Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/165

Rh $266,595,440 of compound interest notes were issued, payable in three years with 6 per cent. interest; outstanding April 1, 1876, $336,700. The acts of Feb. 25 and July 11, 1862, authorized the issue of $300,000,000 of legal-tender notes fundable into a bond bearing 6 per cent. interest in gold. The demand notes previously issued, $60,000,000, were also made a legal tender by the act of March 17, 1862. The act of March 3, 1863, authorized an additional issue of $150,000,000; and the right to exchange such notes for 6 per cent. bonds was limited to July 1, 1863. The act of June 30, 1864, provided that the total amount of such notes should not exceed $400,000,000, and such additional sum, not exceeding $50,000,000, as might be lawfully required for the redemption of temporary loans. The amount outstanding on April 1, 1876, was $370,823,645. (See, vol. xi., p. 743.) On Jan. 1, 1861, the debt amounted to $66,243,721. During the next six months it increased at the rate of about $4,000,000 a month; during the year beginning July 1, 1862, at the rate of about $36,000,000 a month; during the following year at the rate of $49,500,000 a month. Increasing more than $70,500,000 a month from Dec. 1, 1863, to April 1, 1865, and $84,400,000 a month during the five months following, it reached its maximum on Aug. 31, 1865, when it amounted to $2,845,907,626, composed as follows:

Of these obligations, $684,138,959 were a legal tender in the payment of all debts, public and private, except customs duties and interest on the public debt. The amount of legal-tender notes, demand notes, fractional currency, and national bank notes outstanding on Aug. 31, 1865, and annually thereafter, from Jan. 1, 1866, to Jan. 1, 1876, inclusive, was:

The refunding of the national debt was authorized by the acts of congress of July 14, 1870, and Jan. 20, 1871. The amount of six per cent. gold-bearing bonds outstanding on Jan. 1, 1870, was $1,886,349,800, and of five per cent. bonds $221,589,300. On Jan. 1, 1876, the former amounted to $1,017,615,400, and the latter to $670,384,750, showing a decrease in the funded debt of $419,938,950. The reduction in the total debt during this period (excluding $35,175,000 of special deposits of legal-tender notes) was $435,716,254. The temporary loans, certificates of indebtedness, seven-thirty notes, and all the items of the debt bearing interest in lawful money, with the exception of the navy pension fund, either have been paid, have matured and ceased to bear interest, or have been funded. The public debt outstanding on April 1, 1876, is shown in the following statement. Besides this, $64,623,512 of 6 per cent. bonds, maturing 30 years from their date, have been issued to the several Pacific railway companies, which are to pay them at maturity.

The total receipts and expenditures of the government during each decade to 1860 were: