Elbridge was born in Cayuga County, New York, United States, whither his parents, Edward and Mehitable (Goodrich) Spaulding, had gone from New England as pioneers. His ancestor, Edward Spalding, had established the name in Massachusetts Bay by 1640.
Spaulding studied law in offices at Batavia, Attica, and Buffalo.
Spaulding began practice law in Buffalo in the middle thirties. He was immediately successful in his profession, and was actively concerned in the development of the city, handling business connected with its harbor, its sewage system, its gas works, and the enlargement of the Erie Canal. He served as mayor (1847), as assemblyman (1848), and as state treasurer (1853).
Reelected to Congress in 1860, he found himself in the Thirty-seventh Congress a member of the Committee on Ways and Means, and one of its sub-committee of three in charge of the problem of war loans. In the summer of 1861 the United States Treasury was on the verge of bankruptcy, with receipts from taxes inadequate and with the credit of the government too uncertain for the favorable placement of loans.
Currency was scarce and in unusual demand, and on Monday, Decmber 30, 1861, the New York banks suspended specie payments. On the same day Spaulding introduced into the House of Representatives a bill for the issuance of legaltender treasury notes payable on demand.
He took pride in the resulting law of February 25, 1862, authorizing the issuance of the legal-tender notes, or greenbacks, to the amount of $150, 000, 000. As financial needs became more pressing, there was a second authorization of $150, 000, 000 in July 1862; and before the Thirty-seventh Congress expired, on March 3, 1863, another $150, 000, 000 had been made available. Its legaltender feature was distasteful to the Secretary of the Treasury and to the banks, and was accepted only as a measure of desperation.
Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, gave it his support, however, and in the Senate John Sherman and Charles Sumner supported it. This was Spaulding's only important work in Congress, and with it his political career came to an end. He was thenceforth content to be a benevolent local magnate. He brought his bank into the national banking system in 1864 as the Farmers' & Mechanics' National Bank of Buffalo, and managed it until, late in his life, he turned it over to his son.
After his return from Washington he compiled a volume published in 1869 under the title, A Resource of War The Credit of the Government Made Immediately Available. In 1875 he decorated a Buffalo park with a monument to the Spauldings, some of them his forebears, who fought at Bunker Hill.
He died in 1897.
Elbridge Gerry Spaulding was one of the original founders that helped to get the University at Buffalo established. He was a member of the original council of the University, and remained a member until his death. He drafted the Legal Tender Act, and the National Currency Bank Bill. Spaulding's "River Lawn" estate became the basis for present day Beaver Island State Park.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
(A resource of war - The credit of the government made imm...)
( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
(Originally published in 1863. 16 pages. This volume is pr...)
Quotations: Spaulding called himself "a somewhat prominent though humble actor in originating and maturing" the law. "
He was three times married; after the death of his first wife, Jane Rich, in 1841, he married, September 5, 1842, Nancy Selden Strong, who died May 4, 1852, leaving two sons and a daughter; two years later, May 2, 1854, he married Delia (Strong) Robinson, sister of his second wife. There were no children by the first and third marriages.
