ge for coin or the use in
payment of salaries or other dues, of notes of less denomination
than fifty dollars but not less than ten dollars, and bearing
interest at the rate of three and sixty-five one-hundredths per
cent. payable in one year; or these might be payable on demand and
without interest. This loan might therefore be in bonds for sale
in this country or in a different form for sale abroad; or, second,
it might be in Treasury notes of not less than fifty dollars each,
bearing seven and three-tenths per cent. interest; or, third, a
part of the loan not exceeding $50,000,000 might be in notes of
even as low denomination as ten dollars at three and sixty-five
one-hundredths per cent.; and, finally, this latter part might be
in notes without interest payable on demand. The bonds were to
run at least twenty years; the seven-thirties three years; and the
three-sixty-fives were payable in one year, and exchangeable into
seven-thirties at the pleasure of the holder. A supplementary Act
was passed Aug. 5, 1861, which permitted the secretary to issue
six per cent. bonds, payable at the pleasure of the United States
after twenty years, and the holders of seven-thirty notes were
allowed to exchange their notes for such bonds. The minimum of
the denominations of Treasury notes was reduced to five dollars,
and all the demand notes of less denomination then fifty dollars
were receivable for payment of public dues. By Act of Feb. 12,
1862, the limit of demand notes was raised to $60,000,000. In this
modified form the statute directed the movements of the Treasury
during the autumn of the first year of the Rebellion.

SECRETARY CHASE'S REPORT, 1861.

In his report, dated December 9, 1861, the Secretary of the Treasury
related the steps which he had taken to raise money under these
laws. Mr. Chase informed Congress that "his reflections led him
to the conclusion that the safest, surest, and most beneficial plan
would be to engage the banking institutions of the three chief
commercial cities of the seaboard to advance the amounts needed
for disbursement in the form of loans for three years' seven-thirty
bonds, to be reimbursed, as far as practicable, from the proceeds
of similar bonds, subscribed for by the people through the agencies
of the national loan; using, meanwhile, himself, to a limited
extent, in aid of these advances, the power to issue notes of
smaller denominati