.

Chase would have been a far stronger candidate than Greeley.
However any political antagonist might dislike him, every
antagonist must respect him, and nobody could laugh at him.

The question of the constitutional power of Congress to make
Treasury notes legal tender for all debts, whether incurred
before or after they were issued, came up for the decision
of the Court when Chase was Chief Justice. It was a question
which profoundly interested and excited the public. The Democratic
Party, which more lately favored the payment of all debts,
public and private, in irredeemable paper money, had assailed
the Republican Administration during the war for providing,
under an alleged necessity that Treasury notes, called greenbacks,
should be legal tender for the discharge of all debts. The
constitutionality of that law had been affirmed by the courts
of fifteen States. It had been denied by one court only,
that of Kentucky, the eminent Chancellor dissenting. There
was scarcely a Republican lawyer or a Republican judge in
the country who doubted the constitutional power of Congress
to impose such a quality upon the paper currency if, in the
opinion of Congress, the public safety should require it.

The question came before the Supreme Court of the United States
in the case of Hepburn _v._ Griswold, and was decided by that
Court in December, 1869.

The Court were all agreed that Congress has power under the
Constitution to do not only what the Constitution expressly
authorizes, but to adopt any means appropriate, and plainly
adapted to carry in to effect any such express power. So
the two questions arose: First, Was the power to issue legal
tender notes an appropriate, and plainly adapted means to
any end which the National Government has a right to accomplish?
Second, Who are to judge of the question whether the means
be so appropriate, or plainly adapted?

There were then seven Justices of the Supreme Court. Chief
Justice Chase, with the three Democratic Justices held the
Legal Tender Law unconstitutional, and declared that a law
making anything but gold or silver legal tender for debts
was neither appropriate nor plainly adapted to carrying on
war, or any other end for which the National Government was
erected.

He had, when Secretary of the Treasury during the War of the
Rebellion, originally advised the issuing of these legal
tender notes. He had visited the Capitol. He had called
members of the tw