unsigned, in the Secretary of State's office, at eleven and three-quarters p.m., March 3, 1837. As he had not had it ten days it was not a law. A similar circular had been issued in 1828; as there was then no active speculation, very little notice was taken of it.[1]
In April, 1835, a treasury circular forbade the payment out of the treasury of any notes under five dollars after September 30, 1855. February 22 1836, another circular forbade the payment of any notes out of the treasury of a less denomination than ten dollars after May 1st. Congress superseded these circulars by an act of April 14, 1836, that no bank note under ten dollars should be paid out after that date, and that after March 3, 1837, no note under twenty dollars should be either given or taken by the United States Treasury or Post Office Department, and all notes given or taken must be payable in specie on the spot. This act was passed without a contest and with great unanimity. In 1835, the following States allowed no notes under five dollars: Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, New York, New Jersey, and Alabama. Connecticut had none under three dollars. In Mississippi and Illinois, "it is understood that bills under five dollars have not recently been issued." Missouri had no bank of issue. The specie in the country was estimated at sixty-four millions.[2]
From the time that the State banks began to be used as the depositories of the public money, the amount which they held went on steadily increasing. On the 1st of June, 1836, there were about eighty of these banks, with a capital of $46.4 millions. They held public money to the amount of $41 millions. Their loans were $71.2 millions, and domestic exchange, $37.1 millions. Their circulation was $27.9 millions, their private deposits $16 millions, and their specie $10.4 millions.
Jackson had himself proposed in his first message that, after the public debt was paid, the surplus revenue of the federal government should be distributed to the States. Clay and Calhoun, however, took up this project, the former especially aiming to distribute the proceeds of the public lands as such, or to regard the surplus revenue as due to the sales of lands. At the session of 1835-36, Clay introduced a bill to distribute the net proceeds of the lands after taking out ten per cent. for the ten new States. Calhoun had constitutional scruples about distribution, and proposed an amendment to the Constitution to authorize it. He also introduced a bill to regulate the public deposits, and there was another bill for distributing the surplus revenue. The land bill passed the Senate but was tabled in the House. The distribution bill and the deposit bill were consolidated into one, and passed by the Senate, June 17th, 38 to 6. On the 20th of June, in the House, an effort was made to divide the bill so as to separate the regulation of the deposits from the distribution, but the effort failed. As the bill then stood, the surplus was to be divided as a gift to the States. This could not pass the House. It was
