My cite states that no notes issued prior to the greenbacks were legal tender under the greenbacks and you would have known this if you had bothered to read he material I posted in the two wiki Fed articles BTW are you wise and omniscient ones sarcasm aware that Federal reserve notes were not legal tender until 1933 lets see if you read it here I believe that Congress does NOT have the power to make paper money a legal tender and does not even have the power to make gold and silver a legal tender The reference below show clearly that at least one US president and Funding Father agree with me on both counts and that at least two US presidents and Founding Fathers agree with me on one count I hope that claims of original research and synthesis can now be put to rest as BOGUS An old NY times article references the following quotes James Madison Thus the pretext for a paper currency and particularly for making the bill a legal tender either for public or private debt was cut off Thomas Jefferson I now deny their Congress s power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender A Mr Benton who is also cited states The power granted to Congress to coin money is an authority to stamp metallic money and is not an authority for emitting slips of paper containing promises to pay money Per Yale Law School records of the minutes of the vote to TAKE AWAY from Congress the power to emit bills of credit during the Constitutional Convention as recorded by Founding Father and future president James Madison FN23 This vote in the affirmative by Virga was occasioned by the acquiescence of Mr Madison who became satisfied that striking out the words would not disable the Govt from the use of public notes as far as they could be safe proper would only cut off the pretext for a paper currency FN24 and particularly for making the bills a tender FN24 either for public or private debts and Mr Ghorum was for striking out without inserting any prohibition if the words stand they may suggest and lead to the measure My aside The power to be struck out was the power to emit Mr Ghorum Madison misspelled the name the person is actually Nathanial Gorham states that if the words stand the words being emit bills of credit that they may suggest and lead to the measure with the measure being printing legal tender paper money To be ABSOLUTELY clear this vote denied Congress the power to emit per money and strikes at the core of arguments in favor of paper money because Congress can not make paper money a legal tender because the power to print paper money was REMOVED from Congress If Congress can not even print paper money how can it make it legal tender In Federalist 44 Madison states The extension of the prohibition to bills of credit must give pleasure to every citizen in proportion to his love of justice and his knowledge of the true springs of public prosperity The loss which America has sustained since the peace from the pestilent effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man and man on the necessary confidence in the public councils on the industry and morals of the people and on the character of republican government constitutes an enormous debt against the States chargeable with this unadvised measure which must long remain unsatisfied or rather an accumulation of guilt which can be expiated no otherwise than by a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of justice of the power which has been the instrument of it From Craig v Misouri The whole was intended to exclude everything from use as a circulating medium except gold and silver and to give to the United States the exclusive control over the coining and valuing of the metallic medium That the real dollar may represent property and not the shadow of it From the dissenting opinion to one of the Legal Tender cases starts with THE CHIEF JUSTICE dissenting Acts of Congress not made in pursuance of the Constitution are not laws We perceive no connection between the express power to coin money and the inference that the government may in any contingency make its securities perform the functions of coined money as a legal tender in payment of debtsIt is unnecessary to say that we reject wholly the doctrine advanced for the first time