It was during this first period of my service that the last and most earnest effort of the State was made for the war. Various circumstances had caused discourage-ment. It had become difficult to raise troops, yet it was most important to avoid a draft. In the city of New York, at the prospect of an enforced levy of troops, there had been serious uprisings which were only suppressed after a considerable loss of life. It was necessary to make one supreme effort, and the Republican members of the legislature decided to raise a loan of several millions for bounties to those who should volunteer. This decision was not arrived at without much opposition, and, strange to say, its most serious opponent was Horace Greeley, who came to Albany in the hope of defeating it. Invaluable as his services had been during the struggle which preceded the war, it must be confessed, even by his most devoted friends, that during the war he was not unfrequently a stumbling block. His cry ``on to Richmond'' during the first part of the struggle, his fearful alarm when, like the heroes in the ``Biglow Papers,'' he really discovered ``why baggonets is peaked,'' his terror as the conflict deepened, his proposals for special peace negotiations later--all these things were among the serious obstacles which President Lincoln had to encounter; and now, fearing burdens which, in his opinion, could not and would not be borne by the State, and conjuring up specters of trouble, he came to Albany and earnestly advised members of the legislature against the passage of the bounty bill. Fortunately, common sense triumphed, and the bill was passed.
Opposition came also from another and far different source. There was then in the State Senate a Democrat of the oldest and strongest type; a man who believed most devoutly in Jefferson and Jackson, and abhorred above all things, abolitionists and protectionists,--Dr.
Allaben of Schoharie. A more thoroughly honest man never lived; he was steadily on the side of good legislation;but in the midst of the discussion regarding this great loan for bounties he arose and began a speech which, as he spoke but rarely, received general attention.
He was deeply in earnest. He said (in substance), ``Ishall vote for this loan; for of various fearful evils it seems the least. But I wish, here and now, and with the deepest sorrow, to record a prediction: I ask you to note it and to remember it, for it will be fulfilled, and speedily.
This State debt which you are now incurring will never be paid. It cannot be paid. More than that, none of the vast debts incurred for military purposes, whether by the Nation or by the States, will be paid; the people will surely repudiate them. Nor is this all. Not one dollar of all the treasury notes issued by the United States will ever be redeemed. Your paper currency has already depreciated much and will depreciate more and more; all bonds and notes, State and National, issued to continue this fratricidal war will be whirled into the common vortex of repudiation. I say this with the deepest pain, for I love my country, but I cannot be blind to the teachings of history.'' He then went on to cite the depreciation of our revolutionary currency, and, at great length pictured the repudiation of the assignats during the French Revolution. He had evidently read Alison and Thiers carefully, and he spoke like an inspired prophet.
As Senator Allaben thus spoke, Senator Fields of New York quietly left his seat and came to me. He was a most devoted servant of Tammany, but was what was known in those days as a War Democrat. His native pugnacity caused him to feel that the struggle must be fought out, whereas Democrats of a more philosophic sort, like Allaben, known in those days as ``Copperheads,''
sought peace at any price. Therefore it was that, while Senator Allaben was pouring out with the deepest earnestness these prophecies of repudiation, Mr. Fields came round to my desk and said to me: ``You have been a professor of history; you are supposed to know something about the French Revolution; if your knowledge is good for anything, why in h--l don't you use it now?''
This exhortation was hardly necessary, and at the close of Senator Allaben's remarks I arose and presented another view of the case. It happened by a curious coin-cidence that, having made a few years before a very careful study of the issues of paper money during the French Revolution, I had a portion of my very large collection of assignats, mandats, and other revolutionary currency in Albany, having brought it there in order to show it to one or two of my friends who had expressed an interest in the subject.
Holding this illustrative material in reserve I showed the whole amount of our American paper currency in circulation to be about eight hundred million dollars, of which only about one half was of the sort to which the senator referred. I then pointed to the fact that, although the purchasing power of the French franc at the time of the Revolution was fully equal to the purchasing power of the American dollar of our own time, the French revolutionary government issued, in a few months, forty-five thousand millions of francs in paper money, and had twenty-five thousand millions of it in circulation at the time when the great depression referred to by Dr. Allaben had taken place.
