And thus we reach the memorable year 1781, the great, decisive year of the war. While Greene was fighting Cornwallis and Rawdon, and Washington watching eagerly for an opportunity to strike at Clinton, Congress was busy making up its accounts. One circumstance told for them. There was no longer the same dearth of gold and silver which had embarrassed them so much at the beginning of the war. A gainful commerce was now opened with the West Indies. The French army and the French fleet were here, and hard money with them. Louis-d'ors and livres and Spanish dollars,—how welcome must their pleasant faces have looked, after this long, long absence! With what a thrill must the hand which had touched nothing for years but Continental bills have closed upon solid gold and silver! It is easy to conceive that a new spirit must soon have manifested itself in the wide circle of contractors and agents,—that shopkeepers must speedily have discovered that their business was shifting its ground as they obtained a reliable standard for counting their losses and gains,—that every branch of commerce must have felt a new vigor diffusing itself through its veins. But it is equally evident, that, while the gold and silver which flowed in upon them from these sources strengthened the people for the work they were to do and the burdens they were to bear, the comparisons they were daily making between fluctuating paper and steadfast metal were not of a nature to strengthen their faith in money that could be made by a turn of the printing-press and a few strokes of the pen.
Another circumstance told for them, too. The accession of Maryland had fulfilled the conditions for the acceptance of the Confederation so long held in abeyance, and the finances were taken from a board and intrusted to the hands of a skilful and energetic financier. Robert Morris, who had protested energetically against the tender-laws, made specie-payments the condition of his acceptance of office; and on the twenty-second of May, though not without a struggle, Congress resolved "that the whole debts already due by the United States be liquidated as soon as may be to their specie-value, and funded, if agreeable to the creditors, as a loan upon interest; that the States be severally informed that the calculations of the expenses of the present campaign are made in solid coin, and therefore that the requisitions from them respectively, being grounded on those calculations, must be complied with in such manner as effectually to answer the purpose designed; that, experience having evinced the inefficacy of all attempts to support the credit of paper-money by compulsory acts, it is recommended to such States, where laws making paper-bills a tender yet exist, to repeal the same."
Another public body, the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, dealt it another blow, fixing the ratio at which it was to be received in public payments at one hundred and seventy-five for one. Circulation ceased. In a short time the money that had been carted to and fro in reams disappeared from the shop, the counting-room, the market. All dealings were in hard money. Gold and silver resumed their legitimate sway, and men began to look hopefully forward to a return of economy, frugality, and an invigorating commerce.
The Superintendent of Finance set himself seriously to his task. One great obstacle had been removed; one great and decisive step had been made towards the restoration of that sense of security without which industry and enterprise are powerless. As a merchant, he was familiar with the resources of the country; as a Member of Congress, he was familiar with the wants of Government. His resources were taxes and loans; his obligations, an old debt and a daily expenditure. Opposed as he was to the irresponsible currency which had brought the country to the brink of ruin, he was a believer in banks and bills resting on a secure basis. One of his earliest measures was to prepare, with the aid of his Assistant-Superintendent, Gouverneur Morris, a plan of a bank, which soon after, with the sanction of Congress, went into operation as the Bank of North America. Small as the capital with which it started was,—only four hundred thousand dollars,—its influence was immediately felt throughout the country. It gave an impulse to legitimate enterprise which had long been wanting, and a confidence to buyer and seller which they had not felt since the first year of the war. In his public operations the Superintendent used it freely, and, using it at the same time wisely, was enabled to call upon it for aid to the full extent of its ability without impairing its strength.
Henceforth the financial history of the Revolution, although it loses none of its importance, loses much of its narrative-interest. No longer a hand-to-hand conflict between coin and paper,—no longer the melancholy spectacle of wise men doing unwise things, and honorable men doing things which, in any other form, they would have been the first to brand with dishonor,—it still continues a long, a wearisome, and often a mortifying struggle: men knowing their duty and refusing to do it, knowing consequences and yet blindly shutting their eyes to them. I will give but one example.
After a careful estimate of the operations of 1782, Congress had called upon the States for eight millions. Up to January, 1783, only four hundred and twenty thousand had come into the Treasury. Four hundred thousand Treasury-notes were almost due; the funds in Europe were overdrawn to the amount of five hundred thousand by the sale of drafts. But Morris, waiting only to cover himself by a special authorization of Congress, made fresh sales upon the hopes of the Dutch loan and the possibility of a new French loan, and still held on—as cautiously as he could, but ever boldly and skilfully—his anxious way through the rocks and shoals that menaced him on every side. He was rewarded, as such men too often are, by calumny and suspicion. But when men came to look closely at his acts, comparing his means with his wants, and the expenditure of the Treasury Board with the expenditure of the Finance Office, it was seen and acknowledged that he had saved the country thirteen millions a year in hard money.
And now, from our stand-point of the Peace,—from 1783,—let us give a parting glance at the ground over which we have passed. We see thirteen Colonies, united by interest, divided by habits, association, and tradition, engaging in a doubtful contest with one of the most powerful and energetic nations which the world had ever seen; we see them begin, as men always do, with very imperfect conceptions of the time it would last, the lengths to which it would carry them, or the sacrifices it would impose; we see them boldly adopting some measures, timidly shrinking from others,—reasoning justly about some things, reasoning falsely about things equally important,—endowed at times with singular foresight, visited at times by incomprehensible blindness: boatmen on a mighty river, strong themselves and resolute and skilful, plying their oars manfully from first to last, but borne onward by a current which no human science could measure, no human strength could resist.
They knew that the resources of the country were exhaustless; and they threw themselves upon those resources in the only way by which they could reach them. Their bills of credit were the offspring of enthusiasm and faith. The enthusiasm grew chill, the faith failed. With a little more enthusiasm, the people would cheerfully have submitted to taxation; with a little more faith, the Congress would have taxed them. In the end, the people paid for the shortcomings of their enthusiasm by seventy millions of indirect taxation,—taxation through depreciation; the Congress paid for the shortcomings of their faith by the loss of confidence and respect. The war left them with a Federal debt of seventy million dollars, and State debts of nearly twenty-six millions.
Could this have been avoided? Could they have done otherwise? It is easy, when the battle is won, to tell how victory might have been bought cheaper,—when the campaign is ended, to show what might perhaps have brought it to an earlier and more glorious close. It is easy for us, with the whole field before us, to see that from the beginning, from the very first start, although the formula was Taxation, the principle was Independence; but before we venture to pass sentence, ought we not to pause and weigh well our judgment and our words,—we who, in the fiercer contest through which we are passing, have so long failed to see, that, while the formula is Secession, the principle is Slavery?