William Seward may have negotiated the sale of Russian America to the United States. But who signed the check?
Those who know cursive script can make out "Seven Million, Two Hundred Thousand Dollars" on the bank draft made out to the Czar's representative. The signature, however, is nearly impossible to decipher.
There's a reason for that. The signee, Francis Elias Spinner, treasurer of the United States from 1861 to 1875, worked for years to craft an autograph that would not be easy to forge.
"I first practiced it while in the sheriff's office about 1835," Spinner told biographer Issac S. Hartley. "I used it while commissioner for building the asylum at Utica, and as cashier and president of the Mohawk valley bank, and for franking while in congress. It was brought to its highest perfection when I was treasurer."
The treasurer, as distinct from the cabinet-level secretary of the Treasury, was a once-critical appointed position responsible for the receipt and custody of government funds. Over the years, many of its functions have been splintered off to different departments, making it less important if not superfluous. Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all left the post vacant for more than a year at a time.
The office was never more important than at the moment Spinner stepped into the job at the behest of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase in 1861. The Union, already deep in debt, was going into war. The public had little faith in the government, European bankers were unwilling to make loans, Congress wrangled with impractical schemes to solve the problem and an army of swindlers connived to take advantage of the chaos.
"How General Spinner met these difficulties and assisted in bringing the nation through one of the most exciting and perilous crises in its history should be known to every lover of our common country as well as to pupils in political science," wrote Hartley in the Magazine of American History shortly after Spinner's death in 1890.
Spinner -- who got his "general" title from service in the New York Militia -- did not take a single day off for the duration of the Civil War. He kept a bed in a side room at his office and had his meals brought in. Newspaper stories called him "the watch-dog of the Treasury."
He played a major role in creating the novel greenback currency introduced during the war. His own picture was used for the 50-cent bill. The name on the Alaska check was seen on every piece of paper money in the country and was, for many years, the most replicated and best-known signature in America.
The signature of the current treasurer still appears on the lower left of U.S. paper currency.
Spinner's scrawl appears at least twice on the Alaska purchase check, copies of which are sold at Alaska tourist shops today. He signed it once when it was issued and again when the document was returned to the Treasury after being cashed. The date on it is Aug. 1, 1868, because Congress didn't approve the money until more than a year after the treaty was approved.
But Spinner's most enduring achievement has nothing to do with Seward's Day, March 28 this year, and a lot to do with Women's History Month. He was the first federal official to employ women for clerical work. Men were needed for fighting, he argued, and hired more than 100 women to do jobs throughout the department. That innovation and his insistence that the women be paid the same as men drew objections. But he stuck by the women and kept them on after the war. When a new Treasury secretary demanded final say on Spinner's staff, he resigned rather than submit.
From bank clerk to Congress
By then he had been treasurer of the United States under three presidents, spending more time in the office than anyone except William Alexander Julian, who served nearly 16 years under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Born in 1802 in Herkimer County, New York, the son of a preacher, Spinner went from bank clerk to bank president. As a public servant he was sheriff, commissioner for the state insane asylum in Utica, inspector of turnpikes, supervisor of schools, auditor of the Port of New York and a member of Congress from 1855 to 1861.
In retirement, he spent much time at a rustic camp near Jacksonville, Florida, where he maintained an active outdoor life well into his 80s. His home in Mohawk, New York, still stands and was undergoing renovation in early March.
Across the Mohawk River in Herkimer stands a monument to the man. The main sculpture shows him standing, wearing a cape and holding a scroll in one hand. A hat covers his bald pate. A dedication is inscribed on the back of the pedestal: "This statue is a visible expression of the gratitude of women in Government employ and their Friends."
His former female employees raised $10,000 -- roughly $300,000 in today's money -- to pay for the monument to their old boss.
On the front of the pedestal is this quote from him: "The fact that I was instrumental in introducing women to employment in the offices of the Government gives me more real satisfaction than all the other deeds of my life."
Yet his tomb in the Mohawk Cemetery suggests he may have been even prouder of the famous scrawl, the one printed on millions of bills, the one that assured the public they could trust the nation's currency, the one that authorized the checks that paid for the Civil War and Alaska.
The marker, an enormous rectangular granite box, bears no sentiment, no tribute and no name chiseled in neat Roman characters. Not even his dates of birth and death.
It has only a single marking -- a giant facsimile of his indecipherable signature. Carved in stone.