Lincoln’s Dangerous Idea
Greenbacks, and What Congress Did to Them Over Thirteen Years
Coming Soon
The Legal Tender Act of 1862 authorised United States Notes — about $450 million of paper issued directly by the Treasury rather than borrowed into existence. It is the most serious test this country ever ran of financing itself by issuing, and the interesting part is what happened next: Congress contracted the notes from 1866, halted contraction in 1868, froze the outstanding stock in 1878, and left them circulating until 1971. Not a bullet. Thirteen years of recorded votes.
The greenbacks are often lined up with Kennedy’s Executive Order 11110 and Gaddafi’s gold dinar, and the sequence called a pattern. It does not hold: EO 11110 enabled the wind-down of silver certificates rather than challenging the Federal Reserve, and a sequence of events is not a mechanism. The question the greenbacks actually raise is the better one anyway. If a sovereign government can issue its own money, why does it almost always choose to borrow instead? The answer is in the ledger, not in an assassination.
This essay is forthcoming. It builds on the cognitive scaffolding layers above and the essays that precede it in the series. Check back, or begin with the scaffolding to prepare the ground.
The table is already set. The bread has been warm for a thousand years.