Boutwell adopted a policy of letting the economy “grow up to the Civil War money stock.” With settlers starting farms in the West, the South rebuilding, and northern industry expanding, the economy would soon need all the available money supply. The value of greenbacks would rise with the expansion of the economy rather than through the reduction of the money supply, and at some future date the resumption of specie—that is gold—payments could proceed with less pain. This was, in essence, how resumption did eventually take place on January 2, 1879, but it happened far more slowly than liberals
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