I think it is important to recognize at the outset that Bensel does not call into question what I intended to be the article's central arguement, namely that William Ralston was paying Henry Linderman to influence the Coinage Act in ways that he hoped would aid The Bank of California, a relationship with important ramifications for our evaluations of the Populists. While Bensel disagrees with aspects of my explanation for what Ralston was trying to accomplish, and while he contests some of the interpretations I offered for what Ralston's involvement with Linderman means for our understanding of American political development, he does not question that Ralston and Linderman were deeply involved in the Coinage Act's passage.

In his response Bensel makes three principal claims.Footnote ¹ First, he suggests that some correspondence between Ralston and Linderman did not actually discuss the Coinage Act but dealt with other issues, such as preventing Adolph Sutro from gaining congressional support for draining water from the Comstock Lode. Bensel questions what Ralston was trying to accomplish through his revision of the Coinage Act, and specifically questions whether Ralston wanted to demonetize silver. Second, Bensel suggests that because Ralston's payment to Linderman was not made when the government employed Linderman, it does not constitute bribery. Third, he suggests that since William Stewart was the only member of Ralston's legislative coalition that subsequently joined the free silver movement, Ralston's allies had less influence over the transformation of the Democratic Party than I suggested.

I respond to these criticisms as follows: first, I suggest that Linderman understood what the coinage revisions would accomplish before he sent his recommendations to Knox because a draft of Knox's bill was circulated in the weeks before Linderman submitted his recommendations. Since Linderman understood what the bill was going to do, and since he had probably already discussed his course of action with Ralston the year before Knox drafted the measure, it is unsurprising that he was lobbying various officials prior to submitting his comments to Knox.

In response to Bensel's second question regarding whether Linderman was bribed or whether his actions are better described as lobbying, I make two primary points. First, I suggest that Linderman's actions meet the definition of bribery Bensel provides. Second, I suggest that Ralston's payment to Linderman was important, not because it meets some formal definition of bribery, but because it demonstrates that the Populists' claims were closer to the truth than has been realized. In this sense I believe focusing on whether Linderman's actions fit some formal definition of bribery is less relevant than the implications his actions have for evaluating the accuracy of the Populists' claims.

In response to Bensel's third point, I suggest that Ralston's allies influenced the emergence of free silver through several channels, and not simply through joining the free silver movement. First, their role in the Coinage Act's passage helped create the underlying condition, silver's demonetization, that was necessary for Bryan's campaign. Furthermore, although most never joined the free silver movement, some of Ralston's allies also helped popularize claims that the free silver movement subsequently adopted. By introducing legislation to remonetize silver, by denying that anything questionable had occurred with the Coinage Act's passage, by refusing to explain the actual history of the Coinage Act's passage, and by creating the underlying condition that was necessary for free silver to emerge as a political issue, Ralston's allies influenced Bryan and the transformation of the Democratic Party through several different avenues and decisions.

I conclude by discussing the alternative explanations Bensel offers at the end of his comment, and point to several areas of agreement between the interpretations Bensel offers and my own position.

WERE LINDERMAN'S LETTERS REALLY DISCUSSING THE COINAGE ACT?

Bensel points out that certain letters Linderman sent Ralston were written before he submitted his recommendations for the Coinage Act to Deputy Comptroller of the Currency John Knox, and suggests that this indicates that these letters were discussing issues unrelated to the Coinage Act, such as orchestrating opposition to Adolph Sutro's efforts to construct drainage tunnels beneath the Comstock Lode. It is unlikely that Linderman was involved in Ralston's efforts to oppose Sutro. While there are over thirty letters in the Ralston manuscripts dealing with Sutro, Linderman is never mentioned in these letters.

Furthermore, I believe it is likely that Linderman understood what the Coinage Act was going to accomplish before he submitted his recommendations to Knox. Linderman had been in communication with Knox prior to 1870; he had submitted his report on the condition of western mints and coinage on October 8, 1869, and Knox used the information in this report to guide his revisions of the coinage statutes. Linderman also had a very good idea of what Knox's draft was going to do because Knox had circulated an early version of his bill weeks before submitting it to Congress. When describing the initial version of the Coinage Act, Knox noted:

One of the individuals who had received a copy of the draft had been Linderman. Since Knox was circulating early versions of his report to various officials, and since Knox had offered Ralston his services as early as 1869, it is almost certain that Linderman understood what the revisions to the coinage statutes would accomplish well before he sent his recommendations to Knox.Footnote ³

Furthermore, since Linderman met Ralston in 1869, it is likely that they had discussed how Linderman should proceed once he returned to Washington. Since Linderman probably knew what Ralston wanted to accomplish with the revision of the Coinage Act, and since he knew his recommendations were going to be incorporated into the bill, I find it unsurprising that Linderman was lobbying officials and reporting the results of his efforts to Ralston before submitting his recommendations to Knox.

Yet even if we assume Bensel is correct, and the specific letters Linderman sent Ralston in 1870 were not referring to the Coinage Act, I don't think this would change much. For it is clear that Linderman received money from Ralston and that he was deeply involved in writing the final version of the Coinage Act. As the final bill worked its way through Congress, Linderman reported to Ralston: “the Senate sought safety in reporting the Bill precisely as prepared by Knox and myself, and the House committee would have made sad work of it if I had not overhauled every alteration and proposition.”Footnote ⁴

DOES RALSTON'S PAYMENT TO LINDERMAN CONSTITUTE BRIBERY?

Bensel raises a second set of questions regarding whether what Ralston and Linderman did constitutes bribery. Bensel specifically questions whether Linderman was a public official when he accepted money from Ralston, and notes that Linderman was not employed by the Philadelphia Mint when he helped write the Coinage Act. Bensel suggests that if Linderman was not a government employee when he accepted money from Ralston, his actions do not fit the definition of bribery Bensel offers.Footnote ⁵

While Linderman was no longer director of the Philadelphia Mint when he submitted his initial recommendations to Knox, I believe it is inaccurate to suggest, as Bensel does, that Linderman was not employed by the Treasury Department “in any official capacity during this period.”Footnote ⁶ Bensel recognizes in Table 2 that in 1869 Linderman was employed by the Treasury Department to tour the West Coast and make recommendations to them on issues relevant to coinage and minting.Footnote ⁷ Linderman also helped draft the initial version of the Coinage Act, he made a “semi-official” tour of European mints in 1870–71, submitted another report on the Pacific Coast mints in November of 1872, and then testified before the Senate Coinage Committee in December of 1872. Since some of these actions were taken when Linderman was employed as a special agent of the Treasury Department, in my mind this indicates that Linderman was not working in a purely private capacity.

Yet even if we assumed that Linderman was not a public official during this time, Linderman's actions still seem to fall under the second clause of the definition of bribery Bensel provides. The second clause defines bribery as “any such inducement offered to influence a private person corruptly in the discharge of any public duty or franchise.”Footnote ⁸ Even if we assumed that Linderman was a purely private individual and that his employment as a special agent of the Treasury Department didn't constitute public employment, Linderman's role in offering testimony and writing entire sections of the Coinage Act while accepting money from Ralston, and failing to disclose this, appears to be a clear case of a private person acting “corruptly in the discharge of any public duty.”

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I believe focusing on whether Linderman was bribed, or whether he would be more accurately described as a lobbyist, obscures the more general relevance of his involvement with Ralston. While I believe Linderman was bribed, I am actually quite ambivalent regarding whether Linderman's actions constitute bribery or lobbying, or something else entirely. My primary argument in the article was not to demonstrate that bribery was or was not associated with the Coinage Act's passage according to some formal definition, but to demonstrate that the Populists' claims were more accurate than has been recognized. If this is the principal importance of Ralston's payment to Linderman, whether what Linderman did constitutes bribery, lobbying, or something else entirely is less relevant than the fact that it indicates that the Populists' suspicions were closer to the truth than many believe.

Bensel also questions which parts of the Coinage Act Ralston was seeking to influence. Bensel specifically raises doubts as to whether Ralston wanted to demonetize silver, and points out that Ralston was interested in several aspects of the bill, such as the elimination of the coinage charge and the creation of the Trade Dollar.

At times Bensel suggests I was arguing that “Ralston and Linderman were really focusing on the demonetization of silver as their primary legislative goal.”Footnote ⁹ To clarify, I was not arguing that demonetization was their primary goal. I suggested that Ralston was interested in three different aspects of the Coinage Act, demonetization of silver, creation of the Trade Dollar, and elimination of the coinage charge.Footnote ¹⁰ Demonetization was merely one part of Ralston's attempt to use the Coinage Act to aid The Bank of California.

Bensel suggests that if Ralston had been focused on demonetizing silver, he would have dropped his efforts to eliminate the coinage charge, as this aspect of the bill drew criticism from Sherman and delayed its passage. Yet this is almost exactly what happened. Bensel overlooks that the final version of the Coinage Act retained a coinage charge, and although Ralston's allies had insisted upon completely eliminating the coinage charge in prior versions of the bill, they allowed a coinage charge to be included in the final version of the Coinage Act.

One of Ralston's legislative allies, Eugene Casserly, complained to Ralston that he had “tried to strike it [i.e., the coinage charge] out, but could not,” and then explained that a coinage charge had been retained because “our friends from the Pac[ific] Coast seemed to think it best to let it go.”Footnote ¹¹ This indicates that, just as Bensel suggests, Ralston's legislative allies did not view the coinage charge as being worth delaying passage of the measure.

However, this also means that Ralston's allies must have thought the measure's passage was still important for other reasons. What could these other reasons have been? Why would Ralston's “friends from the Pacific Coast” think the passage of the Coinage Act was still important despite retention of a coinage charge? Furthermore, why did Ralston's congressional allies drop their opposition to retaining a coinage charge at this specific point in time given that they had opposed retaining any coinage charge in prior versions of the bill?

I believe the most likely explanation is that Germany had just demonetized their silver currency, and, if bimetallism had been retained, the United States would have been flooded with European silver. Germany's demonetization of their silver currency created pressure to pass the Coinage Act even though the measure included a coinage charge that Ralston's “friends from the Pacific Coast” wanted to eliminate completely.

The threat posed by Germany's demonetization of their silver currency led Linderman to warn Ralston that “Germany having demonetized about $350,000,000 silver, the countries maintaining the double standard will be overrun with silver bullion,” a situation that he believed would make “a serious decline in price unavoidable and this we must prevent, by timely agitation and proper measures.”Footnote ¹² I believe silver's demonetization was one of the “proper measures” Linderman thought would prevent the United States from being overrun with silver bullion.

If retention of a coinage charge was not deemed important enough to delay the Coinage Act's passage in 1872, what aspects of the bill could have interested Ralston? Bensel suggests that Ralston could have been interested in the Trade Dollar and in the refining business he could have captured by coining subsidiary silver. Yet Bensel treats these aspects of the bill as being independent of silver's demonetization, and he never explains why, if Ralston were not interested in demonetizing silver, he insisted upon demonetizing the Trade Dollar.

Nor does Bensel address what would have happened to the domestic American silver market had demonetized European silver been shipped to America. If America remained on a bimetallic standard, demonetized European silver currency would have been shipped to the United States for conversion to gold, and this could have caused the price of silver in the United States to drop below the world price.

Aside from degrading the value of the Comstock Lode, this would have made the Treasury Department less reliant upon domestic silver producers for the bullion needed to produce subsidiary silver coinage. Since Ralston was perhaps the single largest domestic silver producer, this would have drawn business away from The Bank of California. Since The Bank of California was not in a sound financial position, the combined effects of these developments could have been disastrous for Ralston's financial empire.

I should emphasize that I did not mean to suggest that silver's demonetization was Ralston's sole, or primary, objective. Ralston was using the Coinage Act to accomplish several things that he hoped would simultaneously aid his bank. It is also important to stress that Ralston's coalition had no idea that what they were doing would become unpopular. Rather they thought they were securing sectional benefits to key economic actors in their state, and after George Weston's editorials attributed the Panic of 1873 to the Coinage Act's demonetization of silver, these objectives were simply too complicated to explain to the public.

I would also like to clarify that, contrary to Bensel's suggestion, I was not the first to discover the Ralston manuscripts or the bribe to Linderman. Ralston's involvement in the Coinage Act and his bribery of Linderman were first noted in David Lavender's biography of Ralston, Nothing Seemed Impossible: William C. Ralston and Early San Francisco, and then in more detail by Robert Van Ryzin's Crime of '73: The Comstock Connection, A Tale of Mines, Trade and Morgan Dollars. Both of these books, and Van Ryzin's in particular, deserve more attention than they have received. Van Ryzin's book is especially helpful because of his unique expertise in the history of American coinage.

DID RALSTON'S CONGRESSIONAL ALLIES INFLUENCE BRYAN AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

Bensel is also skeptical of my claim that Ralston's congressional allies influenced the development of the Democratic Party's ideology. Bensel correctly points out that William Stewart was the only member of Ralston's coalition to take a leading role in the free silver movement. However, Ralston's influence over Bryan and the Democratic Party was not solely through the development of the free silver movement, but was exerted through a number of channels, perhaps the most important being the fact that the Coinage Act provided the underlying condition that made free silver a political issue in the first place, namely the demonetization of the silver dollar.

While most of Ralston's congressional allies did not take formal roles in the free silver movement, some of them echoed many of the claims made by Weston's editorials, helping popularize themes that the free silver movement subsequently adopted. In one case Bensel overlooks evidence I provided of this. Bensel claims I provide “no evidence that [Sargent] . . . misrepresented his role in passing the coinage act or was a leading silver advocate.”Footnote ¹³ Yet this overlooks the quote I provided from one of Sargent's congressional speeches in 1878 where he claimed that “no fraud was committed” in the Coinage Act's passage, and claimed that to “admit none as so far as myself is concerned.”Footnote ¹⁴ While there is little evidence Sargent accepted money from Ralston, he clearly was masking knowledge of Ralston's role in the Coinage Act. Furthermore, although Sargent did not become a leading member of the free silver movement, Allen Weinstein also points out that Sargent introduced one of the initial bills calling for raising the legal tender value of silver coinage.Footnote ¹⁵ This indicates that Sargent, at minimum, masked his knowledge of Ralston's involvement in the Coinage Act's passage even if he did not formally join the free silver movement after it emerged.

Other similar examples could be given. There were several cases where Linderman assured Ralston that he had spoken with various officials who had promised to endorse the Coinage Act, yet after the publication of Weston's editorials these officials began demanding silver's remonetization or never revealed their interactions with Linderman. For example, Allen Thurman became a free silver advocate, but he discussed the Coinage Act with Linderman prior to its passage and expressed support for the measure.Footnote ¹⁶ Linderman was also advising William Kelley regarding the Coinage Act's various provisions. While none of these officials would become prominent in the free silver movement, their refusal to explain their involvement with Linderman or reveal Ralston's role in the Coinage Act's passage led them to popularize claims they probably knew were untrue.

However, it is important to stress that I was not making a causal claim about the free silver movement being created by Ralston's allies. Rather, their influence over Bryan and the Democratic Party was indirect. By helping pass the Coinage Act, and then masking what they knew had occurred after the publication of Weston's editorials, Ralston's allies helped popularize claims that were subsequently adopted by free silver organizations and then became the centerpiece of the election of 1896. Furthermore, their support for the Coinage Act helped create the underlying condition, the elimination of bimetallism, necessary for Bryan's free silver campaign to occur.