No page of our national history contains a more damning record of injustice than this. Mr. Sherman recognizes and admits that the notes, as issued and paid to the soldiers and producers of the country, were fundable at the holder's option in a government interest-bearing bond. He confesses to the foreknowledge that in nullifying this right the value of the notes would be decreased and to that extent the soldiers' pay be diminished. No organ of public opinion raised the cry of breaking the plighted faith of the nation. The soldier had no organ then; but years after the wrong had been perpetrated, there appeared in Spaulding's "History of the Currency" the naive statement, "It never seemed quite right to take away this important privilege while the notes were outstanding with this endorsement upon them." By a law, passed against the protests of the wisest and most patriotic members of the popular branch of Congress, it had been provided that these government notes, so soon to be further depreciated in value, should be a full legal tender to the nation's defenders, but only rags in the hands of the fortunate holder of interest-bearing obligations of the government, upon which they were based, and into which they were fundable at the option of the holder. In one of his reports while Secretary of the Treasury, Hon. Hugh McCulloch showed that fully thirty per cent of the cost of supplies furnished the government was due to the depreciation of the currency, the initial step in such depreciation being the placing of the words "Except duties on imports and interest on the public debt" in the law and upon the back of the notes. But, having provided that one class of the government creditors should be secured against the evil effects of a depreciated currency, those friends of the soldiers and defenders of the nation's honor proceeded to a systematic course of depreciation of the currency, while the soldiers were too busy fighting, and the citizens too earnest in their support of the government, to criticize its acts. During the war the sentiment was carefully inculcated, that opposition to the Republican party or its acts was disloyalty to the government, copperheadism, treason; and protests against any of its legislation were answered with an epithet. It so happened that very little contemporary criticism was indulged in, from a wholesome fear of social or business ostracism, or the frowning portals of Fort Lafayette.