Such popularity of the greenbacks stimulated to fresh life the "fiat greenback" theory, long in vogue and very influential in many parts of the country. Its pith lay in the proposition that money requires in its material no intrinsic value, its worth and purchasing power coming entirely from the "fiat" of the government issuing it, so that paper money put forth by authority of a solvent and powerful government will be the peer of gold. This idea was the rallying point of the National Labor Greenback Party, organized at its Indianapolis convention, May 17, 1876, when Peter Cooper was put in nomination for President. At the subsequent presidential election in November, he received 82,640 votes. The next year his party polled 187,095 votes; in 1878, 1,000,365. From the moment of its issue, there had been in the country many who went to the opposite extreme with reference to the greenback. They believed it unconstitutional and pernicious, a menace to the nation's credit and financial weal. The question came to the Supreme Court during the war, and this form of contracting debt on the part of the Government was then justified as a war measure. When the war was over the question whether the greenback's legal tender quality could still be maintained, also had to be passed upon by the court. The first decision was in the negative, but it was subsequently reversed. Still a third question was whether a man could be forced to take greenbacks in liquidation of debt after the resumption of specie payments. This was tried out in the famous case of Juilliard vs. Greenman, and the decision was, as on the other two occasions, in favor of the greenback. In spite of all this, however, the zeal for the fiat or non-promissory theory and practice of paper money almost totally died away after about 1880.