truggle was severe, but the enemy in the field was
threatening the life of the nation, while the usurers were urgent and
posing as patriots, that they might accomplish their ends. True
patriots, anxious to defeat the enemy in arms, regarded these usurers
at home as equally the enemies of freedom. They were in a strait
betwixt two foes.

Secretary McCullough said, "Hostility to the government has been as
decidedly manifested in the efforts that have been made in the
commercial metropolis of the nation to depreciate the currency as has
been by the enemy."

The opposition to the usurers was very strong and bitter, but the
conditions were in their favor and they gained a decided advantage. In
the Senate the vote stood twenty-three yeas to twenty-one nays. It was
carried only as a war measure. There was an effort to limit the
usurers' privileges to the war and one year after its close. This was
not successful, but their loan was confined to the war debt, and their
time to its payment, limited to twenty years.

This action caused great distress and dark forebodings of evil to many
of the thoughtful. It was setting aside the policy of the nation,
which had been generally acquiesced in as wise and judicious and safe
for many years. The old patriot Thadeus Stevens, in the opening of a
speech in a preliminary skirmish between patriotism and usurers,
said: "I approach the subject with more depression of spirits than I
ever before approached any question. No personal motive or feeling
influences me. I hope not, at least. I have a melancholy foreboding
that we are about to consummate a cunningly devised scheme, which will
carry great injury and great loss to all classes of people throughout
the Union, except one." Later he said, in excuse of the action, "We
had to yield, we did not yield until we found that the country must be
lost or the banks gratified, and we have sought to save the country in
spite of the cupidity of its wealthier classes."

The usurers have never relaxed the hold they secured by this victory,
and have since been continually increasing their power. They obtained
an extension or "refunding" of the war debt, and a renewal of their
charters by the general laws, so their hold is indefinitely extended.
Bonds are no longer limited to the covering of war expenses, but are
issued freely in times of peace. The traditions of the fathers have
been cast to the winds, and their fears derided and their policy
changed. Th