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A Treasury Note is a type of short term debt instrument issued by the United States prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Without the alternatives offered by a federal paper money or a central bank, the U.S. government relied on these instruments for funding during periods of financial stress such as the War of 1812, the Panic of 1837, and the American Civil War. While the Treasury Notes, as issued, were neither legal tender nor representative money, some issues were used as money in lieu of an official federal paper money. However the motivation behind their issuance was always funding federal expenditures rather than the provision of a circulating medium. These notes typically were hand-signed, of large denomination (at least $50), of large dimension (bigger than private banknotes), bore interest, were payable to the order of the owner (whose name was written on the front of the note), and matured in at most a couple of years - though some issues lacked one or more of these properties. Often they were receivable at face value by the government in payment of taxes and purchases of publicly owned land.〔Cuhaj, George S.; Brandimore, William (2008). ''Standard Catalog of United States Paper Money'', 27th edition, Iola, Wisconsin: Krause Publications. ISBN 0-89689-707-9.〕 On many issues the interest rate was chosen to make interest calculations particularly easy, paying either 1, 1½, or 2 cents per day on a $100 note. Characteristically, the issues were not extensive and, as it has been observed, "the polite fiction was always maintained that Treasury Notes did not serve as money when, in fact, to a limited extent they did."〔Coins of 1861 Controlled by the South, R.W. Julian, "Numismatic News", December 03, 2008.〕 The value of these notes varied, being worth more or less than par as market conditions fluctuated, and they rapidly disappeared from the financial system after the crisis associated with their issuance had ended. The ante-bellum Treasury Notes did not have legal tender status, but financial innovation during the Civil War caused the term ''Treasury Note'' to become associated with legal tender instruments such as the United States Notes introduced in 1862 and the Compound Interest Treasury Notes introduced in 1863. The appearance of these new obligations, together with the changes brought about by the National Banking Act, effectively eliminated most of the uses of the old Treasury Notes as money and the term ''Certificate of Indebtedness'' was introduced to apply to new notes which possessed the debt-like aspects of the pre-war Notes. Today the Treasury's short term debt needs are fulfilled by Treasury bills. == Origin == The early finances of the central government of the United States were quite precarious. To help finance the American Revolution the Continental Congress had issued Continental Dollars between 1775 and 1779. The paper Continental Dollars nominally entitled the bearer to an equivalent amount of Spanish Milled Dollars but were repeatedly devalued and were never redeemed in silver despite the American victory.〔The Continental Dollar: What Happened to it after 1779?, Farley Grubb, NBER Working Paper No. W13770, February 2008.〕 With the fate of the Continentals in mind, the Founding Fathers embedded in the Constitution no provision for a paper currency and they forbid the states to make anything but gold or silver a legal tender. As part of the Compromise of 1790, the Continental Dollars were redeemed at a loss of over 99% vs. their face value, but the United States chose to perform on revolutionary war bond obligations in full by pledging the publicly owned land and the credit of the new federal government against them. As a result, America's early creditors had reason to be wary of a paper currency, but reason to respect its debt. An alternative to Treasury-issued currency is the use of a Central bank to monetize debt. An early American attempt at central banking was the Bank of North America which played a meaningful role in helping the Congress of the Confederation to arrange its finances during the 1780s, but it eventually lost its charter for political reasons. The 1st United States Congress subsequently chartered the First Bank of the United States in 1791 to facilitate its financial operations, but in 1811 its charter was not renewed - political sentiment against central banking again being the cause. Thus, when the declaration of the War of 1812 impaired the government's ability to raise money via the sale of long-term bonds, the United States had no paper currency nor a Central bank with which to obtain emergency short-term financing, and it used its borrowing authority to issue short-term debt in the form of Treasury Notes receivable for public dues or bond purchases. Having thus set the precedent, the Treasury would go on to irregularly issue such notes up through the Civil War. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Treasury Note (19th century)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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