temporarily, business men believed would be impossible without great injury to domestic enterprise and commerce. All these circumstances forced the government (which found itself facing absolutely without preparation organized rebellion) to resort at once to the issue of a national paper currency in the form of non-interest-bearing treasury notes of small denominations. Congress, at its extra session in July, 1861, passed the necessary act for this purpose, and $50,000,000 of these notes ($10,000,000 more were subsequently authorized) were placed in circulation; originally they were made redeemable in coin on demand at any United States sub-treasury, and thus violated none of the established principles of sound finance. This expedient facilitated the negotiation of loans, and provided "the sinews of war" for 1861. But, when Congress met in December of that year, it had become plain that the struggle would be of indefinite duration, and that past expenditures would be greatly exceeded in the months to come. To add to the embarrassments of the situation, at about this time the banks of the North suspended specie payments, and the Treasury Department was compelled as a matter of self-protection to also stop redeeming in coin its own notes then outstanding. It was as a means of escape from this emergency, that the first issue of greenbacks was authorized (by the act of Feb. 25, 1862). These notes were not redeemable on demand, but to secure their free circulation they were made a "legal tender" for all purposes except the payment of duties and of the interest on the public debt. The abandonment of the self-operating method of redemption and the resort to the compulsion of the "legal tender" enactment, as a means of keeping these notes in circulation, constituted a step which the Thirty-seventh Congress took with extreme reluctance. A small minority of its members resisted this measure to the last, but what seemed to be the overshadowing necessities of the situation and the earnest appeals of Secretary Chase finally forced the passage of the law. Mr. Chandler was one of those who, without approving of the principle of this legislation, still voted for it, on the ground that it was essential to the public safety at that moment and justified by the urgency of the situation. But he regarded it as a temporary expedient, a mere plan for an emergency, and not as a permanent policy. The first act authorized the issue of $150,000,000 of "greenbacks" and directed the retiring of the $60,000,000 of treasury notes previously paid out; this $150,000,000 Mr. Chandler believed it was possible to so control and use as to avoid the evils inseparable from inflation. But the proposition to double the amount of "greenbacks," which came in less than half a year from the Treasury officials, he strenuously opposed. On June 17, 1862, he offered this resolution in the Senate: