In 1870, the liberals won a partial victory when the Supreme Court decided Hepburn v. Griswold. The Court undermined the legitimacy of fiat currency by ruling that creditors could demand specie to repay any obligations made before the law authorized the issuance of greenbacks. This was an astonishing verdict and it threatened to wreak havoc, so Grant immediately appointed two new justices to the court. They were both railroad attorneys, and they both knew that Griswold meant railroads would have to pay interest on antebellum bonds in gold, thus significantly raising their costs. In 1871, to
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