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Allaben, he came to me, and strongly opposed as we were in politics, he grasped me by the hand most heartily, expressed his amazement at seeing these assignats, mandats, and other forms of French revolutionary issues, of which he had never before seen one, and thanked me for refuting his arguments. It is one of the very few cases I have ever known, in which a speech converted an opponent.
Therefore it was that, while Senator Allaben was pouring out with the deepest earnestness these prophecies of repudiation, Mr. Fields came round to my desk and said to me: ``You have been a professor of history; you are supposed to know something about the French Revolution; if your knowledge is good for anything, why in h l don't you use it now?
As Senator Allaben thus spoke, Senator Fields of New York quietly left his seat and came to me. He was a most devoted servant of Tammany, but was what was known in those days as a War Democrat. His native pugnacity caused him to feel that the struggle must be fought out, whereas Democrats of a more philosophic sort, like Allaben, known in those days as ``Copperheads, sought peace at any price.
Allaben had taken place. I also pointed out the fact that our American notes were now so thoroughly well engraved that counterfeiting was virtually impossible, so that one of the leading European governments had its notes engraved in New York, on this account, whereas, the French assignats could be easily counterfeited, and, as a matter of fact, were counterfeited in vast numbers, the British government pouring them into France through the agency of the French royalists, especially in Brittany, almost by shiploads, and to such purpose, that the French government officials themselves were at last unable to discriminate between the genuine money and the counterfeit.
The speech of Senator Allaben had exercised a real effect, but these simple statements, which I supported by evidence, and especially by exhibiting specimens of the assignats bearing numbers showing that the issues had risen into the thousands of millions, and in a style of engraving most easily counterfeited, sufficed to convince the Senate that no such inference as was drawn by the senator was warranted by the historical facts in the case.
I trust things have changed in this respect since then. At the little old school house I had many teachers, Bill Bouton, Bill Allaben, Taylor Grant, Jason Powell, Rossetti Cole, Rebecca Scudder, and others.
Fortunately, common sense triumphed, and the bill was passed. Opposition came also from another and far different source. There was then in the State Senate a Democrat of the oldest and strongest type; a man who believed most devoutly in Jefferson and Jackson, and abhorred above all things, abolitionists and protectionists, Dr. Allaben of Schoharie.
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