“Nothing had more obviously threatened quick and overwhelming disaster to the country in the days of the Revolution and the Confederation than the reckless financial operations of the States, their unlimited issues of irredeemable paper, their piled up promises and meagre means of redeeming them; and the constitution of the Union had been framed almost as much to avert ruin from that quarter as to create a real government, clear up the relationships of the States to one another, and steady their political action. It absolutely forbade the States to issue bills of credit, did not give the federal government itself power to do so, and was meant practically to prohibit the use of any currency which was not at least based directly upon gold and silver.”
Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People, (1903), volume 4, pp. 45–46.
1:59 pm on August 26, 2012
