Abraham Lincoln began his troubled administration by the appointment of Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, as Secretary of the Treasury. Never was man asked to help steer the ship of state through more overwhelming breakers. With the dissolution of the Union imminent, the national debt had increased to three times the amount it was at the close of the previous administration. The number of clerks which, in 1861, was three hundred and eighty-three, in 1864 was two thousand. Such a demand was without precedent, and arose from the immense labor of examining accounts, and of preparing and supervising the national currency and securities. The first important measure of Mr. Chase’s administration was the “Internal Revenue Act,” which, in four years, increased the income of the Government from forty-one millions to three hundred and nine millions. Next came the great “National Currency Act,” which, though severely criticised, and probably not free from defects, nevertheless established a paper currency of equal value in every part of the Union, and was, at least, in keeping with the principles of our Government, and freer from chances of corruption and abuse than any other system yet adopted. It met the awful demand of the hour, and offered the guarantee of redemption, rather than of loss and ruin. In a single month, the tax upon the income of the Treasury became stupendous. In one day, it paid out for quartermasters’ stores alone, forty-six millions of dollars—more than were needed to support the entire National Government during the first year of Washington’s administration. In four years, the public debt, from ninety millions, had grown to be two thousand six hundred millions—yet under this mighty demand, with two millions of its sons withdrawn from productive labor, the exports of the country were double what they had ever been before, and the credit of the Government of the United States day by day increased. When Mr. Chase was appointed Chief Justice by Mr. Lincoln, his high seat in the Treasury was taken by Hon. William Pitt Fessenden, whose brief career as Secretary of the Treasury was marked by a single State paper of great ability. He was succeeded by Hugh McCulloch, of Indiana, who dispensed the duties of his office creditably till the close of Johnson’s administration.