Greenback

Lyrics

The cannons are talking.
The treasury's screaming.
Gold's gone south for the winter.
And the Union stopped dreaming in specie.

Empty coffers in Washington D.C.
Secretary Salmon P. Chase, he can't get no sleep.
How you gonna pay a soldier his due?
How you gonna buy a gun, or a mule, or a shoe?
When the specie's a ghost and the credit won't run.
No more silver clink, no more golden sun.
Just a story that's getting old and thin.
Just a war we ain't ever gonna win.

So fire up the presses, boys.
Make a whole new kind of noise.
Slap some of that special green ink on the back of it.
Call it a dollar, and don't take no flak for it.
It ain't backed by a mountain, ain't backed by a mine.
It's backed by the blood on the Mason-Dixon line.
Yeah, the Greenback.
The Greenback.

February twenty-fifth, sixty-two.
Honest Abe Lincoln signs the paper, pushes it through.
The Legal Tender Act.
Sounds so clean and official, don't it?
Just means this paper's the law, you gotta own it.
Pay your taxes with it, but not your customs fees.
Still need the hard stuff for the ships from overseas.
They were hedging their bets, see?
They didn't fully trust the spell.
Hoped this paper ticket wouldn't send 'em all to hell.

So fire up the presses, boys.
Make a whole new kind of noise.
Slap some of that special green ink on the back of it.
Call it a dollar, and don't take no flak for it.
It ain't backed by a mountain, ain't backed by a mine.
It's backed by the blood on the Mason-Dixon line.
Yeah, the Greenback.
That Greenback.

Chase wrote it in a letter. Said it plain and true.
"A war measure."
"A measure of necessity."
He wasn't building a future for me and you.
He was just trying to break free.
From the tyranny of metal.
The heavy anchor of a coin.
He made a weapon out of paper.
And gave the Union's lions their loin.

Just green ink.
And a signature.
And a promise.
Look in your wallet now.
It's still green.
Still just a promise.
Born in a fire, eighteen sixty-two.
And it's still burning through you.