e act could have been determined upon the plainest
principles of equity: if the bonds were payable in coin, there was no
need for its passage; if they were not so payable, there could be no
excuse for it. If there existed a doubt sufficiently strong to require
such an act, it was clearly an injustice to ignore the rights of the
many in the interests of the few. But the men who had not scrupled to
send rag-money to the soldiers in the trenches, and coin to the
plotters in the rear, had no consciences to be troubled. They had
dared to pay to the soldiers the money of the nation, and then rob
them of two-thirds of it under color of law, and now needed only to
search for methods, not for excuses. Political exigencies must be
guarded against. The public must be hoodwinked, the soldier element
placated with pension doles.

The first essential was to stifle public discussion. Some fool-friends
of the money power had introduced and pressed the bill early in 1868.
There were still a few Representatives in Congress who had not bowed
the knee to Baal, and they raised a vigorous protest against the
iniquitous proposal. Discussion then might be fatal to both the scheme
and the party, and Simon Cameron supplemented an already inodorous
career by warning the Senate that this bill would seriously injure
the Republican party, and that it should be laid aside until the
excitement of a political campaign had subsided, and it could be
discussed with the calmness with which we should view all great
financial questions.

Here was the art of the demagogue, blinding the eyes of the people with
sophistry and false pretences in order to secure by indirection that
which could not be obtained by fair discussion. A Presidential election
was approaching. An honest Chief Executive had rebelled against the
attempt to nullify the results of the war by converting the Southern
States into conquered territories, in order that party supremacy should
be secured, even at the expense of national unity and harmony. Any
discussion of a proposition to burden the victorious soldier with
greater debt, in the interest of a class of stay-at-homes, would have
caused vigorous protests from the men whose aid was necessary for party
success. Thaddeus Stevens had announced that if he thought "that the
Republican party would vote to pay, in coin, bonds that were payable
in greenbacks, thus making a new contract for the benefit of the
bondholders, he would vote for Frank