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Speech of Salmon P.Chase. In the case of The Colored Woman, Matilda, who was brought before the Court of Common Pleas of Hamilton county, Ohio. By writ of habeas corpus ; March 11,1837. (Cincinnati, 1837). First and only Edition. Original front and rear wrappers present but detached and chipped at edges, with no lost of text. Rare, especially with wrappers present. Not in Sabin, Work, or Blockson. The only copy to appear at auction brought $450 twenty years ago.

Matilda, a beautiful 20 year-old mulatto, was owned by a Missouri man, who was also her father but had refused to emancipate her. After taking her along on a visit to Virginia, he brought her to Cincinnati to await a steamboat for St. Louis. Matilda, who looked caucasian, slipped away from her hotel room and made her way to Cincinnati's black neighborhood where she was hidden for a few days until she was employed as maid in the home of an prominent Abolitionist lawyer. Meanwhile, Matilda’s owner hired a Cincinnati slave catcher who found her and had her arrested as a fugitive slave. The 29 year-old Chase tried various legal ploys in an attempt to save Matilda from being returned to slavery. He failed. Twenty-seven years later, after serving as US Senator, Governor of Ohio, and Secretary of the Treasury, in the third year of Civil War, President Lincoln appointed Chase Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.