enable the incoming administration
to carry on its financial operations without embarrassment till it
shall have time to mature a plan for itself, has met with an obstacle
quite unexpected to me. The committee of ways and means in the
House has declined to report a bill to authorize me to accept the
guaranties voluntarily tendered by the states. Mr. Spaulding, of
New York, and Mr. Morrill, of Vermont, I learn, have objections.
Unless they withdraw their opposition the bill cannot be reported,
and the plan must fail. In that case I shall not deem it proper
to ask for a loan of more than two millions to meet the redemption
of treasury notes, which fall due before the 4th of March. The
state of the country is such that a larger amount thrown on the
market would have a most disastrous influence on the public credit.
I do not think I can borrow two millions at more than 90 per cent.
With a guaranty such as the states have offered, I can get eight
millions at par. The alternative is to authorize me to accept the
guaranty, or leave the treasury with scarcely anything in it and
with outstanding demands, some of them very pressing, of at least
six millions of dollars, for you and your political friends to
provide for. If anything is done it should be to-morrow, as I
ought to publish the notice on Wednesday. Perhaps you can see the
gentlemen referred to to-night and remove their objections. I am,
very truly, your obedient servant,

"John A. Dix."

On the 8th of February, 1861, a bill became a law providing for
the sale of $20,000,000 six per cent. bonds, and these were sold
at the rate of $89.10 for $100, yielding $18,415,000.

Such was the humiliating financial condition of the government of
the United States at the close of Mr. Buchanan's administration.
The expenditures of the government for the fiscal year ending June
30, 1861, were $84,577,258.60, of which $42,064,082.95 was procured
from loans and treasury notes, leaving a balance in the treasury,
at the close of the fiscal year 1861, of $2,395,635.21. This
condition still existed when Congress subsequently met in special
session.

Under the sub-treasury laws then in force, the revenues of the
government were received and held only in the treasury at Washington,
and in sub-treasuries located in a few of the principal cities of
the United States, and could be paid out only upon the draft of
the treasurer of the United States, drawn agreeably to appropriatio