n
every man's possession, and every man is interested in their being
redeemed.... Provide for continuing your armies in the field till
victory and peace shall lead them home, and avoid the reproach of
permitting the currency to depreciate in your hands, when, by yielding a
part to taxes and loans, the whole might have been appreciated and
preserved. Humanity as well as justice makes this demand upon you; the
complaints of ruined widows and the cries of fatherless children, whose
whole support has been placed in your hands and melted away, have
doubtless reached you: take care that they ascend no higher....
Determine to finish the contest as you began it, honestly and
gloriously. Let it never be said that America had no sooner become
independent than she became insolvent."

But it was not only the Continental money that was blocking up the
channels through which a sound currency would have carried vigor and
health. The States had their debts and their paper-money too,--wheel
within wheel of complicated, desperate insolvency. The two hundred
millions had been issued and spent. There was no money to send to
Washington for his army, and he was compelled for a while to support
them by seizing the articles he needed, and giving certificates in
return. The States were called upon for specific supplies, beef, pork,
flour, for the use of the army,--a method so expensive, irregular, and
partial, that it was soon abandoned. One chance remained: to call in the
old money by taxes, and burn it as soon as it was in; then to issue a
new paper,--one of the new for every twenty of the old; and the whole of
the old was cancelled, to issue only ten millions of the new,--four
millions of it subject to the order of Congress, and the remaining six
to be divided among the States: the whole redeemable in specie within
six years, and bearing till then an interest of five per cent., payable
in specie annually or on redemption, at the option of the holder. By
this skilful change of base it was hoped that a bold front could still
be presented to the enemy, and the field, which had been so long and so
obstinately contested, be finally won.

But the day of expedients was past. The zeal which had blazed forth with
such energy at the beginning of the war was fast sinking to a fitful,
smouldering flame. Individual interests were again taking the precedence
of general interests. The moral sense of the people had contracted a
deadly taint from daily con