by David Haase, onetime candidate for Congress
We were warned by these great men of the perils we now face.
If
the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of
their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people
of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the
continent their fathers conquered.... The issuing power should be taken
from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly
belongs. ... The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating. -Thomas Jefferson
History records that the money changers have used every form of
abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain
their control over governments by controlling money and its
issuance. -James Madison 
If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. -Andrew Jackson
The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. -Abraham Lincoln
Issue
of currency should be lodged with the government and be protected
from domination by Wall Street. We are opposed to...provisions
[which] would place our currency and credit system in private
hands. - Theodore Roosevelt 
Years later, reflecting on the major banks' control in Washington, President Franklin Roosevelt paid this indirect praise to his distant predecessor President Andrew Jackson, who had "killed" the 2nd Bank of the US (an earlier type of the Federal Reserve System). After Jackson's administration the bankers' influence was gradually restored and increased, culminating in the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. Roosevelt knew this history.
The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial
element in the large centers has owned the government ever since
the days of Andrew Jackson... -Franklin D. Roosevelt
(in a letter to Colonel House, dated November 21, 1933)
