Mr. McCulloch took the portfolio of the Treasury our financial
condition was most deplorable. The land was flooded with an irredeemable
currency, and the source of credit being thus poisoned, all business was
mere gambling. To understand this, one has to remember that in the first
year of the war a tariff on imports was enacted by Congress that
amounted at first to prohibition. In thus closing the door against
foreign capitalists the government raised the prices of all manufactured
goods against itself. The evil did not end here. As a purchaser of
supplies in a paper currency for a million of wasteful and extravagant
men in the field, the government again augmented prices to its own hurt.
After the battle of Gettysburg, when the timid capital felt that it was
safe, not to help an impoverished government, but to make investments,
bonds were taken, paid for in the depreciated currency--and when the war
ended, a subsidized Congress, leaving the loan in the shape of currency
made by the people to take care of itself, enacted that these bonds,
bought in currency, should be redeemed, capital and interest, in gold.

This was the situation that faced Mr. McCulloch when sworn in office as
Secretary of the Treasury. He was selected by President Lincoln, and
continued in office by Andrew Johnson. A more admirable appointment
could not have been made. Hugh McCulloch is not only a remarkable man,
but one singularly well adapted to the position assigned him. An
eminently handsome man, he carried a large, healthy brain on a trunk
capable of great endurance. It was health, good health, throughout. To a
keen, sensitive intellect he adds a calm, dispassionate temperament and
the highest courage. Although modest in manner and reticent in speech,
his very presence commanded respect among his opponents, such as all
positive characters possess; while his friends felt that their cause,
whatever it might be, was safe in his hands. Trained a banker, he had
made a success of his banking; and while possessed of a thorough
acquaintance with the details of his business, he had also a
philosophical knowledge of the science. This is a rare combination.

"How little those people know of their own business!" said Salmon P.
Chase to Mr. Richard B. Pullen, of Cincinnati, after a meeting of
bankers the able Secretary of the Treasury had called for consultation.
It was well for the bankers that such was and is their condition. They
are practical men--that