CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



189 



and trade of the United States? The cur- 

 reucy with which exchanges are effected now 

 consists of three hundred and odd millions of 

 bank notes which are not legal tenders, and 

 which are redeemable in $315,000,000 of green- 

 backs which are legal tenders, and are there- 

 fore money; money which must be received 

 by State, county, municipal governments in 

 payment of taxes and other claims, which must 

 be received by the National Government for 

 every obligation save one duty on imports ; 

 which must be received by every citizen from 

 the Government in payment of all debts save 

 one interest on a coin-bearing bond. Your 

 bank notes in the absence of gold, the sufficient 

 accumulation of which is impossible, are con- 

 vertible into this money, with which mort- 

 gages, judgments, and every debt may be liqui- 

 dated ; and you propose to remove the money 

 which is the foundation, and to leave the su- 

 perstructure stand. You propose to maintain 

 a law which decrees that from and after the 

 1st of January, 1879, with a diminishing re- 

 serve and an increasing volume of notes re- 

 deemable by that reserve, every debtor in the 

 country shall be liable to his private creditor, 

 and the nation in its public character liable to 

 all its foreign and domestic creditors in gold. 

 The banks, if greenbacks continue to be retired 

 before an increasing bank circulation, may by 

 that date be unable to redeem even in green- 

 backs. 



" Mr. Speaker, I tell gentlemen they are at- 

 tempting an impossibility. The laws of trade 

 can not be controlled by the wisest and most 

 potential government. As well attempt to reg- 

 ulate the laws of gravitation or refraction as 

 to legislate the flow of gold from creditor to 

 debtor nations in an era like the present. The 

 banks understand all this. They know that 

 there can be no resumption of specie payments, 

 and they hope to obtain control of the entire 

 circulation of the country. They are here in 

 their might and power to control our legisla- 

 tion. They invaded different committee rooms 

 yesterday. They went, so the newspapers tell 

 me, to the Executive Chamber with three Cabi- 

 net ministers as captives in their train. I 

 hope it is not true ; I do not believe it ; I 

 am unwilling to believe it ; I will not believe 

 it till it is proven, that forty or fifty men who 

 hold the money-bags of our eastern cities 

 may come here, and three Cabinet ministers 

 abandon their posts of duty and escort them 

 with servility to the Executive Chamber, while 

 deaf to the cries of widows, of orphans, of men, 

 women, and children pleading for the poor 

 privilege of selling their labor. I will not be- 

 lieve the slanderous story. 



" When I had the pleasure of addressing a 

 few audiences in the State of Georgia, where I 

 was kindly received, especially at Macon, I 

 spoke on the question of money, and said to 

 the Confederate officers and soldiers around 

 me, ' Your leaders were mistaken in their finan- 

 cial theories when they told you that a hand- 



kerchief would wipe up all the blood that would 

 be shed ; they were strict constructionists of 

 the Constitution ; they believed that the Uni- 

 ted States could use nothing but gold and sil- 

 ver as money, and that as they had none of 

 these metals they could not put armies in the 

 field to overwhelm you or fleets upon the ocean 

 to blockade your coasts ; they had not studied 

 the Constitution to see that the Government 

 has control of the question of what shall be 

 money. We discovered that it had, and when 

 we could not get gold or silver we made the 

 greenback, and it was that that whipped you.' 



"'Yes,' said one of them, enthusiastically, 

 4 Judge Kelley, you are right ; it was the green- 

 back that whipped us.' And that which saved 

 us from being citizens of warring sections ; that 

 which has brought us together again to wran- 

 gle, as of old, over minor questions ; that which 

 removed slavery and opened the way to con- 

 ciliation and the interchanges of duty and af- 

 fection between the entire people, must not be 

 branded as ' the worst enemy the country ever 

 had except slavery ' without at least a passing 

 protest from me as one who loves the Union, 

 the whole Union, and believes it now to be in 

 divisible, indestructible, and destined to endure 

 through all time. It was the 'rag baby' that 

 saved this Union ; that enabled you, Mr. Speak- 

 er (Mr. Rice, of Ohio, in the chair), to go forth 

 at the head of your column to lay one of your 

 limbs upon a distant field. Gold, the coward, 

 had fled the country. The ' rag baby ' stepped 

 forward and gave you and your men arms, am- 

 munition, food, medical care, and transporta- 

 tion. It watched over you in the hospital, 

 and brought back the manly spirit in the mu- 

 tilated patriot's form. 



"Now, sir, when peace has returned, that 

 which served us so well in war is not deserv- 

 ing of the contempt that is being heaped upon 

 it, while the people by millions cry from their 

 cold hearthsides, from their hungry homes, 

 for the privilege of toiling, and ask us to main- 

 tain a familiar medium of exchange whereby 

 capital and enterprise may pay labor for its 

 work. Why shall we not heed their prayer ? 

 The nation's credit will not suffer. That which 

 gave us a credit of twenty-seven hundred mil- 

 lions of dollars is certainly enough to sustain 

 the two thousand millions we yet owe. You 

 had no gold or silver when your bonds were 

 first bought by foreigners ; they knew that they 

 took the bonds payable in lawful money, the 

 interest only being payable in coin of gold or 

 silver ; and who will say that when they did 

 this while we had a war upon our hands, with 

 the destiny of the nation uncertain, knowing 

 that the Government only pledged the pay- 

 ment of its bonds in lawful money with the 

 interest in coin, they will not trust us now, 

 if we will only put our new machinery at 

 work?" 



Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, said : " I want it re- 

 membered in the outset that the greenback 

 currency was and is so known in the courts 



