Rutherford B. Hayes: “It is impossible for me to look without grave concern upon a state of things which will leave the public service thus…”

I have the honor to inform the Senate that Hon. Benjamin Harrison, Senator elect from the State of Indiana, has resigned his office as a member of the Commission for the Improvement of the Mississippi River, and the same has been accepted…

If successfully accomplished, it will secure a large decrease in the annual interest payment of the nation, and I earnestly recommend, if the bill before me shall fail, that another measure for this purpose be adopted before the present…

Believing that a measure for refunding the national debt is not necessarily connected with the national banking law, and that any refunding act would defeat its own object if it imperiled the national banking system or seriously impaired…

I can not but regard the fifth section of the bill as a step in the direction of the destruction of the national banking system.