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| Thursday March 7, 1861 |
Salmon P. Chase of Ohio is appointed Secretary of the Treasury.
As secretary of the treasury in President Lincoln's cabinet from
1861 to 1864, during the first three years of the Civil War, he
rendered services of the greatest value. That period of crisis
witnessed two great changes in American financial policy, the
establishment of a national banking system and the issue of a
legal tender paper currency. The former was Chase's own
particular measure. He suggested the idea, worked out all of the
important principles and many of the details, and induced the
Congress to accept them. The success of that system alone
warrants his being placed in the first rank of American financiers.
It not only secured an immediate market for government bonds,
but it also provided a permanent uniform national currency, which,
though inelastic, is absolutely stable. The issue of legal tenders,
the greatest financial blunder of the war, was made contrary to his
wishes, although he did not, as he perhaps ought to have done,
push his opposition to the point of resigning.
The first U.S. federal currency was printed in 1862, during
Chase's tenure as Secretary of the Treasury, thus it was his
responsibility to design the notes. In an effort to further his
political career, his own face appeared on a variety of U.S. paper
currency. Most recently, in order to honor the man who introduced
the modern system of banknotes, Chase was on the $10,000 bill,
printed from 1928 to 1946 (this bill is no longer in circulation).