Well, he sold off some land out west and reduced spending greatly among other things. Plus we were on the gold standard then as well.
But, as I said, the value of gold is completely arbitrary. Just like the current value of our money. If I'm hungry, and I have little slips of paper, I'll give you more of those slips of paper for your sandwich than your soft shiny rock. But, if I think other people will give me more sandwiches for the soft shiny rock, i'll give you more pieces of paper for that than the sandwich, thinking I'll get more sandwiches later trading the soft shiny rock.
So, the gold standard actually meant little more than
not being on the standard does now.
You are way incorrect. One bank wasn't given the "right" to do so through the Constitution. The Constitution was completely circumnavigated. Congress had no right to do what it did in 1913, short of a Constitutional amendment. The Federal Reserve System is made up of 9 private member banks. Banks order notes, $1 $5 $10 etc from the Federal Reserve that are then given to customers who want cash.
I get it, it's not a single bank and a single location, but the concept is the US government (not states, not local businesses, etc.) is the only one authorized to create money IAW Article One, Section 8. Congress said, as they often do for most every thing, "you do that for us" to the Fed.
Banks only lend to other banks when they are in trouble. The Federal Reserve is a bank's lender of last resort. Banks, on their own, each individual bank, every bank, every single bank in operation, in addition to the Federal Reserve, creates money on the spot out of thin air after a "loan" is approved and signed by the customer.
But, there are rules about that. They can't loan money they can't back up. I can't say, "I'm a bank now, and I loan you $3,000,000" and just put $3M in your bank account and let you draw off of that. That's NOT how banks work.
The system was created to enslave this Nation, and every other Nation, to the bankers. You're thinking inside the old gold money standard paradigm.
I'm actually not. I'm thinking the value of our money is arbitrary based on a common agreement that a little slip of specially-formulated paper, if printed just right, is exchangeable for goods and services. We all know nothing backs it except for our common belief that the paper has value. The common agreement of the value of the paper is backed only by confidence that everyone else continues to have the same belief in the paper's value. Generally speaking, in broad terms, if our economy is going well the paper is believed to have a slightly higher value than when our economy is generally weak.
That thinking does not apply to our fiat monetary system and gets everyone confused. You must think from within the system. You are also forgetting about inflation which is a stealth tax by way of increasing the money supply that reduces the value of the dollar thereby necessitating the need for more dollars to purchase the same product or service.
But, what drives inflation? If everyone agreed that we would not pay more than $1 for a home - EVERYONE agreed - then the value of a home would be $1. But, when there are more people working, the value of a home is greater because no one is making any more land to put homes on. So, when we went from single income homes to dual income homes, we couldn't have a plumber and a secretary - whose combined income is more than the doctors and lawyers, living in the same neighborhoods as doctors and lawyers. So, the doctors and lawyers all agreed their homes were now worth a whole lot more, and the plumbers were left paying a lot more for the same house they lived in when it was just the plumber working instead of him and his wife. The cost of everything rose, because there were more slips of paper out there in everyone's hands. The slips of paper have no greater actual value, but since more people had them people who had a "thing" they wanted to sell could ask for more of those pieces of paper in exchange for their thing.
The core question is why people think the debt doesn't matter. It matters. It matters a lot. Because, based on perception the debt will destroy us. We'll have to go back to growing food and bartering some service of value for other services of value, instead of giving our slips of paper to people because they wear bikinis on Instagram.