404 GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND 



merits and copied without understanding his finance. The 

 fifth president, Jackson, attacked the bank of Biddle as a part 

 of the spoils programme and in behalf of the right of politics 

 to issue money. The states, according to the genius of their 

 people, disciplined their several banking systems, some, like 

 Mississippi, repudiating, others, like New York, setting the 

 national government its banking example. 



The populace was always behind the men of finance. The 

 southern or slave states had often capable financiers like 

 Langdon Chenes, William H. Crawford, James Guthrie and 

 Hugh McCulloch. Here and there a banker of special apti- 

 tude like Alexander Mitchell issued the currency for an im- 

 mense section, yet was called a sound democrat. 



Salmon P. Chase lived under the shadow of the failure of 

 the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust company, which went 

 down in 1857, and brought on that general panic of which 

 the civil war was the relief. A cause of it was excessive rail- 

 road building and the contraction of loans, the latter having 

 reached in New York the figure of $122,000,000. The Ohio 

 failure was for only $2,000,000, but it was a sign of the times. 

 The whole capital had been embezzled. It was also plain 

 that the bank presidents were incompetent even in New York 

 City. Extravagant living, fraud in corporations, overbond- 

 ing, a corrupt press, state legislatures bribed by railroads, and 

 state wildcat banks, aided the eventuation. Chase was gov- 

 ernor of Ohio at the panic and his state treasurer, Gibson, 

 had been caught robbing the state of half a million dollars. 

 Chase's majority ran down from 15,000 to 1,500 voters. Yet 

 he stepped from this embarrassment to the head of our ruined 

 finances and his chief monuments were the national banks. 



A year after the legal tender or arbitrary treasury note 

 bill passed the national bank act was passed, Feb. 25, in each 

 case, 1862 and 1863. Chase as chief justice attempted to 

 return to the democratic party and declared the legal tender 

 act illegal, December, 1869. Field was one of the four other 

 justices with him. Both were presidential candidates. Mil- 

 ler, Swayne and Davis, all or nearly all ditto. 



The public paid no more attention to the decision than 

 to the first abortive decision of the income tax case of 1895, 



