he volume of our exports, to our
commerce, and our general prosperity? Serious re-action had in other
lands followed the financial expansion created by great wars, even
without complications similar to those which the disturbed condition
of the South seemed to render unavoidable. Ought Congress to accept
such a re-action as the necessary condition of the restoration of our
currency, of return to a normal situation, of adjustment of expenditure
to revenue on a peace footing? Could the possibility be entertained of
such a return and such an adjustment, without panic, without paralysis
of industry, without temporary interruption and prostration of
commerce? Grave apprehensions were felt as to the possible effect upon
production and trade of the legislation required to maintain the
National credit. These apprehensions derived force and peculiar
seriousness from the growing conflict between President Johnson and
Congress upon measures of Reconstruction and upon removals from office.

In spite however of all suggested fears and doubts, a feeling of
confidence pervaded the country, and was fully shared by Congress, that
the power which had saved the Union could re-establish its credit
without panic and without dangerous and prolonged depression. Faith
in the resources which had equipped and supported the National armies,
now embraced the plainer and less exciting duties of funding and paying
the debt and of protecting the notes of the United States. The loans
had been placed, the money borrowed, under the excitement of
war,--sometimes under the pressure of defeat, sometimes in the
exaltation of victory. Without this pressure, without this exaltation,
could money be secured at a rate adequate to build up a National credit
worthy to be compared with that of the older and richer nations beyond
the Atlantic?

The intrepidity with which Congress met its task will always compel the
admiration of the student of American history. While the war lasted,
the contributions by taxes and by loans had been on a munificent scale.
The measures adopted at the close of the Thirty-eighth Congress, after
four years of desperate struggle and on the very eve on National
victory, showed as great readiness to make sacrifices, as little
disposition to count the cost of saving the Union, as had marked
previous legislation. Less than six weeks before the surrender of Lee
the internal taxes were increased, the duties on imports were
adjusted t