The financial experience of the Government of the United States in the years following the war is without precedent among nations.

When Congress first met after the close of hostilities (December, 1865), it was as a ship sailing into dangerous and unknown seas without chart of possible channels.

The Reconstruction problem before the country seemed at the time to be less difficult than the financial problem.
Other nations had incurred great expenditures for war purposes, but had always left them in chief part as a heritage for the future.

Great Britain will probably never pay the total principal of her public debt.
France will be burdened perhaps as long as her nationality endures by the debts heaped upon her through the ambition of her sovereigns, and in her own struggles to enlarge the liberty of her people.

But in this country the purpose was early formed, not simply to provide for the interest upon the debt incurred in the war for the Union, but to begin its payment at once, and to arrange for its rapid liquidation.