Had there been any doubt about the meaning, it was fixed by the general understanding, and by special declarations of responsible persons speaking for the Nation.

Here is a succession of authorities, embracing high functionaries of the United States, all concurring in affixing upon these bonds the obligation to pay in coin.

I think I do not err, if I conclude that the first part of the pending measure is inadequate, while the cancellation of the three per cent. certificates in the manner proposed is inexpedient.

As testimony to the meaning of the bonds, it is important; but considering that all these persons represented the National Treasury, and that they were the agents of the Nation for the sale of these very bonds, their representations are…

This is plausible, but to my mind illusory and impracticable.

Until their authority is disowned by Congress, and their representations discarded, it is difficult to see why their language must not be treated as part of the contract, at least in all sales subsequent to its publication.

Therefore do I insist that these representations are a part of the contract by which the Nation is bound.

On its face a greenback is a promise to pay a certain number of dollars.

As well say, that, on a promise to pay so many francs in France, or so many pounds sterling in England, you could honestly acquit yourself by handing over a scrap of printed paper, inconvertible in value.

The promise in our greenbacks carries with it an ultimate obligation to pay the silver dollar whose chink is so familiar in the commerce of the world.

To pay with another promise is to renew, and not to discharge the debt.

But the obligation in our bonds is to pay “dollars” also, whenever the bonds are paid; it may be after five years, or, in the discretion of the Nation, not till twenty years, but, when paid, it must be in “dollars.” Such is the…

It is contrary to reason that a bond should be paid in an inferior obligation.

It is dishonest to force inconvertible paper without interest in payment of an interest-bearing obligation.

Such an attempt disturbs the reason and shocks the moral sense.

The dishonor of these obligations, whatever form it may assume, and whatever pretext it may adopt, is nothing but Repudiation.

It was not unnatural that a State mad with Slavery should dishonor its bonds.

Rejecting all obligations of humanity and justice, it easily rejected the obligations of Public Faith.

Slavery was in itself a perpetual repudiation, and slave-masters were unblushing repudiators.

It is one of the calamities of war, that, while it compels the employment of large means, it blunts the moral sense, and breeds too frequently an insensibility to the obligations incurred.

A national debt shares for the time the exceptional character of war itself.

It was not in the ordinary spirit of money-lending that those contributions were made.

Love of country entered into them, and made them more than money.

Every loan at that time was a contract of bottomry on the Nation,--like money lent to a ship in a strange port, and conditioned on its arrival safe at home,--so that it failed entirely, if Slavery, by the aid of Foreign Powers, established…

It remains now that we should overcome that other enemy, which, hardly less malignant than war itself, would despoil the Nation of its good name and take from it all the might of honesty.