JACKSON ANDREW Autograph Letter Signed as President to Secre

Sale 2483 - Lot 139

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DISCUSSING CHANGES TO HELP REDUCE NATIONAL DEBT JACKSON, ANDREW. Autograph Letter Signed, as President, to Secretary of Treasury Samuel D. Ingham, inquiring about how to structure an aspect of the Treasury bureaucracy, requesting the return of related papers, and, in a postscript: "I have such a pain in my head I can scarcely write." 1 page, 4to, with integral address leaf; remnants of prior inlay at all edges, faint scattered soiling, folds, address panel (on page 3) addressed in his hand. Np, 14 November 1829

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"Judge Barrien having differed from you on the Subject, when it is best for the interest & security of the revenue, to vest the powers of the agent for the Treasury. I have thought it right to lay his views before you, and ask you to inform me, whether his reasoning has produced a change in your views to me on this subject, and whether, if his reasoning has not convinced you of the propriety of throwing this duty on the Att'y Gen'l, whether a law agency would not be better than to throw it on the first auditor. . . ."
Published in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, vol. 7, ed. Moser and MacPherson. Knoxville, 2007, p. 546.
When Jackson addressed Congress on December 8, 1829, he confidently anticipated the elimination of public debt due to increasing tax revenue from successful trade, adjustments to tariffs, and other measures, remarking that other changes could be made to improve the state of the Treasury; he noted that the supervision of debt-collection and other lawsuits involving the government had been inefficiently assigned to an accounting officer of the Treasury, recommending instead that the power be transferred to the Attorney General. On May 29th of the following year, Congress instead created a new office for the purpose: Solicitor of the Treasury. By the beginning of 1835, the national debt had been reduced to zero.