The only safeguard from these evils is the election of a Republican President, and the adoption of a liberal Republican policy which should be fair and even generous in the south, but firm in the maintenance of all the rights won by the…
John Sherman
The Public Record
John Sherman was an American politician from Ohio who served in federal office throughout the Civil War and into the late nineteenth century. A member of the Republican Party, he served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. He also served as Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State. Sherman sought the Republican presidential nomination three times, coming closest in 1888, but was never chosen by the party. Between 1861 and 1897, John Sherman served in the U.S. Senate for nearly 32 years and holds the record for longest serving senator from the state of Ohio.
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The southern states are to be organized, by violence and intimidation, into a compact political power only needing a small fragment of the northern states to give it absolute control where, by a majority rule of the party, it will govern…
The election of a Democratic President means a restoration to full power in the government of the worst elements of the rebel Confederacy.
That a policy of finance be steadily pursued, which, without unnecessary shock to business or trade, will ultimately equalize the purchasing capacity of the coin and paper dollar.
We demand that this policy be abandoned, and that the volume of currency be made and kept equal to the wants of trade, leaving the restoration of legal tenders to par with gold, to be brought about by promoting the industries of the people…
That the contraction of the currency heretofore made by the Republican party, and the further contraction proposed by it, with a view to the forced resumption of specie payment, have already brought disaster to the business of the country…
Therefore the measure grants to the Secretary of the Treasury powers enough to execute it, but if we can secure the aid of a Democratic House we can make it certain and effective.
Its chief merit is that it establishes a public policy which no political party or faction will be strong enough to overthrow, and which if it had not been adopted now, the Democratic party in the next Congress would have defeated.
The act does not go as far as I wished, but everything in it is right in itself, and is in the right direction.
This session the same Senators, enlightened by the long debate and heeding the call of the press, gave to the subject the most careful and deliberate consideration, and agreed upon this bill without much debate, and yet the press is not…
You must have noticed that when banks retire their notes, as they have done and will do rapidly, this is a reduction of the currency, while every issue of notes to new or old banks involves a retirement of a ratable amount of United States…
You have treated it as a political trick, an evasion, a disgrace to Congress.
Claiming as you do to be a 'monetary and business' journal, you might be expected to treat fairly a measure affecting so greatly the interests you represent; but you have not done so.
The resumption act was generally received with disfavor by those who wished the immediate resumption of specie payments.
Either of these plans I could readily support; but they have met and will meet with such opposition that we cannot hope to carry them or ingraft them in this bill without defeating it.
Although that plan has been adopted in England and successfully carried into execution, yet there is a strong objection to it in this country, and therefore that mode is abandoned.
We have undertaken to redeem these notes in coin, and it is at least a question of doubtful ethics whether we ought to enter into the markets of the world and buy our own notes at a discount.
At present rates we would give about $90 of gold for $100 of greenbacks, and then provide for a graduated scale by which we would approach specie payments constantly, and reach it at a fixed day.
That is, that we provide now for the redemption, at a fixed rate or scale or rates, of so much gold for a specific sum of United States notes.
The third plan of resumption has been favored very extensively in this country, which is the plan of a graduated scale for resumption in coin or bullion; what I call the English plan.
I therefore have been compelled to surrender my ideas on this bill in order to accomplish a good object without using these means that have been held objectionable by many Senators.
It is believed to operate as a disturbing element in all the business relations of life; to add to the burden of the debtor by making scare that article in which he is bound to pay his debts; and there has been an honest, sincere…
The simplest and most direct way to specie payments is, undoubtedly, the gradual withdrawal of United States notes or the contraction of the currency.
We also know, by the example of other nations which have found themselves in the condition in which we are now placed, and by some of the states when specie payments were suspended, that they have adopted a specific day for the resumption…
Under the law as it now stands banking is substantially free in the southern and some of the western states; but banking is not free in the great commercial states, in the older states, where wealth has accumulated for ages.
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