The issue of legal-tender notes during the Civil War was of this character. The country received a deadly blow to its financial credit when that policy was adopted. Nations or peoples cannot, any more than individuals, violate the established rules of honest dealing without suffering the just penalty. If money is needed beyond current revenues, there is no other honest way to get it but by borrowing it at such rate of interest and upon such security as can be agreed upon. Besides, to leave any room for doubt or cavil about the conditions of a loan, or about the standard of money in which principal and interest are to be paid, necessarily arouses suspicion of bad faith, and hence destroys or seriously injures national credit. It is now perfectly well known to all who have taken the pains to study the subject that this false and practically dishonest policy, however innocently it may have been conceived, cost the United States many hundreds of millions of dollars, and came very near bringing disaster upon the Union cause. One of the most astounding spectacles ever presented in the history of the world was that presented by this country. It went into the war practically free from debt, and come out of it with a debt which seemed very large, to be sure, and was in fact nearly twice as large as it ought to have been, yet so small in comparison with the country's resources that it could be paid off in a few years. It went into the war practically without an army, and came out of the war with its military strength not even yet fully developed. It had more than a million of men, nearly all veterans, in the ranks, and could have raised a million more, if necessary, without seriously interfering with the industries of the country. Yet in four short years a false financial policy destroyed the national credit, brought its treasury to bankruptcy, and thus reduced a great people to a condition in which they could no longer make any use of their enormous military strength! This lesson ought to be taught in every school-house in the United States, until every child is made to understand that there is no such thing in the world as paper money; that the only real money in the world is standard gold and silver; that paper can be used in the place of money only when it represents the real gold or silver in which it can at any time be redeemed; that even gold and silver can be used together as standard money only under the real intrinsic values as recognized by all the world; that any attempt to force either gold or silver into unlimited circulation, under any arbitrary ratio different from their real ratio, is not honest; and that dishonesty is the worst of all financial policies, as well as the most unworthy of a civilized people.
The laws of finance, like the laws of military strategy, were never invented by anybody, any more than the law of gravitation or the law of electrical attraction and repulsion. They have all been learned by the experience and study of mankind since the dawn of civilization. All alike are parts of the great laws of nature. They should be carefully and diligently studied and taught in all the schools, until the rising generation understand that all the affairs of mankind are governed by the uniform laws established by the great Creator and Ruler of the universe; and that self-appointed "leaders of the people" who would entice them to follow their own inventions cannot save them from the penalties which naturally follow the violation of any of the laws of the universe. In short, education,—wisely directed education,—both in science and in morals, is the one indispensable foundation of good popular government. The relative importance to be attached to the many branches of popular education demands the careful consideration of all educators, and still more the purity of the doctrines taught in all the schools. There is good reason for believe that this last duty has been much neglected, especially in respect to financial theories.
A VICIOUS CLAUSE IN THE CONSTITUTION
In this connection, it is worthy of serious consideration whether one of the teachings of a corrupt age has not found its way into that almost sacred writing, the Constitution of the United States. What right has Congress, or any other department of government, or any government on earth, to "regulate the value" of money, any more than that of wheat or corn? Is not the real value of money, like that of everything else, regulated by the general law of supply and demand throughout the world? Ought not the value of money, and what shall constitute money, be left, without governmental interference, to be determined by the common consent of mankind? Must not commercial intercourse among all the countries of the world necessarily regulate all this, in spite of the decrees of government? Ought not the function of government in this regard to be limited to the coining of money and stamping on its face its real value—that is, in effect, the amount of gold or silver it actually contains? In short, is not the attempt of government to make a certain weight of one thing equal to a certain weight of another thing a plain violation of a natural law, and hence necessarily vicious? Is not all our serious monetary controversy in this country the result of vicious teaching to be found in our own Constitution, inherited from a corrupt age, when the fiat of a prince was thought sufficient to make a coin worth more than it was in fact? Where did so many of the people of the United States learn the heretical doctrine of fiat money? Is it not taught in the Constitution of the United States? It so seems to me, and hence it seems to me that the people should at once strike at the very root of the evil, and eradicate from their fundamental law the theory that the value of anything can be regulated by arbitrary fiat, in violation of natural law. Let the people restore to themselves their inalienable right to liberty of trade, so that they can deal with each other in gold, or in silver, or in cotton, or in corn, as they please, and pay in what they have agreed to pay in, without impertinent interference from legislators or anybody else. Then, and only then, can the monetary system of this country be placed on a sound foundation, and all the gold or silver of our mines, as well as all the other products of human industry, and the people who produce or own them, become truly free.
Another important lesson taught by our experience since the Civil War, no less than at the commencement of that period, is that prompt and vigorous action, in accordance with established military methods, whenever military force must be employed, necessarily presupposes such knowledge of the laws on the part of department and army commanders as will justify the President in intrusting them with discretionary authority to act without specific orders in each case. Such emergencies as that of 1894, for example, give striking proof of the necessity for the higher education to fit men for high command in the army. It is not mainly a question of military education. Early deficiencies in that respect may soon be overcome by the constant practice afforded by active service. The indispensable necessity is for education in general, and especially in those things which army officers are not habitually required to know, but which are of vital importance to those who must, in great emergencies, by intrusted with great responsibilities and with discretionary authority. That very emergency of 1894 gave examples of officers, not educated at West Point nor at any other military school, distinguished for gallant and efficient military service in the field, who proved to be perfectly familiar with the principles of constitutional and military law which ought to govern the action of troops under circumstances like those of 1894; while others, distinguished as commanders in the field, seemed strangely ignorant of both constitutional and military laws. It is also worthy of remark that such necessary legal education did not appear to be universal among the West Point graduates at that time. Some men who are not graduates of West Point are much better qualified for high command than some who are.
OFFICERS NOT EDUCATED AT WEST POINT
Much has been said about a supposed prejudice in the army against officers who have not enjoyed the advantages of education at the military academy. I aver, emphatically that I have never seen any evidence of any such feeling, and I do not believe it has ever existed to any appreciable extent. On the contrary, the general feeling has been that of just and generous consideration for officers who were at first laboring under that disadvantage. Some of the most popular men in the army have been among those appointed from civil life or from the volunteers. General Alfred H. Terry was a fair example of this. He was a ripe scholar, a thorough lawyer, a very laborious student of the art and science of war,—more so than most West Point graduates,—and so modest that he hesitated to accept the appointment of brigadier-general in the regular army, although it had been given for so distinguished a service as the capture of Fort Fisher, on the ground that older officers who had devoted their whole lives to the military service were better entitled to it.
The general feeling in the army has no special reference to West Point. It is a feeling, and a very strong one, in favor of education, of qualification in all respects for the service which may be required, and of that dignified self-respect and becoming modesty which prevent an officer from desiring a position for which he is not fully qualified, and, above all, that manly delicacy which makes it impossible for an officer to seek a position which ought to be left to seek him. As well might a maiden ask a man to marry her, or get some one else to do it for her, as a soldier to seek in the same way a position on the staff of a general or of the President.
This is especially true in respect to the position of the "commanding general," or general-in-chief, of the army. The President being, by the Constitution, commander-in-chief of the army and navy, no law of Congress, even with his own consent, could relieve him from that responsibility. There is no law, and there could not constitutionally be any law passed, establishing any such office as that of commanding general of the army, and defining the duties and authority attached to it. Such a law would be a clear encroachment upon the constitutional prerogatives of the President. The only constitutional relation in which the so-called "commanding general," or "general-in-chief," of the army can occupy is that usually called "chief of staff"—the chief military adviser and executive officer of the commander-in-chief. He cannot exercise any command whatever independently of the President, and the latter must of necessity define and limit his duties. No other authority can possibly do it. In this regard the President's power and discretion are limited only by his constitutional obligation to exercise the chief command himself. He can give his general-in-chief as much authority as he pleases consistently with that obligation. Hence it is entirely in the discretion of the President to define and fix the relations which should exist between the general and the Secretary of War— a very difficult thing to do, no doubt,—at least one which seems never to have been satisfactorily done by any President. The Secretary and the general appear to have been left to arrange that as best they could, or to leave it unarranged. However this may be, the relations of the general to the President are, or ought to be, of the most confidential character, no less so than those of any member of the cabinet. And the necessity of that confidential relation is far more important than in the case of any cabinet officer, for the reason that it is brought into prominence in times of great emergency, when questions of peace and war are involved, and when the President is required to act upon momentous military operations about which he cannot, in general, have much knowledge, and hence must trust to the ability, judgment, discretion, and scientific military knowledge of the general-in-chief. In such cases the general becomes, as it were, the "keeper of the President's conscience" in respect to the most momentous questions he can ever have to decide.