The vivid, lucid and extremely illuminating diary of Salmon P. Chase remained scattered until 1954 when they were published under the editorship of eminent Civil War historian David H. Donald. Chase served as Secretary of the Treasury in President Lincoln's cabinet from 1861 to 1864, during the Civil War, despite the crisis he instituted the establishment of a national banking system and the issue of paper currency. Ambitious, talented and underhand, his diaries reveal the Civil War at its highest level on the Union side. "SOME of the best American diaries record the turbulent years of the Civil War… Of the important Northern Civil War diaries, one has been unduly neglected-the journals of Salmon Portland Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury.…For a good many years I have hoped to edit Chase's Civil War diaries, believing that the importance both of the man and of his position warranted publication, I have tried to present the diaries just as Chase wrote them. Beyond standardizing the dates which head each entry, I have not tampered with the text."-David H. Donald.
