previous next
[937] gold-contracted notes were payable in currency; and the whole of that issue, put forth at a time when there was nothing but gold as currency, for which the faith of the country was pledged, under the decision of Mr. Fessenden, had to be received by the people (who paid for it in gold) in paper, or they were compelled to convert it into such bonds as the government chose to give them.

Mr. Blaine. Will the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Butler] allow me to read one sentence?

I answered, Certainly.

Mr. Blaine. The decision in regard to the payment of the first series of seven-thirty notes was made on the 18th of May, 1862, by Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, in these words:--

“ The three-year seven-thirty treasury notes are part of the temporary loan, and will be paid in treasury notes, unless the holders prefer to exchange them,” etc.

That was three months before Mr. Fessenden went into the treasury. He found the question res adjudicata.1 The gentleman is all wrong in charging this upon Mr. Fessenden. There is not the remotest foundation for his assertion.

I replied: The House will judge whether I was wrong, without the dictum of my friend from Maine [Mr. Blaine]. I did not say that Salmon P. Chase was not guilty of the same thing; I only said that William P. Fessenden was guilty of it; that is the distinction. [Laughter.] If Salmon P. Chase had broken the faith of this government — if he had said that, although the government had received gold in the hour of its necessity, immediately after the first battle of Bull Run, the darkest day the government ever saw, and had pledged gold in return — for then we paid gold to meet all our obligations — if Salmon P. Chase, on the 18th of May, 1864, when called upon to say whether we should pay gold for the gold we had received, broke the faith of the government, if he was one of those repudiators and scoundrels and knaves we hear of so glibly when we attempt to discuss this question of finance, why did not and why should not Secretary Fessenden overrule him when he became Secretary of the Treasury? If so great a wrong was res adjudicata, it was res very badly adjudicata, and should have been forthwith set right.

My friend does not pretend that Mr. Fessenden altered this; and when we, who believe in maintaining the faith of the nation, but not in oppressing the people with taxation, are attacked on all hands by hard words and strong inferences, and when, to get us down, we are yoked up with everybody who happens to have bad political sentiments, I would

1 Res adjudicata. A thing adjudicated or determined.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Massachusetts (Massachusetts, United States) (1)
Maine (Maine, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
William P. Fessenden (5)
Salmon P. Chase (4)
James G. Blaine (3)
William Pitt Fessenden (1)
Benjamin F. Butler (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
May 18th, 1864 AD (1)
May 18th, 1862 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: