1. Unless otherwise indicated, all page numbers are to DeCanio, Samuel, “Populism, Paranoia, and the Politics of Free Silver,” Studies in American Political Development 25 (April 2011): 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. To indicate how large a sum this was at the time, John Jay Knox, Deputy Comptroller of the Currency for the Treasury Department, received an annual salary of $2,500. Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States on the Thirtieth of September, 1871 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872)Google Scholar, p. 53. In fact, the check to Linderman was worth even more than its $3,500 face value because, as can be seen in the lower right-hand corner, it was payable “In U.S. Gold Coin,” which was worth a substantial premium over the greenbacks in which Knox was paid. In 1863, the California legislature had passed a law that allowed commercial transactions to stipulate the kind of money that was to be transferred; Bank of California checks thus specified gold (not paper money). Lavender, David, Nothing Seemed Impossible: William C. Ralston and Early San Francisco (Palo Alto, CA: American West Publishing, 1975)Google Scholar, p. 170.

3. Although translations of the dollar's value over almost a century and a half are hazardous at best, $23,500 in the early 1870s would be worth about a million contemporary dollars.

4. Written more than two years after the Coinage Act was enacted, that letter apparently acknowledges that Linderman had arranged a meeting between James Garfield, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Ohio, and Ralston. After that meeting, Ralston wrote to say that he would “do what we can to make [Garfield] happy” (p. 16). There is no suggestion that Linderman did anything more than arrange this meeting or that the meeting between Ralston and Garfield had any connection to the Coinage Act. In addition, DeCanio only cites this letter once in his article. We might add that on August 27 of the same year William Ralston apparently committed suicide after he resigned as president of the Bank of California. The bank had suspended payments earlier in the day in an open admission that it was insolvent.

5. The reference to “Philadelphia” is unclear but might refer to William Kelley, a Republican congressman from that city (see text).

6. Lyman, George D., Ralston's Ring: California Plunders the Comstock Lode (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937), pp. 168–71Google Scholar. Sutro was rushing to complete his tunnel as he attempted to raise money for its construction. That would explain the urgency with which Linderman and Ralston would have been working for passage of the Fitch bill (because lenders would not have extended money to Sutro without the promise of royalties when the tunnel was completed). That would also explain Linderman's heavy lobbying activity and, in particular, his meeting with Kelley. For descriptions of the Sutro Tunnel and its relationship to the Comstock Lode, see Tilton, Cecil, William Chapman Ralston, Courageous Builder (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1935), pp. 211–18Google Scholar; Lavender, Nothing Seemed Impossible, pp. 230–35, 267–69.

7. Fitch formally introduced the bill, HR 1179, on February 10, 1870. Congressional Record 42:2:1185.

8. A year or so before Linderman's letter was written, Ralston became involved in a very public struggle over the legitimacy of land claims to a quicksilver mine in which both the contestants evidently bribed a number of congressmen. Lavender, Nothing Seemed Impossible, pp. 227–30. But the most likely alternative might be Ralston's pending proposal for an exclusive contract for refining bullion for the San Francisco Mint. That would explain why Linderman refers to “the Mint Bill” in his letter (pp. 283–84).

9. Linderman was promoting both the discontinuance of the silver dollar and the elimination of the coinage charge. This might appear to be working at cross purposes, since elimination of the silver dollar would destroy any advantage that “free coinage” might have given Ralston. However, his firm would still have had access to the mint for subsidiary silver coinage (e.g., the half dollar), the trade dollar that Linderman had proposed as a substitute for the silver dollar, and gold coins. All in all, Ralston and Linderman clearly expected the refining operation in San Francisco to be quite a bit more profitable after adoption of the coinage act even though the silver dollar was discontinued.

10. S.R. no. 1406, 41^st Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, Ex. Doc. no. 51, “Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, February 24, 1870.” This letter transmits “a portion of a report made to this department by the Hon. H.R. Linderman, on the 8^th of October last [1869] upon the branch mint in San Francisco, also a copy of a portion of report made to the department by Messr. Linderman and Knox, on the 7^th instant, upon the United States assay office in New York . . .,” pp. 4–5.

11. There were only two gold and silver refineries in San Francisco at this time: the Ralston firm and the Pacific Gold and Silver Refinery, owned by F. Reichling & Company. 1872 San Francisco Directory (San Francisco: Henry G. Langley, 1872)Google Scholar, pp. 548, 572, 783.

12. S.R. no. 1406, 41^st Congress, 2nd Session, Senate: Ex. Doc. no. 51, “Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, February 24, 1870,” p. 9.

13. For more on Ralston's pursuit of the refining contract, see Lavender, Nothing Seemed Impossible, pp. 283–84, 292.

14. Because the trade dollar would not be legal tender in the United States, it would not be a substitute for the silver dollar in the American monetary system. But Ralston and Linderman did expect that the trade dollar would be minted in large numbers at the San Francisco Mint because it was intended to circulate in the Far East, particularly China. In that sense, the trade dollar was a substitute for the silver dollar in terms of mint activity in San Francisco.

15. (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1895), p. 237.

16. Although Linderman was a Democrat, Andrew Johnson had appointed him director of the Philadelphia Mint in 1867. When President Grant assumed office in 1869, he removed Linderman as the director of the Philadelphia Mint in order to appoint a Republican, James Pollock, in his place. After the Coinage Act of 1873 was enacted, Grant appointed Linderman the first director of the Bureau of the Mint, a new post created by the act. Lavender, Nothing Seemed Impossible, p. 280.

17. For example, Linderman's name does not appear in the Treasury Department roster of employees reported in the Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States on the Thirtieth of September, 1871 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1872), pp. 20–154Google Scholar.

18. S.R. no. 1408, 41^st Congress, 2nd Session, Senate: Mis. Doc. no. 132, “Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, April 25, 1870,” pp. 6, 12. S.R. no. 1426, 41^st Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. no. 307, “Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, June 20, 1870,” p. 29. S.R. no. 1406, 41^st Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, Ex. Doc. no. 51, “Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, February 24, 1870,” pp. 1, 10.

19. The Secretary of the Treasury reported that there were fifty-one special agents employed by the Treasury Department on February 1, 1870. One of these agents received a salary of $5,000 a year and the rest were paid per diem. Of the latter, the median compensation was between five and six dollars per diem; the average compensation was $6.59. In addition, these agents received about three dollars per diem for “mileage and other expenses.” Although the secretary did not provide their names, none of the responsibilities of these agents would encompass the investigations and other activities that Linderman carried out for the department. In fact, almost all agents were paid out of an account for collecting customs duties and their usual purpose was the suppression of smuggling. S.R. no. 1417, 41^st Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, Ex. Doc. no. 133, “Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, February 12, 1870,” pp. 1–3. In short, Linderman does not appear to have been in the official service of the Treasury Department when he wrote the first letter to Ralston. Or, if he was, he was not receiving compensation. In addition, if he later received payment for official service as a special agent, it would probably have been far less remunerative than his former position as director of the Philadelphia Mint.

20. However, I agree with DeCanio that it is unlikely that Linderman was bribing congressman, senators, or other government officials. He was, instead, depending upon his knowledge of monetary and coinage policies and his personal relationships with officials and legislators in order to influence legislation.

21. David Lavender knew of the March 26, 1871, letter from Linderman to Ralston and Ralston's payments to Linderman but still regarded Linderman's services as only raising “questions about his standards.” Nothing Seemed Impossible, p. 333. Lavender also notes that Ralston had other lobbyists, besides Linderman, working on his behalf in Washington (p. 403, n. 25).

22. This does not mean that I accept the conspiracy interpretation as an accurate description of what actually transpired during legislative consideration of the coinage act. The problem with the conspiracy interpretation is that all the information that Sherman withheld on the Senate floor was already in the public domain and anyone (including all members of Congress) had access to it if they wanted it. As Allen Weinstein notes, Linderman's reports to Treasury Secretary Boutwell were available in the form of official communications from the secretary to Congress and had been reprinted in the Banker's Magazine well before passage of the act. Prelude to Populism: Origins of the Silver Issue, 1867–1878 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 14–17Google Scholar. In addition, the summary of the bill prepared by Knox had a subsection titled: “Silver Dollar—Its Discontinuance as a Standard.” The opening sentence read: “The coinage of the silver dollar piece ... is discontinued in the proposed bill . . ..” Several lines later, Knox wrote: “The present gold dollar piece is made the dollar unit in the proposed bill, and the silver dollar piece is discontinued.” S.R. no. 1408, 41^st Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, Mis. Doc. no. 132, “Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, April 25, 1870,” p. 11. Although Sherman was certainly evasive and even deceptive in Senate debate and although Treasury officials were not entirely forthcoming, one of the conditions for terming something a “conspiracy” is that the consequences of an act and the motives and identity of its perpetrators be secret. If this was a conspiracy, it was very weak. Although Weinstein would probably maintain that there was more covert coordination than is apparent in the evidence, he does conclude that “Linderman, Boutwell, and Sherman broke no laws . . .,” p. 30.

23. Congressman Samuel Beach Axtell, a Democrat from California and Senator John P. Jones, a Republican from Nevada, are also mentioned a number of times in DeCanio's account. However, Axtell left Congress on March 3, 1871, almost two years before passage of the coinage act. And Jones did not enter the Senate until March 4, 1873, after the act had been signed into law. In addition, Jones had broken with Ralston long before that and has even been described as an “enemy” of the Bank of California. Lyman, Ralston's Ring, p. 253.

24. Sherman cast this vote in 1871 when the Senate passed the bill for the first time. Weinstein, Prelude to Populism, p. 22.

25. Ibid., p. 24.

26. Although DeCanio refers to Senator John P. Jones of Nevada fourteen times in his article, Jones did not enter the Senate until after the coinage act had become law and, thus, would have had no reason to misrepresent his role in its passage.