[17] Charles J. White had been Reid’s teacher in the Union Grove school. Writing forty years later the pupil speaks of him as “one who, to a marked degree, left the impress of his fine character and careful scholarship upon all of the young people who were so fortunate as to come under his instruction.” [18] At the outbreak of the Civil War the currency of Wisconsin was secured in very large measure by the bonds of southern states. Never considered wholly safe in the financial world, these securities, as soon as hostilities between the North and the South began, fell to a third of their face value. Wisconsin bankers were unable to make good the depreciation, and the value of their currency reflected their embarrassment. On April 4, 1861, the bankers of Chicago resolved not to accept the notes of 40 of the 109 Wisconsin banks. On the following day the Milwaukee bankers rejected the notes of 19 of the institutions proscribed at Chicago. This affected the value of about $1,000,000 of the $4,500,000 of Wisconsin currency. Brokers in the state during the succeeding weeks purchased the discredited money at prices which rapidly sank to fifty cents on the dollar. [19] George B. Smith was born in New York in 1823 and came with his father to Racine, Wisconsin, in 1843. From 1844 until his death in 1877 his residence was at Madison. He was the youngest member of the first constitutional convention of the state, served as mayor of Madison several terms and several as state legislator, was attorney-general of Wisconsin for two years, and engaged in many other activities of a public nature. [20] Moses M. Strong, author of a _History of Wisconsin_, had been since 1838 one of the leading public men of the territory and of the state. John Y. Smith had settled at Green Bay in 1828, and later at Milwaukee and at Madison. He served in the first constitutional convention and was for many years an influential editor and publicist. Smith had made a speech denouncing secession and upholding the Union and the administration at Washington. Strong also denounced secession but argued that a union held together by force was worthless and that compulsion should not be resorted to keep the South in the Union. [21] By the chair, according to the _State Journal’s_ report of the meeting, which asserts that two-thirds of the audience voted against tabling the motion. [22] Rev. Lathrop Taylor, pastor of this church from April, 1860, till January, 1864. Except for these three years his forty-seven years of service in the pastorate were passed in Massachusetts and in Illinois.