McCulloch swears in Wood to lead the Secret Service; the new agency's only target is counterfeiters

Three months after Appomattox, the American dollar itself was under siege: counterfeiting of U.S. currency had become rampant following the Civil War. On July 5, 1865, in Washington, D.C., Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch swore in William P. Wood as the first Chief of the newly formed United States Secret Service, tasked solely with hunting down counterfeiters. Wood moved fast, shutting down more than 200 counterfeiting plants within a year. The agency Lincoln had authorized would eventually take on a very different job: guarding presidents…