divorce, Kate lamenting that “the bitterest part of my recent troubles has been that I should be thought a silly, vain woman.” But worse was to come: Her political influence had diminished so much that she couldn’t finagle an appointment for Conkling as Treasury secretary, even though the president, Chester A. Arthur, had previously been Conkling’s protégé; and Conkling himself declined to leave his own wife and make even a nominally honest woman out of Kate. Unable to make a mark in the world except through the men she was connected to, she dwindled into impecunious old age,living until 1899 — alone but for her developmentally disabled daughter Kitty — on her father’s Washington property, where she sold farm produce to make ends meet.
In other hands such a story might have had more dimension; but although Oller has explored previous biographies (none recent) and a plethora of archives and family testimony, his account is too full of anachronistic clichés (Kate’s father wishes to “get her out of his hair,” a cotton trader is “no dummy,” Kate’s divorce petition is “a doozy”), too cumbered by undigested political minutiae, too hampered by explicatory backtracking to develop the kind of narrative sweep and psychological depth that make for fully satisfying biography. I wish, too, that Oller had confronted the great unanswered question of Kate Chase’s life: what she might have done if not bound by what George Eliot called “the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women.” “She seems as much alone as Cleopatra in her barge floating down the dusky Nile,” the society journalist Emily Pomona Edson Briggs wrote of Kate during her divorce proceedings; florid though that phrase is, Briggs’s book about Kate Chase Sprague is one I’d like to read.
AMERICAN QUEEN
The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War “Belle of the North” and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal
By John Oller
Illustrated. 376 pp. Da Capo Press. $25.99.
QUOTED: "nuanced and finely balanced."
Review: 'American Queen' by John Oller
'American Queen'
The life of Kate Chase is explored in John Oller's new biography, "American Queen." (Keri Wiginton, Tribune)
She would never be royal, but Kate Chase was the 'American Queen'
By Patrick T. Reardon
Mary Todd Lincoln was in her glory. It was
ADVERTISING
March 28, 1861, and she had hosted her first state dinner at the White House as the nation's first lady. She was saying goodbye to her guests, including Kate Chase, the daughter of her
husband's treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase.
"I shall be glad to see you any time, Miss Chase," she said to the tall, elegant, 20-year-old woman.
"Mrs. Lincoln," said Chase, "I shall be glad to have you call on me at any time."
What effrontery! Yet, two weeks before the start of the Civil War, the battle for dominance of Washington society was already well underway between the diminutive, Kentucky-born Mary Lincoln and the queenly Kate Chase. And Chase was winning.
It was no contest. As John Oller shows in his nuanced and finely balanced "American Queen: The Rise and Fall of Kate Chase Sprague, Civil War 'Belle of the North' and Gilded Age Woman of Scandal," Chase had whatever that ineffable quality is that draws eyes and interest and fascination. "She was," one woman recalled, "tall and slim … with an unusually long white neck, and a slow and deliberate way of turning it when she glanced about her. When she appeared, people dropped back in order to watch her."
As the oldest surviving daughter of Salmon P. Chase, one of the founders of the Republican Party and a perennial presidential candidate, Chase grew up among hard-bitten, ambitious politicians — and knew how to turn them into butter.
Consider this description of her at 18 by Carl Schurz, a German immigrant who was a Civil War general and an American statesman for half a century:
Soon she came, saluted me very kindly, and then let herself down upon her chair with the graceful lightness of a bird that, folding its wings, perches upon the branch of a tree. … She had something imperial in the pose of the head, and all her movements possessed an exquisite natural charm.
The title for Oller's book echoes the one used in 2001 for a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Sarah Bradford, "America's Queen." Like the wife of John F. Kennedy, Chase was the epitome of elegance for Americans of her era, described as a "magnificent creature" and "the most splendid woman at the present time" and "the acknowledged queen of fashion and good taste."
In some ways, she was like Hillary Clinton in her intense interest in politics, but she was no policy wonk. Instead, Chase was filled with ambition for her father and the other men in her life. Oller details how, even though as a woman she was not allowed on the convention floor, she was the unofficial manager for her father's unsuccessful attempt to switch parties and win the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination.
In 1863, she married Rhode Island Gov. William Sprague IV, and, after that marriage fell apart, she engaged in a long and very public affair with another politician, Roscoe Conkling, a Republican power broker in New York who served in the U.S. House and Senate.
Although attempts have been made to turn Chase into a proto-feminist, Oller asserts, "Kate's political life was driven more by the personal than the ideological, so too were the actions she took in her marital life."
No radical, she did what she wanted to do because she could.
Later in life, her finances hard hit by a national recession, Chase worked as a field hand and sold produce in suburban Washington to make ends meet for her and her developmentally disabled daughter, Kitty.
According to her half-sister, Chase's fall from public grace — the scandal with Conkling, her divorce from Sprague and her near-poverty before her death in 1899 — was tragic. But Oller disagrees.
She may have lost her worldly possessions and discarded her once-burning ambition, but she traded them for a life of greater freedom and independence. She became entirely her own person, a rare feat for women of her day. And through it all she displayed a resilient and indomitable spirit.
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Patrick T. Reardon, who is writing a book about Chicago's Loop, is a member of the advisory board of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
"American Queen"
By John Oller, Da Capo, 376 pages, $25.99
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