I came across your piece regarding Salmon Chase and the placement of his own portrait on the $1 bill, which references the pamphlet, "Going Home to Vote". Although it is likely that the pertinent passage from this pamphlet is likely already known to you by this time, I thought I would provide it just in case:

It seems to me that the speech passage certainly demonstrates Chase putting the fame generated by his portrait to advantageous political purpose, and his statement all but admits that he dictated the placement of his portrait on the $1 bill. I would think that internal government records would clarify the exact process by which the portrait/denomination decisions were arrived at, but think that even if these confirm that he dictated it there is not likely to be any clue that would constitute a smoking gun to confirm that he had more widespread distribution of his own portrait vs that of Lincoln's in mind.

There was a second quote in the "Going Home to Vote" pamphlet that records Chase mentioning his likeness on the $1 bill in another speech:

Chase and his daughter certainly actively promoted him by providing photographs and autographs to inquiries for such, as noted in this passage from a biography of Kate Chase:

I also recall reading of his leaving a torn $1 bill as a calling card for a woman he was pursuing, when she was not present at a hotel at the time he had hoped to meet her.

I recently discovered an autographed Chase calling card that features the National Bank Note Company engraving of the $1 bill vignette, trimmed to its oval border and mounted onto manila-weight card stock. The precision with which the vignette was trimmed strongly suggests that it was not a home-made production, but rather that it had been produced by a skilled Treasury Department worker.

Also of interest is that the date, February 11, 1864, lies at the precise watershed of Chase's presidential ambitions. The first of the two privately mailed anti-Lincoln pamphlets that destroyed his campaign first appeared in a newspaper the day before, and it would only be a few weeks before Chase was forced to withdraw from contention due to the firestorm the pamphlets had created.

I am not sure how much use Chase made of this National Bank Note Company engraving for self-promotion but it would be interesting to find out. I would expect that Chase-signed examples of it are not particularly common.

I came across your e-zine in the course of researching the calling card with the NBNC proof vignette and would like being placed on your mailing list. Thank you.

Perhaps some of your readers will help me clarify the fine points of this proof, and Chase's "purloining" of it for his own use -- or was it official government business use? He was Secretary of the Treasury at the time.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:MORE ON SALMON P. CHASE AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN(http://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v11n21a15.html)