ewing the financial
policy of his party during the war, Mr. Sherman said, in a speech in
the Senate, July 14th, 1868 [Footnote: Congressional Record, page
4044]:

"It was, then, our policy during the war, to depreciate the value
of United States notes, so that they would come into the Treasury
more freely for our bonds. Why, sir, we did a very natural thing
for us to do, we increased the amount to $300,000,000, then to
$450,000,000, and we took away the important privilege of
converting them into bonds on the ground that, while this
privilege remained, the people would not subscribe for the bonds,
and the notes would not be converted; that the right a man might
exercise at any time, he would not exercise at all."

No page of our national history contains a more damning record of
injustice than this. Mr. Sherman recognizes and admits that the notes,
as issued and paid to the soldiers and producers of the country, were
fundable at the holder's option in a government interest-bearing bond.
He confesses to the foreknowledge that in nullifying this right the
value of the notes would be decreased and to that extent the soldiers'
pay be diminished. No organ of public opinion raised the cry of
breaking the plighted faith of the nation. The soldier had no organ
then; but years after the wrong had been perpetrated, there appeared
in Spaulding's "History of the Currency" the naive statement, "It
never seemed quite right to take away this important privilege while
the notes were outstanding with this endorsement upon them." By a law,
passed against the protests of the wisest and most patriotic members
of the popular branch of Congress, it had been provided that these
government notes, so soon to be further depreciated in value, should
be a full legal tender to the nation's defenders, but only rags in the
hands of the fortunate holder of interest-bearing obligations of the
government, upon which they were based, and into which they were
fundable at the option of the holder. In one of his reports while
Secretary of the Treasury, Hon. Hugh McCulloch showed that fully
thirty per cent of the cost of supplies furnished the government was
due to the depreciation of the currency, the initial step in such
depreciation being the placing of the words "Except duties on imports
and interest on the public debt" in the law and upon the back of the
notes. But, having provided that one class of the government creditors
should b