The legal-tender note, which we wish to expel from our currency, has two different characters: first, as mere currency, for use in the transactions of business; and, secondly, as real value, from the assurance that ultimately it will be…
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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What is natural is simple; and I am persuaded that our remedy must be of this character.
There are few who will advocate inconvertible paper as currency.
Driven from the ocean by pirate flags during the Rebellion, it cannot struggle back to its ancient supremacy until the accustomed laws of trade once more resume their rule.
Our shipping, which in times past has been the pride of the Nation, whitening every sea with its sails, is reduced in number and value.
Commerce with foreign powers is prosecuted at an incalculable disadvantage.
In all foreign transactions we are driven to purchase gold at a premium, or to adopt a system of barter which belongs to the earlier stages of commerce.
Our currency has the stamp of legality at home, but it is worthless abroad.
Until it becomes again the standard among us, we are not, according to the familiar phrase of President Lincoln, in “practical relation” with the civilized world.
Our foreign commerce is not less disturbed; for here we are brought within the sphere of other laws than our own.
Broken contracts prepare the way for crime, which comes to complete the picture.
The failed paper of the Government teaches the lesson of bankruptcy.
Speculation without money takes the place of honest industry, extending from the stock exchange everywhere.
The temptation of excessive gains leads from the beaten path of business.
The stock exchange becomes little better than a faro bank.
In such a condition of things the gamblers have the advantage.
A dollar which has to-day one value and to-morrow another is no better than a yard which has to-day one length and another to-morrow, or a bushel which has to-day one capacity and another to-morrow.
Fluctuations in the measure of value are as inconvenient and fatal as fluctuations in the measures of length and bulk.
Even at the smallest rate, it is many millions more than all the annual expenses of our Government immediately preceding the Rebellion.
One per cent. on this prodigious amount represents a tax of one hundred and ten millions, paid annually by consumers, according to their consumption, and not in any degree according to their ability.
There are few business men who would not put the annual loss in their affairs, from the fluctuation in the currency, somewhere from one to five per cent.
There is not a manufacture or business which does not feel it also.
There is no national enterprise which it does not impede.
It weakens the Nation and hampers the citizen.
It is a discredit to the national name, from which the Nation suffers in whole and in detail.
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