1862 another Congress would be chosen, and if party lines were suffered to be drawn, the South would certainly gain her independence. [Illustration: One Nation, or Two?] With this Unionist program perfectly understood, Lincoln asked Congress for 400,000 men. Congress gave him 500,000. A second wave of warlike enthusiasm swept over the North, and men enlisted not for three months, but for three years. The zeal and _abandon_ of the South was hardly matched, but there was no lack of men or support. With a few exceptions the newspapers, the pulpits, and the lecture platforms urged most ardent support of the common cause. But the more difficult problem of finding money for the vast armies that moved upon the South was not so quickly solved. Secretary Chase reported the expenditure in the three months of June, July, and August of a hundred millions--an amount greater far than the total national debt. Before another three months had passed this expenditure had doubled, and the Secretary estimated that $500,000,000 would be needed before the end of June, 1862! These were astounding figures to a country whose normal annual income was about $50,000,000. And what was worse, the financial men refused to take government bonds at par, as they had done during the war with Mexico, although they were now offered interest at the rate of six to eight per cent. The country had recovered from the panic of 1857, and as business activity increased and the general prosperity became certain, it was more difficult for the Government to borrow money. The suspension of specie payments by all the banks before the end of the year did not mean panic or severe economic crisis, as had hitherto been the case; rather, a change from metallic to paper money. Secretary Chase was told by New York leaders in December, 1862, that government bonds bearing six per cent interest would hardly bring sixty cents on the dollar. Yet business men borrowed money at four per cent and the wheels of industry and commerce were moving at full speed. Prosperity in the North was thus almost as fatal to the Union as adversity in the South was to the Confederacy. Rather than advertise a collapse of the federal credit by selling bonds at a discount of twenty to forty per cent the guiding spirits at Washington decided to issue notes as legal tender to the amount of $150,000,000, increased to $300,000,000 a little later. Immediately, bankers and business men who refused to take bonds protested with such vigor and resolution that Chase and Lincoln, unlearned in the ways of finance, knew not what course to take. To sell bonds at enormous discounts and high rates of interest was bad; to tax the people directly for the needs of the Government would have ruined the party in power; and to issue fiat money was equivalent to forcing the poor to lend what the rich refused. But the emergency was great. It was decided to issue and float "greenbacks" and also to sell bonds in unprecedented numbers.