Mr. Monroe made W. H. Crawford, of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury. Under him, the routine of the Department was improved by the appointment of a second Comptroller and four additional Auditors. Charges of malfeasance were brought against him toward the close of his term of office. They were examined by a committee consisting of John Randolph, Edward Livingston, and Daniel Webster, who pronounced the charges false. President John Quincy Adams recalled Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, then Minister to England, and made him Secretary of the Treasury.
Under Andrew Jackson’s Presidency, the conservative management of the Treasury Department changed into “the anti-bank period.” His administration was marked by five different Secretaries, and a prevailing state of excitement. The first Secretary of the Treasury, under Jackson, was Samuel D. Ingham, of Pennsylvania, whose trust ended in a violent breaking up of the Cabinet. He was succeeded by William J. Doane, of Pennsylvania, who refused to remove the national deposits from the United States Bank, and was dethroned by Roger B. Taney, of Maryland. The Senate refused to confirm his appointment, and Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, was installed in the office, holding it to the end of Jackson’s administration.
April 1, 1833, the Treasury Building was for the third time destroyed by fire, and a large amount of valuable public documents destroyed. Afterwards, the business of the Department was carried on in a row of brick buildings opposite Willard’s Hotel. At this time the “Agent of the Treasury,” was changed to Solicitor of the Treasury, and a sixth Auditor was created. Jackson’s administration closed with an “apparent plethora of money among the people, and the glorious consummation of paying off the national debt.”
Mr. Woodbury continued at the head of the Treasury, under President Van Buren. It was his fate to be its director “in the times of unparalleled plenty, speculation and extravagance, and two years afterwards, to witness a pecuniary revulsion that had no precedent in financial history.” In 1837, financial ruin dismayed the Nation. Congress was convened by special proclamation, to devise ways and means to relieve the people. Specie payments were suspended, and all business involved in apparent ruin. Binding laws were passed, divorcing the Government from all banking institutions, and a new policy was created for the control of our national finances.
Under Presidents Harrison and Tyler there were five Secretaries of the Treasury: Thomas Ewing, of Ohio; Walter Howard[Howard], of Pennsylvania; John C. Spencer, of New York, and George M. Beble[Beble], of Kentucky. President Polk made Robert J. Walker the head of the Treasury. He was known as “the apostle of free trade.” His administration was marked by the introduction of the present warehousing system, based upon English precedent; by his reciprocity system between Canada and the United States abolishing all customs and imports, and the establishment of an “Interior Department” upon the old overgrown Land Office, with a Cabinet officer to administer its affairs, under the title of Secretary of the Interior.
The Secretary of the Treasury, under President Taylor, was William M. Meredith, of Pennsylvania; who was succeeded, under President Fillmore, by Thomas Corwin, of Ohio. Secretary Corwin established the present lighthouse department and wrote the instructions regarding light-vessels, beacons and buoys. This beneficent legislation gave over six hundred lights to protect the hitherto neglected mariner on his way.
The Chief of the Treasury under President Pierce, was James Guthrie, of Kentucky. He is remembered as a strict and efficient officer, carrying out in minutiæ, the duties and laws of the department. He discovered outstanding balances against the Treasury, which, if collected, would more than pay the national debt. Of this sum he collected hundreds of millions into the Treasury, and raised the standard of efficiency in the Treasury service by demanding monthly, instead of quarterly reports, from all its employés.
Three Secretaries of the Treasury served under James Buchanan—Howell Cobb, of Georgia; Philip F. Thomas, of Maryland; and John A. Dix, of New York. A monetary crisis, almost as severe as that of 1837, marked this administration. The throes of Secession shook the Union to its foundation, and the Secretaries of the Treasury, like all other public servants, were occupied with the “signs of the times,” the swiftly advancing portents of revolution, more than with the mere financial duties of the public Treasury.
Abraham Lincoln began his troubled administration by the appointment of Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, as Secretary of the Treasury. Never was man asked to help steer the ship of state through more overwhelming breakers. With the dissolution of the Union imminent, the national debt had increased to three times the amount it was at the close of the previous administration. The number of clerks which, in 1861, was three hundred and eighty-three, in 1864 was two thousand. Such a demand was without precedent, and arose from the immense labor of examining accounts, and of preparing and supervising the national currency and securities.
The first important measure of Mr. Chase’s administration was the “Internal Revenue Act,” which, in four years, increased the income of the Government from forty-one millions to three hundred and nine millions. Next came the great “National Currency Act,” which, though severely criticised, and probably not free from defects, nevertheless established a paper currency of equal value in every part of the Union, and was, at least, in keeping with the principles of our Government, and freer from chances of corruption and abuse than any other system yet adopted. It met the awful demand of the hour, and offered the guarantee of redemption, rather than of loss and ruin.