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Updated: July 28, 2025
And now, when, after repeated argument at the bar, and long deliberations of the court, the decision was announced, the determining opinion of the Chief-Justice, in an equal division of the six associate justices, pronounced the legal-tender acts unconstitutional, as not within the discretion of the political departments of the Government, Congress, and the Executive, to determine this very question of the necessity of the juncture, as justifying their enactment.
In the "fighting Seventh" ward I once counted ballots for thirty-six consecutive hours, and as I remember conditions I was the only officer who finished sober. During my first year in government employ the depreciation in legal-tender notes in which we were paid was very embarrassing.
The Secretary of the Treasury still adhered to the policy of contraction, and yet was charged with putting into circulation legal-tender notes that had been once withdrawn, in order to affect the market. Thus in August, 1866, between the 8th and the 23d inclusive, he had withdrawn and destroyed $12,530,111, and of the 31st of that month he issued $12,500,000.
All the bonds that have been issued since February 12, 1873, when gold became the only unlimited legal-tender metallic currency of the country, are justly payable in gold coin or in coin of equal value. During the time of these issues the only dollar that could be or was received by the Government in exchange for bonds was the gold dollar.
Ignatius Donnelly, who had apparently changed his mind on the currency question since 1873, was the temporary president. The platform contained the usual endorsement of a circulating medium composed of legal-tender notes interconvertible with bonds but gave first place to a demand for "the immediate and unconditional repeal of the specie-resumption act."
The legal-tender notes, when "stocked" preparatory to their equal division, amounted to a fraction less than ten per cent. of the deposits. The pressure of sales of stock was almost entirely for cash. No money could be borrowed, either at the banks or elsewhere, on securities of any kind, and loans which the borrowers were unable to pay off were being called in in all directions.
As there is no doubt of the power of Congress under the Constitution "to coin money and regulate the value thereof," and as this power covers the whole range of authority applicable to the metal, the rated value and the legal-tender quality which shall be adopted for the coinage, the considerations which should induce or discourage a particular measure connected with the coinage, belong clearly to the province of legislative discretion and of public expediency.
Certainly the issue of our gold coinage, reduced in weight materially below its legal-tender value, would not be any the less a present debasement of the coinage by reason of its equaling, or even exceeding, in weight a gold coinage which at some past time had been commercially equal to the legal-tender value assigned to the new issue.
It neglected to consider its different and essential character as a circulating medium. The advocates of the repeal of the legal-tender clause included many able lawyers, who however did not meet the objection that this clause was an element in the value of the currency, only less important than that of positive redemption.
Stevens, "I could have specie payment to-morrow, without deranging the business of the country, I would. If it would derange the business of the country to return to specie payment at once, I would postpone it a little. I voted for the Legal-tender Bill; and I am glad I did so, for the country would not have survived without it." "Would you compromise on a year?" asked Mr. Wentworth.
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