“In the spring of 1863, California created a law that allowed any business contract to identify the kind of money or currency to be used in the fulfillment of the contract. If the contract required payment in gold, for example, then only a gold payment fulfilled the contract. In the other states, greenbacks could be a substitute for gold or silver payments. By the time McCulloch was appointed treasury secretary, just 37 months after the Legal Tender Act, greenbacks were worth less than half of their original value. California’s hesitancy to use these demand notes as an equal exchange for gold was proving wise.”
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