nt, December 27, 1878.
"Hon. James Gilfillan, Treasurer United States.

"Sir:--In connection with the department's circular of the 14th
instant concerning the resumption of specie payments, you are
directed, on and after the 1st proximo, to keep no special account
of coin with any public disbursing officer, and to close any account
of that description at that time standing on your books, keeping
thereafter but one money of account in your office.

"Similar instructions have this day been sent to the several
independent treasury officers.

"Very respectfully,
"John Sherman, Secretary."

On the 28th I wrote the First National Bank of New York:

"Your letter of yesterday is received. I do not see my way clear
to issue another call until the one now outstanding is covered by
subscription. There is still a deficit of about $4,000,000 on the
71st call. There is not, however, the slightest objection to your
stating authoritatively, or, if desired, I will do so in response
to a direct inquiry, that every dollar of the proceeds of four per
cent. bonds sold during the present year had been applied on calls
for refunding, and it is my purpose to continue this unless I give
public notice to the contrary.

"I feel the more inclined to refuse to make a call by reason of
the probable requisition that may be made for the Halifax award,
and I do not wish by any chance to impair the resumption fund."

During the latter part of December the air was full of rumors of
a combination in New York for a run upon the sub-treasury on the
opening of the new year. The alarm was so great that the president
of the National Bank of Commerce in that city, who was also chairman
of the clearing house committee, at three o'clock p. m. on the
30th, with the advice of other bankers, sent me, by special messenger,
an urgent request for the transfer to his bank, on the following
day, from the sub-treasury, of $5,000,000 in gold, in exchange for
a like amount in United States notes, to enable the banks, he said,
to meet a "corner" in gold. To this there could be but one reply.
The treasury had no power to make the transfer, even if it desired
to do so. I therefore declined the proposition, and did not believe
in a "corner."

During the exciting events connected with resumption and refunding
I did not overlook the political condition in Ohio, and wrote a
letter in regard to it, which I think proper here to insert, as it
presents my view at