SENATORSHIP AT ALB ANY- 1864-1865 113 



shall vote for this loan; for of various fearful evils it 

 seems the least. But I wish, here and now, and with the 

 deepest sorrow, to record a prediction : I ask you to note 

 it and to remember it, for it will be fulfilled, and speedily. 

 This State debt which you are now incurring will never 

 be paid. It cannot be paid. More than that, none of the 

 vast debts incurred for military purposes, whether by 

 the Nation or by the States, will be paid ; the people will 

 surely repudiate them. Nor is this all. Not one dollar 

 of all the treasury notes issued by the United States will 

 ever be redeemed. Your paper currency has already de- 

 preciated much and will depreciate more and more; all 

 bonds and notes, State and National, issued to continue V 

 this fratricidal war will be whirled into the common vor- 

 tex of repudiation. I say this with the deepest pain, for 

 I love my country, but I cannot be blind to the teachings 

 of history." He then went on to cite the depreciation 

 of our revolutionary currency, and, at great length pic- 

 tured the repudiation of the assignats during the French 

 Kevolution. He had evidently read Alison and Thiers 

 carefully, and he spoke like an inspired prophet. 



As Senator Allaben thus spoke, Senator Fields of New 

 York quietly left his seat and came to me. He was a 

 most devoted servant of Tammany, but was what was 

 known in those days as a War Democrat. His native 

 pugnacity caused him to feel that the struggle must be 

 fought out, whereas Democrats of a more philosophic 

 sort, like Allaben, known in those days as ' * Copper- 

 heads," sought peace at any price. Therefore it was that, 

 while Senator Allaben was pouring out with the deepest 

 earnestness these prophecies of repudiation, Mr. Fields 

 came round to my desk and said to me: "You have been 

 a professor of history; you are supposed to know some- 

 thing about the French Revolution; if your knowledge 

 is good for anything, why in h 1 don't you use it now?" 



This exhortation was hardly necessary, and at the close 

 of Senator Allaben 's remarks I arose and presented an- 

 other view of the case. It happened by a curious coin- 



I. 8 



