The Legal Tender Decision.
The Act of Congress of 1862 had made “greenback” notes a legal tender, and they passed as such until 1869 against the protests of the Democrats in Congress, who had questioned the right of Congress to issue paper money. It was on this issue that Thaddeus Stevens admitted the Republicans were travelling “outside of the constitution” with a view to preserve the government, and this soon became one of his favorite ways of meeting partisan objections to war measures. At the December term of the Supreme Court, in 1869, a decision was rendered that the action of Congress was unconstitutional, the Court then being accidentally Democratic in its composition. The Republicans, believing they could not afford to have their favorite, and it must be admitted most useful financial measure questioned, secured an increase of two in the number of Supreme Justices—one under a law creating an additional Justiceship, the other in place of a Justice who had resigned—and in March, 1870, after the complexion of the Court had been changed through Republican appointments made by President Grant, the constitutionality of the legal tender act was again raised, and, with Chief Justice Chase (who had been Secretary of the Treasury in 1862 presiding) the previous decision was reversed. This was clearly a partisan struggle before the Court, and on the part of the Republicans an abandonment of old landmarks impressed on the country by the Jackson Democrats, but it is plain that without the greenbacks the war could not have been pressed with half the vigor, if at all. Neither party was consistent in this struggle, for Southern Democrats who sided with their Northern colleagues in the plea of unconstitutionality, had when “out of the Union,” witnessed and advocated the issue of the same class of money by the Confederate Congress. The difference was only in the ability to redeem, and this ability depended upon success in arms—the very thing the issue was designed to promote. The last decision, despite its partisan surroundings and opposition, soon won popularity, and this popularity was subsequently taken as the groundwork for the establishment of