The Portland daily press., 1879-08-05
Disingenuous Correspondent.

OF the party, and turning from the
financial doctrines preached by men like
Fessenden, Sumner and other great leaders
who shaped legislation in 1862 The letter
should have been noticed before, but the
PRESS has been so busy setting the Argus
right as to Thomas Jefferson and other DEM
ocratic leaders, past and present, that no
time has been found to treat of the matter it
now proposes to consider. Now to the let
ter and its misstatements. Here it and they
are:
To the Editor Of the 4rgus:
By reference to the annual Cyclopedia for
the year 1862, on page 317 an interesting dis
cussion in the 37th Congress on the above sub
lect may be found, and also the vote in the
Senate and House of Representatives, on this
momentous question: when it was decided to
pass the bill then pending as the public exigen-
cy demanded it. An equal exigency now Gn
1879 demands circulating medium in the
nature of legal tenders or greenbacks.
Maine by its delegation in Congress voted
unanimously for legal tenders in 1862. The
vote stood in the United States Senate-yeas
30, nays T. In the House of Representatives
under the lead of the accomplished Thaddeus
Stevens, the vote stood-yeas SO, nays 59-a
majority of "a votes for the issue of greenbacks
by the Government. So it appears by the rec
ord that John Sherman, the present father of
resumption, advocated, with Senators Fessen-
den of Maine, Wilson and Sumner of Massach-
usetts, Howard of Michigan and others, the
conStitutiondlity Of legal tenders or treasury
notes and passed the bill in 1862.
Now if the Republican party believed in the
issue of treasury notes as legal and constitu-
tional in 1862, why have they gone back on
their record? The truth is that Sherman and
his party are deceiving the people by opposing
the very policy which they formerly advocated
and under which the business of the country
prospered.
The resumption policy of this administration
has been the chief cause OF hard times, and the
coming election will prove that the voters of
Maine are alive to the pending issue.
This letter entirely misrepresents the
memorable discussion that followed the
introduction of the legal-tender bill, and the
reasons that induced the Republican leaders
to adopt it. They consented to its enact
ment with fear and trembling, and passed it
as war measure, under the pressure of an
overwhelming necessity, in order to meet
the enormous demands made upon de-
pleted Treasury by the war, and with the
understanding that a return to the old stan
dard should be made at the earliest practical
BILE moment. The act itself provided for
that return by its funding clause, and the
great mistake the Republicans made at a
later day was in repeating that clause.
The Republican leaders in House and
Senate were hard-money men. They held
that standard coin or paper convertible into
it was the only safe medium of exchange,
and they reluctantly and fearfully consented
to temporary departure from it under ex-
traordinary circumstances. Secretary Chase
hesitated long before suggesting the act for
he dreaded the consequences that might fol-
low from 1.-THE debauchery of public SEN
tlment and the unsettling of sound financial
doctrines that an excessive and irredeemable
paper currency brings about. He said
legal tender notes must be the devil made
manifest in paper; for no man can foresee
what mischief they may do when they are
once let loose" When the bill was sub
mitted to Congress it met with much oppo-
sition and was adopted with extreme reluc-
tance. The legal-tender clause passed by
only five majority. Senator Fessenden,
chairman of the Committee on Finance.
whom the argus correspondent has the
effrontery to quote, said of the bill:
1t proposes something utterly unknown in
this Government from its foundation: a resort
to measure of doubtful constitutionality, to
say the least of it, which has always been de-
nounced as ruinous to the credit of any Gov
ernment which has recourse to it; a
measure, which, when it has been tried by
other countries, as it often has been, has al
ways proved disastrous failure
He supported the bill with reluctance,
but said the committee was bound
''That an assurance should be given to the
country that it is to be resorted to only as
policy; that it is what it processes to be, but a
temporary measure. l have not heard any
man express a contrary opinion, or, at least,
any man who has spoken on the subject in
congress All the gentlemen who have
written on the subject, except some wild spec
ulators on currency, have declared that as
policy it would be ruinous to any people: and
1t has been defended, as have stated, simply
and solely upon the ground that it is to be a
single measure, standing alone, and not to be
repeated. 1t is put upon the ground of
absolute, overwhelming necessity"
Senator Sumner, whom the Arqus cores
pondent also quotes, said:
Surely we must all be against paper money,
we must insist upon maintaining the integrity
faces against any proposition like the present
except as temporary expedient, rendered i'm
perative by the exigency of the hour. .
A remedy which at another moment you would
reject is now proposed Whatever may be the
national resources they are not now in reach
except by summary process. Reluctantly,
painfully, consent that the process should
issue. And yet cannot give such vote with
out warning the Government against the dam
gers from such an experiment. The medicine
OF the Constitution must not become its daily
bread.''
In the House the bill was opposed and
voted against by many of the most strenuous
supporters of the war. Even of those who
voted for it not one defended it as a perma-
nent policy. Owen Lovejoy, than whom a
better Republican never breathed, said:
"There is no precipice, there is no chasm,
there is no possible, bottomless, yawning gull
before the Nation so appalling so ruinous, as
this same bill that is before us"
Thaddeus Stevens, whom the Greenback-
ers and the argus SO frequently quote, said
'This bill is a measure of necessity not OF
choice. No one would willingly issue paper
currency not redeemable on demand and
make it legal tender. 1t is never desirable to
depart from the circulating medium which, by
the common consent of civilized nations, forms
the standard of value"
These expressions of opinion show where
Republicans stood in 1862 With an empty
Treasury, with the Secretarys table loaded
with acquisitions for millions of money,
with great rebel armies confronting us at
every point, they resorted, with doubt and
trembling, and under the pressure of a
dreadful necessity, to the dangerous expe-
dent of forced loan from the people, and
with the express understanding that the ex-
pedient was but temporary and that return
should be made to the coin standard at the
earliest practicable moment That is the
ground the Republicans stood on then.
That is where they stand now. How was it
with the Democrats? Have they shifted
ground or not? The Aryus correspondent,
who refers so jubilantly to ''the annual
cyclopedia for the year 1862 on page 317,''
will do well to look at page 327, where he will
find the Democratic Senators Pierce, Powell
and Salisbury recorded as voting against
the legal-tender bill; and to page 324, where
he will find Democratic Congressman Cox,
Holman, Pendleton, Vallandingham, Voor-