By 1880 the Republicans were boasting of restoring "our paper currency from 38 per cent to the par of gold," and the Greenback Party, with Gen. James B. Weaver of Iowa, a former Republican, as its presidential candidate, demanded the issue of all paper currency by the Government alone and that "the unlimited coinage of silver, as well as gold" be established by law, and demanded "a Government of the People, by the People, and for the People, instead of a Government of the Bondholder, by the Bondholder, and for the Bondholder." This was the first National declaration in favor of what later, in the campaign of 1896, became known as "free silver."

This year saw the high water mark of strength for a national Greenback ticket, General Weaver receiving 308,578 votes in a total of 9,218,251. But both of the old parties had much internal disaffection and politicians in both had become greatly alarmed and has vied with one another to confuse and demoralize the new party by holding out temptations in the way of local fusion. This was actually carried to the extent, in some of the states, of partial fusions on the Electoral Ticket. In Maine such a fusion was made up with three Democrats and four Greenbackers, and as a "Straight" Greenback Ticket was also in the field, the Greenback strength was thus cleverly divided.

As a result of this campaign there were nine members of the House of Representatives credited to the "Nationals", but this gain was short lived, as the next House contained but two "Nationals" and four "Independents."

"American Politics," by Thos. V. Cooper, says that "In State Elections up to as late as 1880 this Greenback element was a most important factor." "Farmer" Allen in Ohio, "Blue Jeans" Williams in Indiana, and Solon Chase and "them steers," in Maine, became figures of National importance, while Gen. Benj. F. Butler, a Republican Congressman, and several times nominated by the Republicans for Governor, so bedeviled the politics of Massachusetts as to land himself in the gubernatorial chair shortly after the Greenback wave had subsided, in 1882, through the capture of the Democratic Party and its State machinery. Cooper says truly, however, that "As a party, the Greenbackers, standing alone, never carried either a State or a Congressional District. Their local successes were due to alliances with one or the other of the great parties."

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This statement fairly epitomizes the history of a really large and, for a time, menacing National Movement and one responsible for giving the Republican Party its first serious alarms after the ten years of uninterrupted party power and political security which followed the first election of Lincoln. It will serve as a historical background for the account which follows, of Greenback politics in Wisconsin, which also, explains the prominence of Wisconsin Greenbackers in, and their close relations to, the National Greenback Movement.

It may be said, with truth, that the literature of Greenbackism developed in Wisconsin, was among the best written and ablest of the country. It is, therefore, typical.

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The Wisconsin Greenback Movement

A

CHAPTER THREE.

S early as the last half of 1875 there was noticeable discussion of the currency question, in Wisconsin, in the newspapers and elsewhere, but prior to January 1876 there seems to have been no concentrated movement for a party organization to express Greenback sentiment.

It was suggested in the previous chapter that the Greenback Movement began with the nomination of David Davis for President, in 1872. Many of the men early active in the movement had been known, years before, as anti-slavery prophets, and later, as prominent Republicans. David Davis had been a Delegate-at-Large to the Convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860. He had been appointed, by Lincoln, a Justice of the Supreme Court, and was named as one of the executers of Mr. Lincoln's will. Wendell Phillips had been one of the most eloquent of the Abolitionists, and George W. Julian had been in at the birth of the Free Soil Party, one of the early progenitors of the Republican Party, and throughout the war he had been one of the foremost Republicans in the National House of Representatives, and was known as "the father of the Homestead Act."

Among the "Liberal Republicans" who nominated Greeley, in 1872, we find such familiar names as Carl Schurz; Col. A. K. McClure, editor of the Philadelphia Times, and ex.-Gov. Andrew G. Curtin, the famous war Governor, of Pennsylvania; Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts; Reuben E. Fenton of New York; Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, and many other men of great ability and recognized

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prominence in the earlier annals of the Republican Party. Schurz, Fenton and Trumbull all served in United States Senate as Republicans.

Wisconsin reflected this prevailing spirit of unrest and criticism within the Republican ranks and Greeley received more votes in this State, by about 3,000, than Horatio Seymour, as the Democratic candidate, had received four years earlier.

It was this new disposition to break over party traces that gave especial anxiety to Republican leaders, everywhere, throughout the entire country.

In Wisconsin, one of the first important men of wellknown Republican affiliations to speak in dissent of the Republican policy of finance, was Edward P. Allis. As early as November 27th, 1875, the Milwaukee Sentinel published a communication from Mr. Allis, which was as follows:

In your very good and modest "Thanksgiving" article in this morning's paper you have mentioned two things that I think were referred to upon general principles, and should not have particular application to this case. You speak of our having reduced the National Debt "in spite of reduced taxation and revenue," as a cause of thanks, and then speak of the human beings who are in cold and want, and whose only chance for thanks will come from charity.

It is certainly a good thing, in the abstract, to reduce a debt; and I think you have mentioned it in that way, and that, after consideration of its particular application in this case, you will agree with me, that the good may be not an unalloyed one.

This fact stands out glaringly in our National history. The War of the Rebellion came and found us comparatively out of debt, but financially weak. The war ended and found us overwhelmed with debt, but financially strong. We entered the contest a debtless pigmy, and emerged an indebted giant.

We entered it with but moderate or negative and prosperity and National_strength, and emerged with almost boundless prosperity and power. This prosperity continued after the war, but with a declining tendency, until to-day we find the only thing to be thankful for, "that we have reduced the National Debt," and couple that cause of thanksgiving with the appeal for charity to men with strong arms and willing hearts,— men who desire and ought to have the opportunity to owe their Thanksgiving Dinner to the goodness of God, rather than to the charity of men. If we carefully investigate the facts, we shall find that we have everything to be thankful for, so far as the fruits of the earth can make it so, but that our own acts are turning a real cause of thanks into a real cause of complaint. If we had cited the reduction of the National Debt as a cause of complaint, and then the necessity of charity as the effect, we might have been not wide of the mark.