John Sherman

With such a lesson before us it is futile to attempt to conduct the business of a great country like ours with coin alone.

Without this the effort to preserve the Union would have utterly failed.

For the want of paper money at the commencement of the Civil War, the United States was compelled to issue its notes and to make them a legal tender.

The only danger in our present currency is that the amount may be increased to a sum that cannot be maintained at par with coin, but the same or a greater danger would exist if the volume of paper money should be left to the interested…

There is another objection to a sole dependence on bank notes as currency: They cannot be made a legal tender either by the states or the United States, while it is settled by the Supreme Court that notes of the United States may be made a…

The issue of bank notes would be governed by the opinions and interest of the banks, and the amount could be increased or diminished according to their interests and without regard to the public good.

I see no reason why the people of the United States should not have the benefit of this cheap loan rather than the national banks, and there are many reasons why the issue of a like amount of notes by national banks cannot fill the place…

I would not make such a recommendation now, as I am convinced that United States notes based on coin in the treasury are the best form of currency yet devised, and that the volume might be gradually increased as the volume of business…

I was very willing to hold on to the progress made in making United States notes equivalent to coin rather than to attempt to secure their retirement from circulation.

While I did not concur in all the views stated by the President, especially as to the policy of retiring United States notes then in circulation, yet his general conclusions in favor of the coin standard were, in my view, sound and just.

They have failed, and that dogma for hard money, which they abandoned, has been adopted by the Republican party, as the corner stone of its greatest success.

Democrats can claim no credit, but stand convicted of a blundering mistake in abandoning the old and tried principles of their party, and following after strange gods with the hope of a brief and partial success.

It has not, for twenty- five years, had Providence on its side, but we may fairly infer that, as it has steadily resisted Providence and patriotic duty for more than twenty years, it must have had the devil on its side.

We should be, and are, thankful to the Almighty, but we are under no thanks whatever to the Democratic party.

Now that resumption is a success, Democrats say the Republican party did not bring it about, but that Providence has done it; that bountiful crops here and bad crops in Europe have been the cause of all the prosperity that has come since…

The panic of 1873 put an end to all these wild, visionary schemes, and left the country prostrate and in ruin.

The Republican party has won no victory more complete than the passage, execution and success of the resumption act.

I must add, however, that I do not believe the banking system would be sustained by popular opinion unless the great body of our currency was in the form of United States notes or certificates based upon coin.

Free banking open to all, with prompt and easy redemption, supplies a currency to meet the varying wants of different periods and seasons.

We are determined to assert the supremacy of the United States in all matters pertaining to the United States, and to enforce the laws of the United States, come what will.

We must as firmly resist nullification now as when Jackson threatened 'by the eternal God' to hang the original nullifier, Calhoun.

If Congress was purged to-day of men elected by fraud and bloodshed in the south, the Democrats would be in a pitiful minority in the capital.

With the help of Almighty God, we intend to right that wrong.

If the south, rebellious as it is, stands in the way again, we will protect every voter in his right to vote wherever the constitution gives the right to vote.

If the Democratic party stands in the way, so much the worse for the Democratic party.