When a new Treasury secretary demanded final say on Spinner's staff, he resigned rather than submit. But he stuck by the women and kept them on after the war. That innovation and his insistence that the women be paid the same as men drew objections. Men were needed for fighting, he argued, and hired more than 100 women to do jobs throughout the department. He was the first federal official to employ women for clerical work. 1, 1868, because Congress didn't approve the money until more than a year after the treaty was approved.īut Spinner's most enduring achievement has nothing to do with Seward's Day, March 28 this year, and a lot to do with Women's History Month. He signed it once when it was issued and again when the document was returned to the Treasury after being cashed. Spinner's scrawl appears at least twice on the Alaska purchase check, copies of which are sold at Alaska tourist shops today. The signature of the current treasurer still appears on the lower left of U.S. The name on the Alaska check was seen on every piece of paper money in the country and was, for many years, the most replicated and best-known signature in America. His own picture was used for the 50-cent bill. He played a major role in creating the novel greenback currency introduced during the war.
Newspaper stories called him "the watch-dog of the Treasury." He kept a bed in a side room at his office and had his meals brought in. Spinner - who got his "general" title from service in the New York Militia - did not take a single day off for the duration of the Civil War. "How General Spinner met these difficulties and assisted in bringing the nation through one of the most exciting and perilous crises in its history should be known to every lover of our common country as well as to pupils in political science," wrote Hartley in the Magazine of American History shortly after Spinner's death in 1890. The public had little faith in the government, European bankers were unwilling to make loans, Congress wrangled with impractical schemes to solve the problem and an army of swindlers connived to take advantage of the chaos.
The Union, already deep in debt, was going into war. The office was never more important than at the moment Spinner stepped into the job at the behest of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Bush all left the post vacant for more than a year at a time. Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and George W. Over the years, many of its functions have been splintered off to different departments, making it less important if not superfluous. The treasurer, as distinct from the cabinet-level secretary of the Treasury, was a once-critical appointed position responsible for the receipt and custody of government funds. It was brought to its highest perfection when I was treasurer." "I used it while commissioner for building the asylum at Utica, and as cashier and president of the Mohawk valley bank, and for franking while in congress.
"I first practiced it while in the sheriff's office about 1835," Spinner told biographer Issac S.
The signee, Francis Elias Spinner, treasurer of the United States from 1861 to 1875, worked for years to craft an autograph that would not be easy to forge. The signature, however, is nearly impossible to decipher. Those who know cursive script can make out "Seven Million, Two Hundred Thousand Dollars" on the bank draft made out to the Czar's representative. William Seward may have negotiated the sale of Russian America to the United States.
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