United States Notes A History Of The Various Issues Of Paper Money By The Government Of The United States By John Jay Knox With An Appendix Containing The Recent Decision Of The Supreme Court Of The United States And The Dissenting Opinion Upon The Legal Tender Question

Author : John Jay Knox
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781528347044
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (47 download)

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Download or read book United States Notes written by John Jay Knox and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-09-15 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from United States Notes: A History of the Various Issues of Paper Money by the Government of the United States At the date of the adoption of the Constitution, the issue of paper money in any form was popularly re garded with aversion. The experience of the colonists with bills of credit, as paper money was then called, had been fraught with loss and political disturbance, and the experience with the like issues by the Contin ental Congress had so affected the minds of the wisest and best men of that time, that in the Federal Conven tion the general feeling was one of almost bitter opposi tion to granting the power to emit bills of credit to the new Government. N 0 one can examine the records of those days without being thoroughly impressed that the sense of the Convention was in favor of an absolute prohibition. Further proof may be found in the fact that from 1791 to 1812, a period of twenty-one years, the method of raising funds for the Government by the issue of bills of credit was not even suggested nor indeed were circulating notes, in form payable on demand without interest, issued at all, until more than seventy years after the adoption of the Constitution. The charter of the first Bank of the United States expired in 1811, and the Federalists were not strong enough to secure a recharter. When the war of 1812broke out, the necessity of funds was so imperative, that the Administration and Congress felt themselves forced, the one to recommend, and the other to author ize, the issue of interest-bearing Treasury notes. They were regarded as a measure of necessity. Loans in the ordinary form had failed, and these notes were regarded as a convenient form of loan. They were not intended to circulate as money; they were fundable into public stock, and, as a matter of fact, were retired as soon as possible after the close of the war. These issues were, however, a fatal precedent out of which has grown a latitude of constitutional construction not then antici pated. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.