EARLY AMERICAN FINANCIERS 405 



knowing that it would be set aside by a reconstituted court, as 

 was done. 



A biographer of Mr. Chase pretends that he was originally 

 against the legal tender act, but Senator Morrill told me that 

 Chase intimated that he would resign from the cabinet unless 

 Morrill, Morton and others in congress ceased their opposition 

 to the greenback measure. 



Mr. Chase's merit as a financier was reviving a national 

 currency. 



The assaults previously efficacious against the one United 

 States bank and its branches now fell upon a cordon of banks, 

 each intrenched in its own locality. 



These banks and bankers generally regarded Chase as 

 having tried to chisel his name out of its only durable monu- 

 ment. 



McCulloch, of Maine, an Indiana practical banker, for 

 years at the head of the successive state bank systems there, 

 was required by Chase for his currency details and not im- 

 probably for future political assistance. He obtained Chase's 

 place in Johnson's cabinet, was resuscitated by President 

 Arthur, and he set on foot the acts which John Sherman con- 

 summated to restore specie payments, or the equality of all 

 our money, in 1879. 



Boutwell and Windom were payers of the public debt 

 and refunders; Manning and Fairchild grown-up clerks of the 

 national bank system ; Carlisle was a Saul of Tarsus suddenly 

 become a financial Paul. 



The financiers have been long lived. 



McCulloch died at 87, the widow of Alexander Hamilton 

 at 97, his survivor fifty years; Albert Gallatin died at 88; 

 Alexander Dallas, who restored the United States bank, died 

 earlier of the gout. Adam Smith lived to be 67, a sickly child 

 and old bachelor. Richard Rush, promulgator of the great 

 tariff as secretary of the treasury under President J. Q. 

 Adams, lived to be 79. Finance, relieved from the personal 

 pursuit of wealth, is a seasoning, wholesome profession. And 

 even avarice requires virtues which pleasure throws away. 



The Astors, the first Vanderbilt, Peabody, Girard, lived 

 full lives. Men of providence for themselves get longevity, 



