Whitelaw Reid: “It seems to me, then, idle to thresh over old straw when the grain is not only winnowed, but gone to the mill.”

Congress is supreme, and, for all the purposes of this department, has all the powers of the people of the United States, except such as have been expressly or by implication reserved in the prohibitions of the Constitution.

We must, then, be prepared with a policy for maintaining it ourselves.

Here was the opportunity for a statesman to grasp.

Fully believing the debts of their Rebel Government legal and just, they were prepared to repudiate them at a hint from Washington.