CIVIL WAR FRACTIONAL CURRENCY TREASURY ABOLITIONIST CONGRESSMAN AUTOGRAPH SIGNED
Item History & Price
FRANCIS ELIAS SPINNER, JR.(1802 - 1890)CIVIL WAR TREASURER of theUNITED STATES APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT LINCOLN and CONTINUING TO SERVE UNDERPRESIDENTS JOHNSON & GRANT, NY MILITIA MAJOR GENERAL, 3-TERM ANTI-SLAVERY ABOLITIONISTCONGRESSMAN&THE FATHER OF CIVIL WAR ERA FRACTIONALCURRENCY!Spinner was the first administrator in the Federal Governmentto employ women for clerical jobs during the Civil War. He was elected as an anti-slavery Democrat to the 34th USCongress.&nb...sp; On the recommendation ofSecretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, he was appointed by PresidentLincoln as Treasurer of the United States, serving from 1861-1875HERE’s SPINNER’S ATTRACTIVESIGNATURE REMOVED FROM A 19th CENTURY AUTOGRAPH ALBUM, SIGNED:“Very Respectfully yoursF. E. Spinner Jr.”BEAUTIFULLY SIGNED BY SPINNER IN HISCHARACTERISTIC HAND!Thedocument measures 5” x 2½” and is in very fine, clean condition. A WONDERFUL ADDITION TO YOURFINANCIAL/POLITICAL/CIVIL WAR ERA AUTOGRAPH & EPHEMERA COLLECTION ORA GREAT COLLATERAL ITEM FOR YOURFRACTIONAL CURRENCY NOTE COLLECTION!<><::><>BIOGRAPHICALSKETCH OF THE HONORABLE F. E. SPINNER, JR.Spinner, Francis Elias Jr.(21 Jan.1802-31 Dec. 1890), congressman and treasurer of the United States, was born inGerman Flats (now Mohawk), New York, the son of recent German immigrants, JohnPeter Spinner and Mary Brument. His father, a Roman Catholic priest who had renouncedhis church, was the pastor for two German-speaking congregations of the DutchReformed church in Herkimer and German Flats. Although his father was auniversity graduate, Spinner received only a common school educationsupplemented with what he could pick up through wide reading. Fascinated byaccounting, Spinner longed to enter business, but his father wished him tolearn a skilled trade and actually removed him from an apprenticeship to anAlbany confectioner because he was being taught sales and bookkeeping. Hisfather then apprenticed him to a saddlemaker in Amsterdam, New York. At the age oftwenty-two Spinner returned to Herkimer and became a merchant in partnershipwith Alexander Hackley. Two years later (1826) he married Caroline Caswell, withwhom he had three children. In 1825 he helped to organize an artillery unit, inwhich he served as lieutenant, for the state militia. He quickly rose throughthe ranks in the largely ceremonial organization, achieving major generalbefore he retired in 1835. His military "experience" won Spinnerappointment as deputy sheriff in 1829, and in 1834 he was elected sheriff as aDemocrat, serving a three-year term. Earning a reputationfor honesty, hard work, and a blunt, businesslike manner, Spinner seemed a logicalchoice in positions of public trust. In 1838 Democratic governor William Marcynamed him one of the commissioners for overseeing the building of the statemental hospital in Utica. A subsequent politically motivated Whiginvestigation, despite heroic efforts, could find no financial wrongdoing inthe enterprise. In 1839 the newly formed Mohawk Valley Bank invited Spinner tobecome its cashier, and in his twenty-year association with the institution herose to be its president. During Democrat James K. Polk's presidentialadministration, he served as auditor and deputy naval officer at the Port ofNew York (1845-1849). In 1854 antislaveryDemocrats upset over the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act elected thepugnacious Spinner to the Thirty-fourth Congress. He represented a district innorth-central New York where Democratic factionalism on this issue and othershad been simmering for a decade. Alone among those elected as Democrats, Spinner backed Nathaniel Banks in a long controversy over the HouseSpeakership, thus identifying himself with the nascent Republican party. In1856 he served on the special committee that investigated RepresentativePreston Brooks's caning of Senator Charles Sumner and on a conference committeethat failed to agree on an army appropriations bill because of a disagreementover the army's use in Kansas. Spinner made his mark in committees, where hearticulated principles and doggedly pursued them, rather than on the floor ofthe House, where he was seldom heard. Reelected in 1856 and 1858 as aRepublican, Spinner rose to chair the Committee on Accounts. Spinner stronglysupported Salmon P. Chase, whose honesty he admired, as treasury secretaryfollowing Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860. Chase in turn recommendedSpinner's appointment as U.S. treasurer in charge of the nation's accounts.Spinner, a strong nationalist, was an important adviser to Chase on matterssuch as the circulation of greenbacks (which bore Spinner's distinctive, hard-to-duplicate signature) and the creation of a national banking system.Because of the increased demands on his office due to the Civil War, Spinnerpresided over a vast increase in his workforce from fifteen clerks, copyists, and currency counters handling $8 million a month at the war's outset tohundreds of employees handling millions of dollars a day at the conflict'sclose. Feeling personally responsible for every dollar in his trust and lackinga suitable system to delegate authority, Spinner worked long days, often eatingand sleeping in his office. At one point, fearing that the capital might fallto the Confederates, he had his employees pack up all the government's money inpreparation for fleeing on a steamer down the Potomac. Needing large numbers ofreliable employees not subject to military service, he was the firstgovernmental administrator to turn to women. He vigorously defended theiremployment against critics, hired over one hundred, paid them well by thestandards of the time, and insisted on their continued employment after thewar. Other government bureaus soon followed his lead. This act is the one forwhich Spinner has been most remembered. Spinner has been credited with finding the solution to the shortage ofcoinage: he created postage currency (which led into the use of Fractionalcurrency). Postage (or postal) currency was the first of five issues of U.S.Post Office fractional paper money printed in 5-cent, 10-cent, 25-cent, and50-cent denominations and issued from 21 August 1862 through 27 May 1863.Spinner proposed using postage stamps, affixed to Treasury Paper with hissignature on the bottom (see illustration below). Based on this initiative, Congress supported a temporary solution involving fractional currency and on 17July 1862 President Lincoln signed the Postage Currency Bill into law. Theintent, however, was not that stamps should be a circulating currency. Spinner remainedtreasurer under Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant. When a new secretary ofthe treasury in 1875 assumed control over the appointment of clerks, however, Spinner feared that dishonest people might be hired and he would be heldresponsible. He resigned and moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he enjoyed avigorous outdoor life until his death in that city. Bibliography Spinner's papers are atthe Library of Congress. Some letters from his period as sheriff in HerkimerCounty are at the Cornell University Library. See also George A. Hardin, History of Herkimer County, New York (1893); Isaac S. Hartley, "GeneralFrancis E. Spinner the Financier, " Magazine of American History 25 (1891):185-200; A. L. Howell, "The Life and Public Services of Gen. Francis E.Spinner, " Papers Read before the Herkimer County Historical Society, vol.2 (1902). Brief recollections of Spinner occur in a number of memoirs, including most usefully Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Century(1888). An obituary is in the New York Times, 1 Jan. 1891. [Source: AmericanNational Biography]I am a proud member ofthe Universal Autograph Collectors Club (UACC), The Ephemera Society ofAmerica, the Manuscript Society and the American Political Items Collectors(APIC) (member name: John Lissandrello). I subscribe to each organizations'code of ethics and authenticity is guaranteed. ~Providing quality service andhistorical memorabilia online for over twenty years.~
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Collectibles Autographs Political PresidentialCoins & Paper Money Paper Money: US Fractional Currency
WE ONLY SELL GENUINE ITEMS, i.e., NO REPRODUCTIONS, FAKES OR COPIES!
Collectibles Autographs Political PresidentialCoins & Paper Money Paper Money: US Fractional Currency
