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GREENBACKS

GREENBACKS, the popular name for the U.S. notes issued during the Civil War as legal tender for all debts except tariff duties and interest on the public debt. They served as the standard of value in ordinary commercial transactions after their issue in 1862. The $450 million in greenbacks that was authorized was later permanently reduced to $346,681,016. Although heavily depreciated during the Civil War, greenbacks were much favored by rural proponents of inflationary monetary policies, who rallied for their continuance in the late 1860s and 1870s. Organized as the Greenback Party, the proponents succeeded in postponing the resumption of specie payments until the Resumption Act of 1875, which by 1879had returned the greenback to a value on par with metallic currency.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ritter, Gretchen. Goldbugs and Greenbacks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Unger, Irwin. The Greenback Era. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Elmer Ellis/A. R.

See also Currency and Coinage; Resumption Act; Specie Payments, Suspension and Resumption of.