According to the greenbackers, finance was at the heart of the nation's economic and political problems. Their analysis of the country's woes and their prescriptions for correcting them centered on money and banking. This obsession with finance was shared by the financial conservatives. Both the defenders of gold and the NBS, and the promoters of a government-managed flexible currency system, saw themselves as the protectors of the republic. How did finance become the defining issue for these competing visions of the national good? The answer lies in an examination of the philosophies and programs of the greenbackers and financial conservatives.

Both parties to the financial debate drew from earlier American political philosophies in responding to the economic crisis of the 1870s. Moreover, both were concerned with larger issues of economic and political development. Greenbackism provided a coherent way of understanding the economic changes of the 1870s, and offered political correctives to the problems of economic concentration. Financial conservatism, in the name of market liberalism, advocated a stable, strong money supply as the basis for economic growth and international prestige.