Non-fiction: Message on the Reestablishment of the Independent Treasury

Context and Aim
James K. Polk’s 1846 message urges Congress to sever the federal government’s finances from the banking system and to reestablish the Independent Treasury first adopted under Martin Van Buren in 1840 and repealed by the Whigs in 1841. Polk situates his appeal in the wake of repeated bank suspensions and crises since the 1830s, arguing that public funds have too often been entangled in speculative cycles and private credit contractions. With wartime expenditures rising and tariff and customs revenues central to federal receipts, he contends that a durable, accountable, and non-speculative fiscal mechanism is indispensable.

Core Proposal
Polk proposes that the United States hold, receive, keep, and disburse its own money through the Treasury and its agents, not through chartered banks. The plan rests on specie, gold and silver, as the exclusive standard for federal receipts and payments, phased in to give commerce time to adjust. Instead of depositing public money in banks, the government would maintain subtreasuries and use existing national facilities such as mints, branch mints, and customhouses as depositories. Designated officers, under strict bonds and safeguards, would receive, store, and pay out funds only under lawfully authorized appropriations. The system is meant to be self-contained: public money would not be lent, farmed out, or converted into bank credit.

Constitutional and Policy Rationale
Polk grounds the proposal in the constitutional duty that money shall be drawn from the Treasury only by appropriation. If public funds are placed in banks, he argues, they are no longer in the Treasury’s custody and effectively become loans to corporations, made without explicit constitutional sanction. He rejects any federal “fiscal agent” designed to regulate the currency or to bolster paper issues, asserting that the Constitution equips the government to coin money, fix its value, and ensure the integrity of the medium, not to sustain a nationwide system of bank credit. By aligning federal transactions strictly with specie, the government sets a stable example, promoting honesty in contracts and checking the inflationary temptations of over-issue without arrogating to itself the role of a central bank.

Replies to Objections
To the claim that the plan would drain specie from commerce or contract credit, Polk answers that public money, wherever kept, is temporarily withdrawn from private use; the question is whether it should be exposed to the hazards of private banking. He maintains that the Independent Treasury will actually steady commerce by removing the government’s deposits as a lever of speculation and by preventing sudden withdrawals that exacerbate panics. Concerns about inconvenience are met with phased implementation, the use of widely distributed depositories, and stricter accountability, features he argues are superior to the opacity of bank-ledger arrangements. He denies that the scheme is a “hard money” crusade against legitimate private banking, describing it instead as governmental neutrality: the state neither props up nor persecutes banks; it simply confines its own operations to constitutional money.

Anticipated Effects and Stakes
Polk forecasts safer custody of public funds, reduced losses from bank failures and suspensions, more transparent and prompt settlements, and an end to political bargaining over favored deposit institutions. He links fiscal independence to broader republican principles: freeing public finance from corporate influence, restraining executive discretion by clear legal controls, and promoting public confidence through visible, specie-based integrity in receipts and disbursements. By restoring the Independent Treasury, he argues, Congress would complete the Democratic program of the mid-1840s, limited government, revenue tariffs, and sound money, while insulating national finances from the recurrent oscillations of paper credit.