Business; Capitalists and financiers -- United States; Speculation; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.)
Before long, the whole of the authorized $250,000,000 of 7-30 notes had
been sold to the public through the Government agents; and later, from
time to time, Congress authorized large additional amounts of these till
finally they reached their maximum, in August, 1865, when $830,000,000
of them were outstanding.
At the same date, also, the Government bond issues, which had kept pace
with the 7-30 note issues, and simultaneously reached their maximum,
showed immense totals. There were then outstanding $514,880,500, of 5-20
bonds, and $172,770,100 of 10-40 bonds. Among our own people patriotism
and profit combined to make these great United States loans doubly
attractive, and the Government agents used their best efforts to
stimulate the demand for them both at home and abroad. Livermore, Clews
& Co., in particular, sold large amounts of these in England and other
foreign countries, where they ultimately proved extremely profitable
investments. To meet the demands of the war, we—the Government
agents—were as anxious as the Secretary of the Treasury himself, and
never were men more successful in accomplishing their object and doing
good work than we were. There was patriotism worthy of Patrick Henry, as
well as profit, in this, and Wall Street can lay the flattering unction
to its soul that it rendered, through the Government agents, the best of
good service to the Government in this time of peril to the Union.
As General Grant said long afterwards to me, we were not fighting for
the Union as soldiers in the field, but we served it equally well by
helping it in its struggle for money to prosecute the war; and I felt
proud of the active part I took in thus helping to preserve the Union as
one of its army in civil life.
The campaign in Virginia having proved prolific of disaster to the Union
army, Congress, on July 11, 1862, authorized the issue of a hundred and
fifty millions more of non-interest-bearing United States legal tender
notes, and on January 17, 1863, another hundred millions to which it
added $50,000,000 on March 3d, in the same year, making $450,000,000 of
legal tender notes, or greenbacks, fifty of which were to be held as a
Treasury reserve, for the redemption of temporary loan certificates.
This was the maximum issue of non-interest-bearing legal tender notes at
any time, and by the act of January 28, 1865 Congress restricted the
total to $400,000,000, and there it remained till Hugh McCulloch became
Secretary of the Treasury, early in 1865.
Secretary Chase had meanwhile become Chief Justice of the United States
Supreme Court, and Thomas Fessenden, who succeeded him as Secretary, had
resigned. Mr. McCulloch began to contract the legal tender notes, and
had withdrawn $44,000,000 before Congress interfered to prohibit any
further contraction. It did this in response to a general protest
against any further curtailment of the greenbacks in circulation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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