page_title: Hugh McCulloch
section_title: Government career
hierarchical_section_title: Hugh McCulloch / Biography / Government career
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraved BEP portrait of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch
context_page_description: Hugh McCulloch, a New England Yankee, was an American financier who played a central role in financing the American Civil War. He served two non-consecutive terms as U.S. Treasury Secretary under three presidents. He was originally opposed to the creation of a system of national banks, but his reputation as head of the Bank of Indiana 1857 to 1863 persuaded the Treasury to bring him in to supervise the new system as Comptroller of the Currency 1863–65. As Secretary of the Treasury 1865–69 he reduced and funded the gigantic Civil War debt of the union, and reestablish the federal taxation system across the former Confederacy. He tried but failed to make a rapid return to the gold standard.
context_section_description: On March 9, 1865, McCulloch was appointed as the 27th Secretary of the Treasury by President Abraham Lincoln. His appointment was largely due to his influence with existing state banks. McCulloch later remarked that on the morning of Lincoln's assassination, "I never saw Mr. Lincoln so cheerful and happy...The burden which had been weighing upon him for four long years, and which he had borne with heroic fortitude, had been lifted; the war had been practically ended; the Union was safe." He continued to serve in the Presidential Cabinet of Andrew Johnson until the close of his administration in 1869.
  Immediately confronted with inflation caused by the government's wartime issue of greenbacks, he recommended their retirement and a return to the gold standard. In McCulloch's first annual report, issued on December 4, 1865, he strongly urged the retirement of the legal tenders or greenbacks as a preliminary to the resumption of specie payments. However this would have reduced the supply of currency and was unpopular during the period of postwar reconstruction and westward expansion.
  In accordance with this suggestion an act was passed, on March 12, 1866, authorizing the retirement of not more than $10,000,000 in six months and not more than $4,000,000 per month thereafter. This act met with strong opposition and was repealed on the February 4, 1868, after only $48,000,000 had been retired. The battle over its revival raged for the next fifty years. McCulloch was also disappointed by the decision of the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the legal tenders.
  During his tenure, McCulloch maintained a policy of reducing the federal war debt and the careful reintroduction of federal taxation in the South.
  Soon after the close of his term of office McCulloch went to England, and spent six years (1870–1876) as a member of the banking firm of Jay Cooke, McCulloch & Co.
  From October 1884 until the close of President Chester A. Arthur's term of office in March 1885, McCulloch again served as Secretary of the Treasury. During his six months in office at that time, he continued his fight for currency backed by gold, warning that the coinage of silver, used by then as backing for currency, should be halted.
  After his death, McCulloch's portrait was used on several issues of $20 U.S. national bank notes (specifically the 1902 series).
caption: Bureau of Engraving and Printing portrait of McCulloch as Secretary of the Treasury.
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