Note 135 — CHAPTER SIX. Tricked to the Trenches—Then Snubbed.

“Apart from the phraseology of the statutes it appears during the early years of the War the possibility of the payment of the bonds in other than coin was hardly raised. According to the explicit statement of Garfield in 1868, when the original five-twenty bond bill was before the House in 1862, all who referred to the subject stated that the principal of these bonds was payable in gold, and coin payment was the understanding of every member of the committee of ways and means.... It thus became practically an unwritten law to pay the obligations of the United States in coin.”—Dewey: Financial History of the United States, paragraph 148.