CONGRESSIONAL CURRENCY: AN OUTLINE OF THE FEDERAL I. INTRODUCTORY. THE monetary transactions of the government and of the people of the United States are conducted with money bearing the government's stamp of weight and fineness, and with paper currency prepared and furnished by the government, all emanating from the Treasury Department at Washington, under and by virtue of acts of the Congress, either directly, as in case of the greenbacks, the gold and silver certificates, the currency certificates and the Treasury notes of 1890; or indirectly, as in the case of the national bank notes, which are issued under statutory restrictions and limitations, and are secured by government bonds. The currency circulation is accurately divisible into two classes, viz. money, which includes gold coins, the standard silver dollar, and subsidiary coins; and currency proper,' which consists of greenbacks, national bank notes, gold certificates, silver certificates and Treasury or coin notes. Thus there are nine kinds of circulating medium in the United States, having the stamp and approval and backed by the credit of the government. In times of panic and financial crisis, under our peculiar system even these nine kinds of money have proved insufficient, and resort has been had in the cities of the United States to a tenth species of currency, not emanating, however, from the Congress, nor recognized by it, but serving a potential and valuable purpose at such periods, viz.: the clearing-house certificates. Of the results of the War between the States, which begun in 1861 and ended in 1 Webster's Works, vol. iv., p. 271. 1865, the ultimate settlement of the doctrine of secession in the negative, and the emancipation and enfranchisement of the Southern slaves, if apparently the most conspicuous at its close, were not the most important and far reaching in their consequences upon the future welfare of the American people. "An indissoluble Union of indestructible States" has long been the creed of patriotic Americans, North and South; and the "Negro Question" has of late years settled itself to the general satisfaction of the whole country. But the burden of financial legislation resulting from the War lies heavily upon the people of the United States thirty years after the War's end. As tremendous in its significance as it was rapid in its consummation, was the irresistible aggregation, under the exigent stress of conflict, into the hands of the Congress of the United States, within a period of some four or five years, of all the financial and currency forces of the country, with the stupendous powers and capabilities for good and evil which the possession |