Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1868-10-21
The Contract 10 Pay the Bonds
John Sherman's miraculous Con

version.
Judge RUFUs P. RANNEY, acknowledged
as one of the ablest lawyers in Ohio-a
man who never gives an opinion on law
matter without reflection and examination
lin a speech delivered at Ashtabula on
the 18th of September, in speaking of the
payment of the bonds, said:
"There is not the slightest obligation on
earth to pay in coin. There is not thing
in the law under which they were issued,
nor thing in the form of the contract,
that binds us to pay anything else than the
lawful currency of the country, such as you
have to take for your debts and your labor;
not thing"
In the same speech, in which Judge
RANNEY gives this opinion, he shows up
Senator JOHN SHERMAN's sudden change of
front on the Greenback issue, in light
that reflects no credit upon that celebrated
political summersaulter. He says:
The most remarkable conversion that 1
nave seen any where is of Brother John
Sherman on this subject. John, like the
war-horse spoken of in the book of Job,
"smells the battle from afar." Laughter ]
John, last, year, was the most vehement in
all Ohio to stand by your contracts and
pay all these five-twenties in gold coin.-
He would not hear to any thing else. l
will read you little to show the way he
was last year. 1t is an extract from the
Cincinnati Gazette of July 1, 1S6S comment
ing on a speech of his in Hamilton county
I'VE funded the currency payable debt
debt into hve-twenty bonds. Senator
Sherman, the Chairman of the Finance
Committee, said these were gold bonds, and
tnat any body who was for paying them in
sreenbacks aods repudidtor. In his cam
paign speech last fall, at Carson's Grove,
In this county, he gave a full financial eX-
| position, as was fit for our leading legisla-
tive finaneier, and the principal point of it
| was an argument showing that the public
faith was committed to the payment of the
5-20's In gold. After reviewing the laws
under which the bonds and greenbacks
| were issued, to show the legal pledge, he
cited Secretary Chase's letter of May Is
1854, affirming the payability of the 5-20's
In gold, and then with a solemn oath, lie de.
| clared that he would sacredly keep his
pledge. He said: That declaration was
made by the Secretary of the Treasury
with the sanction of both Houses of Con.
gress. Upon the faith of that, money was
lent by all classes of people to the United
States That policy has prevailed from the
foundation of the Government to this time
Ii has never been violated, and so help me
Godl i would never aid in its violation
whatever might be the consequences, s
Further on, the Gazette says he closed his
remarks in this elegant and eloquent laa
guage:
'The whole proposition is a Utopian,
demagogicai, mean, dirty, nasty scheme
which no party but the Copperhead party
In the United States could invent. -
That Is John Sherman last year. Now,
we will come to John Sherman of March
20. of this year. You recollect, my friends,
that ehnrfl xyo tor.f fbis
held in Ohio and some distant thunder was
heard [iaughter], and the masses began to
speak out pretty boldly that they would
not increase this debt one-third beyond
what the legal terms of the obligation
bound them to pay, by holding it payable
In coin. They further gave very signifi-
cant intimationr that they were slightly
better than the negroes, and the negroes
could not be invited here to vote with
them. ~ A' 'S9i'' q "
John heard it, for he hears anything that
pertains to getting into office as quick as
any man in America, and when he got back
into Congress he got up the Funding bill
toput you under the heels of moneyed
aristocracy for hundred years to come.
NOW, read what he says in letter, dated
Washington, March 20, 1868, to man at
Brooklyn Heights: sa d.. - ,s3i -a
'UNITED STATES SENATE CHAMBERl
'sDEAR SIR: 1 was pleased to receive
your letter. My personal interests are the
same as yours: but, like you, do not in
tend to be influenced by them. My con-
struction of the law is the result of careful
examination, and feel quite sure an i'm
partial court would confirm it. if the case
could be tried before court. Your idea is
that we propose to repudiate or violate a
promise when we offer to redeem the prin-
N in raI H. Y
hotder violates his promise sohen he refuses to
take the same kind of money he paid
for the bond If the case is to be
tested by the law, I am right. If
it is to be tested by Jay Cookies advertise
ments, am wrong. 1 hate reputation or
anything Ike it, but we ought not to be
deferred from doing what is right by fear
OF undeserved epithets. If, under the law
as it stands, the holders of five-twenties
can only be paid in gold, then we are re-
pudiators If we propose to pay otherwise.
If on the other hand the bondholder CAN
LEGALLY DEMAND only the kind of money
he paid, then he is repudiator, and an ex-
tortioner to demand money more valuable
than he gave, Truly, yours,
JOHN SHERMAN
I, ''To Hon.A. Mann, ,Jr, Brooklyn Heights -
Z The Apostle Paul, you remember, was
pretty suddenly converted, but it is hardly
an instance OF such sudden conversion as
happened to this office holding gentleman
from the State of Ohio, between the time
just before the last election and just after
Z Between the time of SHERMAN's letter,
and his speech in Hamilton county, it be-
came necessity on the partof the Radical
leaders to procure large sums of money to
carry on the campaign for GRANT and COL
FAX, and the bondholders would not furnish
it, unless they were to have gold for their
bonds. The party that, at the last State
Convention in Ohio, declared for their pay
ment in greenbacks, had to change front
and with them JOHN SHERMAN "'bouted
face" from the doctrine of his letter, and
he became an advocate of rags for the peo-
pie, for the soldier and the pensioner, and
gold for the bondholder. .azuaa
Well may Judge RANNEY call it s're-
markable conversion" when man, elected
twice to the United States Senate, thus stul-
titles himself.
A Republican Paper RejOices
Over Democratic Congressional
Claims. II e.
The Cleveland Leader (intensely Radical)
in referring to the gains the Democrats
have made in members of Congress in the
recent elections, says:
ave do not regret this gain. In the
present House of Representatives the Re-
publicaus have 16S members and the Dem
oerats So, The Republicans thus outnum-
Der the Democrats by more than three to
ope.i This majority is altogether too large