In legislation, also, the city contributed its part to the successful prosecution of the struggle. On December 30, 1861, Mr. E. G. Spaulding, member of Congress from Buffalo, introduced the bill which afterwards became famous as the Legal-Tender Act, whereby the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to issue $50,000,000 in Treasury notes, payable on demand, in denominations of not less than $5, these to be the legal tender for all debts, public and private, and exchangeable for the bonds of the Government at par. Nearly every element of American progress has entered into the growth of this beautiful city. Its development has been brilliant in enterprise, luminous in education, rich in romance, splendid in achievement, and noble in patriotism. In a word, Buffalo has kept pace with the Great Republic. [Illustration: SEAL OF THE CITY OF BUFFALO.] [Illustration] PITTSBURGH THE INDUSTRIAL CITY BY SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH George Washington, the Father of his Country, is equally the Father of Pittsburgh, for he came thither in November, 1753, and established the location of the now imperial city by choosing it as the best place for a fort. Washington was then twenty-one years old. He had by that time written his precocious one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior; had declined to be a midshipman in the British Navy; had made his only sea-voyage to Barbadoes; had surveyed the estates of Lord Fairfax, going for months into the forest without fear of savage Indians or wild beasts, and was now a major of Virginia militia. In pursuance of the claim of Virginia that she owned that part of Pennsylvania in which Pittsburgh is situated, Washington came there as the agent of Governor Dinwiddie to treat with the Indians. With an eye alert for the dangers of the wilderness, and with Christopher Gist beside him, the young Virginian pushed his cautious way to “The Point” of land where the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers forms the Ohio. That, he declared, with clear military instinct, was the best site for a fort; and he rejected the promontory two miles below, which the Indians had recommended for that purpose. [Illustration: AN EARLY RESIDENT OF PITTSBURGH. (FROM A STATUE BY T. A. MILLS IN THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM.)]