Robinson Crusoe's Money;: or, The Remarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunes of a Remote Island CommunityWells, David Ames
General
Robinson Crusoe's Money;: or, The Remarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunes of a Remote Island Community
Wells, David Ames
Currency question -- United States; Money
Besides the persons referred to, who either openly or by their
indecision opposed fiscal reform, there were various other classes
of obstructives. There were those, for example, who, during the
war, were always friends of peace, dressed in broad-brimmed hats
and drab coats, and were at any time ready to compromise with the
cannibals, on condition that the latter should be satisfied with
roasting and eating only the old men, the babies, and an occasional
mother-in-law. All such, as a part of their peace policy, opposed
the original issue and circulation of the bluebacks as something
arbitrary, illegal, and unnecessary. When, however, the cannibals
were driven away, these "friends of peace in time of war" at once
changed their Quaker garb; became "friends of war in time of peace;"
declared earnestly for the enlarged issue and continued use of the
bluebacks, and, as a pretext for so doing, were willing, if necessary,
to have another war, or, at least, an annual scare. During the war,
these friends of peace were called "copper-heads;" and after the
war, their copper-headism, although disguised, was substantially the
same thing. For it was apparent that opposition to the issue of the
bluebacks, as manifested by the advocates of peace during the war,
and opposition to their payment and withdrawal after the war, were only
different manifestations of hostility to the Government and to the war
itself: inasmuch as failure on the part of the Government to observe
its promises, made under such circumstances of extreme peril, would
manifestly put it in bad repute, and prevent it from ever resorting
to similar measures in like emergencies. [21] The really intelligent
and patriotic men of the island at once saw through this duplicity
and repudiation, advocated under pretense of extreme solicitude for
the wants of trade. They remembered the old couplet:
"When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
When the devil got well, the devil a monk was he;" [22]
and thereafter designated the opponents of paying the bluebacks, as
inflated, or elongated, copper-heads, by which name they were ever
after known in history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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