Various - Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889

But there came a time when the policy of the government was radically changed. The soldiers had conquered a peace, – or thought they had, – and, as they marched in review before their commander-in-chief, had been paid off in crisp notes of the government – legal tender to the soldier, but not to the bondholder; the time for government to pay the soldiers had ceased; the national banks had been allowed to show their patriotism and their willingness to aid the government overthrow a rebellion already conquered, by the issuance of their notes to add to an inflated and depreciated currency; the soldiers had returned to the arts of peace, and had taken their places as producers of the nation’s wealth and taxpayers to the national Treasury. Then Mr. Sherman, with his brother patriots and statesmen, discovered that the country (meaning, of course, the bondholders) was suffering under the evils of a depreciated currency. Their tender consciences had never suffered a twinge while the soldiers were receiving from the government a currency depreciated in value as the result of its own acts. But when the soldier became the taxpayer, and from his toil was to be obliged to pay the bondholder, then the patriotic hearts of Mr. Sherman and his co-conspirators in the dominant political party trembled at the thought of a soldier being allowed to discharge his obligations in the same kind of money he had received for his services. As a recipient of the government dole, paper money, purposely depreciated, was quite sufficient. From the citizen by the product of whose toil a bonded interest-bearing debt was to be paid, “honest money” was to be demanded. It required no argument to convince the government creditor that this was a step in his interest, and public clamor was hushed with the catchwords of “honest money” and “national honor,” while driblets of pensions were allowed to trickle from rivers of revenue. The Nero of Rome had been excelled by his Christian successor, and the dumb submission of ancient slaves became manly independence in contrast with modern stupidity.

By the passage of the so-called “Credit-strengthening Act,” in March, 1869, it was provided that all bonds of the government, except in cases where the law authorizing the issue of any such obligation has expressly provided that the same may be paid in lawful money, or other currency than gold and silver, should be payable in coin. This act was denounced by both Morton and Stevens, as a fraud upon the people, in that it made a new contract for the benefit of the bondholder. The injustice of the act could have been determined upon the plainest principles of equity: if the bonds were payable in coin, there was no need for its passage; if they were not so payable, there could be no excuse for it. If there existed a doubt sufficiently strong to require such an act, it was clearly an injustice to ignore the rights of the many in the interests of the few. But the men who had not scrupled to send rag-money to the soldiers in the trenches, and coin to the plotters in the rear, had no consciences to be troubled. They had dared to pay to the soldiers the money of the nation, and then rob them of two-thirds of it under color of law, and now needed only to search for methods, not for excuses. Political exigencies must be guarded against. The public must be hoodwinked, the soldier element placated with pension doles.

The first essential was to stifle public discussion. Some fool-friends of the money power had introduced and pressed the bill early in 1868. There were still a few Representatives in Congress who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and they raised a vigorous protest against the iniquitous proposal. Discussion then might be fatal to both the scheme and the party, and Simon Cameron supplemented an already inodorous career by warning the Senate that this bill would seriously injure the Republican party, and that it should be laid aside until the excitement of a political campaign had subsided, and it could be discussed with the calmness with which we should view all great financial questions.

Here was the art of the demagogue, blinding the eyes of the people with sophistry and false pretences in order to secure by indirection that which could not be obtained by fair discussion. A Presidential election was approaching. An honest Chief Executive had rebelled against the attempt to nullify the results of the war by converting the Southern States into conquered territories, in order that party supremacy should be secured, even at the expense of national unity and harmony. Any discussion of a proposition to burden the victorious soldier with greater debt, in the interest of a class of stay-at-homes, would have caused vigorous protests from the men whose aid was necessary for party success. Thaddeus Stevens had announced that if he thought “that the Republican party would vote to pay, in coin, bonds that were payable in greenbacks, thus making a new contract for the benefit of the bondholders, he would vote for Frank Blair, even if a worse man than Horatio Seymour was at the head of the ticket.” Oliver P. Morton, the war-Governor of Indiana, had been equally vigorous in his language; and practical politicians foresaw that even Pennsylvania and Indiana might be lost to the Republican party with these men arrayed against it. Therefore the cunning proposal to postpone this discussion “until after the excitement of a Presidential election was over, and we could discuss this with the calmness with which we should view all great financial questions.” The hint was taken, the contest of 1868 was fought under a seeming acquiescence in the views of Stevens and Morton; the dear people were hoodwinked with catch-phrases coined to deceive, and a new lease of power was secured by false pretence. But when the excitement of the election had passed, and there was no longer any danger of “injuring the Republican party,” all discussion was stifled; and the first act signed by the newly elected President was that which had been laid aside for that season of “calmness with which we should view all great financial questions.”

The next step in the conspiracy was a logical sequence to all that had preceded. Having secured coin payment of interest and principal of all bonds, it was now in order to still further increase the value of the one and to perpetuate the payment of the other. To this end, silver was demonetized by a trick in the revision of the Statutes, reducing the volume of coin one-half, and decreasing the probability of rapid bond payments. Then the volume of the paper currency was contracted by a systematic course of substituting interest-bearing bonds for non-interest-bearing currency, and the first chapter of financial blunders and crimes of the Wall Street servants ended in a panic, revealing, in its first wild terror, the disgraceful connection of high public officials with the worst elements of stock-jobbery.

It is possible that a direct proposition in 1865, to double the amount of the public debt as a free gift to the creditor-class, might have caused such a clamor as would have forever driven from power its authors, and have silenced the claims of modern Republicans that they were the sole friends of the soldier, and defenders of national honor. But the financial legislation of the Republican party has done more and worse than this. Its every act has been in the interest of a favored class, and a direct and flagrant robbery of the producing masses. It has won the support of corporate monopoly by blind submission to its demands, and, with brazen audacity, sought and obtained the co-operation of the survivors of the army by doling out pensions and promises. And yet, with a record that would have crimsoned the cheek of a Nero or Caligula, its leaders are posing as critics of honest statesmen, and the only friends and defenders of the soldier and laborer. The leaders of its earlier and better days have been ostracised and silenced in party councils, while audacious demagogues have used its places of trust as a means of casting anchors to windward for personal profit. Its party conventions are controlled by notorious lobbyists and railroad attorneys, and the agricultural population appealed to for support. Truly the world is governed more by prejudice than by reason, and American politics of the present day offer but slight rewards to manliness or patriotism.