Salmon P. Chase was one of the greatest men of the great period of the Civil War. He was Secretary of the Treasury at the time the greenbacks were issued, and they were issued at his instance and advice, but he was opposed to the clause that made the notes a legal tender. He never expressed the opinion that the Legal-Tender Acts were constitutional, nor did he expect that the notes, of which these authorized the issue, would ever become a permanent national money. This is evident from the fact that the notes were made _fundable_ at his instance, not so much with the view of keeping up the value of the notes by giving them a present market in bonds, as with the view that they would help the sale of the bonds and would be absorbed by them as soon as the price of the bonds was above par in greenbacks. Afterwards Mr. Chase thought that this _fundability_ of the notes into bonds would so far take up the notes as to stand in the way of the negotiation of further necessary loans to the Government, and at his instance this provision of the law was repealed. Consequently, there was nothing inconsistent between his position as Secretary and his later position as Chief Justice. He was undoubtedly right in both of these positions. The making the greenbacks legal tender did not probably add one particle to their purchasing-power, but rather the reverse, because that feature implied a doubt on the part of Congress itself as to the validity and currency of such national promises-to-pay. That he was also right in his judicial opinion and decision, however subsequently overruled in his own Court, may be safely left to the inevitable future appeal to common sense and to the common principles of constitutional interpretation. This judgment in Hepburn _versus_ Griswold was favorably received by the country at large, as being just in the line of the great decisions of Chief Justice Marshall, and as being exactly in accordance with Amendment X of the Constitution, namely, "THE POWERS NOT DELEGATED TO THE UNITED STATES BY THE CONSTITUTION, NOR PROHIBITED BY IT TO THE STATES, ARE RESERVED TO THE STATES RESPECTIVELY, OR TO THE PEOPLE." The State of Massachusetts particularly, which has always maintained and still maintains a strong doctrine of State Rights as over against, though in harmony with, the Rights of the United States under the Constitution, applauded this judgment as sound in law and politics, and as righteous altogether. But the then administration of General Grant, inexperienced alike in law and politics, and linked in entangling alliances with the great corporations of the country, received the Decision with marked dissatisfaction; and it was especially offensive to the huge railroad companies, whose bonds had been executed prior to Feb. 25, 1862, inasmuch as it made the principal and interest of these bonds payable in coin, which they had hoped to pay off in the depreciated greenbacks, made legal tender for all debts.