Editing United States Note (section)

===Post Civil War===
[[File:US-$10-LT-1901-Fr.114.jpg|thumb|Series of 1901 {{US$|long=no|10}} Legal Tender depicting military explorers [[Meriwether Lewis]], [[William Clark (explorer)|William Clark]], and an [[American bison]]]]
At the end of the [[American Civil War]], some economists, such as [[Henry Charles Carey]], argued for building on the precedent of non-interest-based fiat money and making the greenback system permanent.<ref>Carey, Henry Charles (March 1865) [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?sid=932372736069d66b3b26927f407796bf&c=moa&idno=AEU5158.0001.001&view=toc  The Way to Outdo England Without Fighting Her]</ref> However, [[Hugh McCulloch|Secretary of the Treasury McCulloch]] argued that the Legal Tender Acts had been war measures, and that the United States should soon reverse them and return to the [[gold standard]]. The [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] voted overwhelmingly to endorse the Secretary's argument.<ref name="Cyclo">"United States Notes", [[John Joseph Lalor]], ''Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States'', Rand McNally & Co, Chicago, 1881.</ref> With an eventual return to gold convertibility in mind, the Funding Act of April 12, 1866<ref>[http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=014/llsl014.db&recNum=62 United States Congress. Act of April 12, 1866 Chapter XXXIII. Washington D.C.: 1866]</ref> was passed, authorizing McCulloch to retire {{US$|long=no|10}} million of the Greenbacks within six months and up to {{US$|long=no|4}} million per month thereafter. This he proceeded to do until only {{US$|long=no|356000000}} were outstanding during February 1868. By this time, the wartime economic prosperity was ended, the crop harvest was poor, and a financial panic in Great Britain caused a recession and a sharp decrease of prices in the United States.<ref name="Studenski">Studenski, Paul; Krooss, Hermand Edward (1952). ''Financial History of the United States'', New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. {{ISBN|1-58798-175-0}}.</ref> The contraction of the money supply was blamed for the deflationary effects, and caused debtors to agitate successfully for a halt to the notes' retirement.<ref>[http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h171.html The Greenback Question.] Retrieved May 30, 2009.</ref>

During the early 1870s, Treasury Secretaries [[George S. Boutwell]] and [[William Adams Richardson]] maintained that, though Congress had mandated {{US$|long=no|356000000}} as the minimum Greenback circulation, the old Civil War statutes still authorized a maximum of {{US$|long=no|400000000}}{{#tag:ref |While the three Legal Tender Acts had authorized {{US$|long=no|450000000}} of notes, the Second Legal Tender Act, in taking the total from {{US$|long=no|150000000}} to {{US$|long=no|300000000}} had reserved {{US$|long=no|50000000}} of the increase for the purpose of redeeming balances in a temporary deposit program. The Act of June 30, 1864, reiterated this limitation, and as the temporary loan program had ceased to exist, only {{US$|long=no|400000000}} of the {{US$|long=no|450000000}} ceiling were available.| group="nb"}}—and thus they had at their discretion a "reserve" of {{US$|long=no|44000000}}. While the Senate Finance Committee under [[John Sherman]] disagreed, being of the opinion that the {{US$|long=no|356000000}} was a maximum as well as a minimum, no legislation was passed to assert the committee's opinion. Starting in 1872, Boutwell and Richardson used the "reserve" to counteract seasonal demands for currency, and eventually expanded the circulation of the Greenbacks to {{US$|long=no|382000000}} in response to the [[Panic of 1873]].<ref name="Timberlake">Timberlake, Richard H.(1993). ''Monetary Policy in the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press. {{ISBN|978-0-226-80384-5}}.</ref>

In June 1874, Congress established a maximum for Greenback circulation of {{US$|long=no|382000000}}, and in January 1875, approved the [[Specie Payment Resumption Act]], which authorized a reduction of the circulation of Greenbacks towards a revised limit of {{US$|long=no|300000000}}, and required the government to redeem them for gold, on demand, after January 1, 1879. As a result, the currency strengthened and by April 1876, the notes were on par with silver coins which then began to re-emerge into circulation.<ref name="100Greatest">Bowers, Q. David; David Sundman (2006). ''100 GREATEST AMERICAN CURRENCY NOTES'', Atlanta, Georgia: Whitman Publishing. {{ISBN|0-7948-2006-9}}.</ref> On May 31, 1878, the contraction in the circulation was halted at {{US$|long=no|346681016}}—a level which would be maintained for almost 100 years afterwards.<ref>[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F0CE0DE1639E433A25757C2A9639C946297D6CF The National Balance Sheet; It Includes {{US$|long=no|71000000}} of Debits Which Might Well Be Dropped"] ''[[New York Times]]'' May 24, 1903, Sunday</ref> While {{US$|long=no|346681016}} was a significant figure at the time, it is now a very small fraction of the total currency in circulation in the United States. The year 1879 found Sherman, now Secretary of the Treasury, in possession of sufficient specie to redeem notes as requested, but as this brought the value of the greenbacks into parity with gold for the first time since the Specie Suspension of December 1861, the public voluntarily accepted the greenbacks as part of the circulating medium.<ref name="Cyclo"/>

While the United States Notes had been used as a form of debt issuance during the Civil War, afterwards they were used as a way of moderately influencing the money supply by the federal government—such as through the actions of Boutwell and Richardson. During the [[Panic of 1907]], President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] attempted to increase liquidity in the markets by authorizing the Treasury to issue more Greenbacks, but the [[Aldrich–Vreeland Act]] provided for the needed flexibility by the [[National Bank Note]] supply instead. Eventually, the perceived need for an elastic currency was addressed with the [[Federal Reserve Note]]s authorized by the [[Federal Reserve Act|Federal Reserve Act of 1913]], and attempts to alter the circulating quantity of United States Notes ended.