The Panic of 1819 (6 page)

¹⁹
Day,
Early Development
, p. 452; Norman S. Buck,
Development and Organization of Anglo-American Trade, 1800–1850
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1925), pp. 134–47. See also Evans,
Business Incorporations
, pp. 12–30; Ware,
Early New England
, pp. 56ff.

²⁰
Trade restrictions, however, had already reduced re-exports to $16 million by 1811, the immediate prewar year. Pitkin,
Statistical View of Commerce
, p. 35; U.S. Treasury,
Monthly Summary;
and Emory R. Johnson, et al.,
History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the United States
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institute, 1915), vol. 2, pp. 31ff. On exports from the principal cities, see Robert G. Albion,
The Rise of the New York Port
(New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1939), p. 390.

²¹
Pitkin,
Statistical View of Commerce
, pp. 95–144.

²²
Cole,
Wholesale Commodity Prices
, p. 161; Pitkin,
Statistical View of Commerce
, pp. 108–15.

²³
William M. Gouge,
Journal of Banking
(Philadelphia: J. Van Court, 1842), pp. 346, 355.

²⁴
New note issue series by banks reached a heavy peak in 1815 and 1816 in New York and Pennsylvania. D.C. Wismer,
Pennsylvania Descriptive List of Obsolete State Bank Notes, 1782–1866
(Fredericksburg, Md.: J.W. Stovell Printing Co., 1933); and idem,
New York Descriptive List of Obsolete Paper Money
(Fredericksburg, Md.: J.W. Stovell Printing Co., 1931).

²⁵
U.S. Congress,
American State Papers: Finance
4, no. 705 (March 22, 1824): 759.

²⁶
Dewey,
State Banking
, pp. 6–21.

²⁷
For data, see Walter Buckingham Smith,
Economic Aspects of the Second Bank of the United States
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 49. Also U.S. Comptroller of the Currency,
Annual Report, 1876
, p. 261; R.C.H. Catterall,
The Second Bank of the United States
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903), p. 501. Other assets of the Bank were $9.5 million in government bonds, $2.7 million due from state banks. Capital totaled $35 million.

²⁸
Folz, “Financial Crisis,” p. 164; Smith,
Economic Aspects
, pp. 105, 112; U.S. Congress,
American State Papers: Finance
4, no. 705 (March 22, 1824): 523.

²⁹
A contemporary estimated the number of banks in 1818 at 500. “Philotheus,” Baltimore
Federal Republican
, July 9, 1819. Also Gouge,
Journal
, pp. 223–26; New York Legislature,
Senate Journal
, 1819 (January 26, 1819): 66–70.

³⁰
N.S.B. Gras,
The Massachusetts First National Bank of Boston, 1784–1934
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937), pp. 710–11.

³¹
Knox,
History of Banking
, pp. 485–86.

³²
Gouge,
Short History
, pp. 166ff.

³³
Purchasers were only required to pay one-fourth of the total within forty days of purchase, and the penalty of forfeiture for failure to complete payment in five years was repeatedly postponed by Congress. U.S. Congress,
The Public and General Statutes Passed by the Congress of the United States of America
(Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1827), vols. 2 and 3,
passim
.

³⁴
See the data compiled from the records of the General Land Office, in Smith and Cole,
Fluctuations
, p. 185; and in Arthur H. Cole, “Cyclical and Seasonal Variations in the Sale of Public Lands, 1816–60,”
Review of Economic Statistics
9 (January 1927): 42ff. Also Thomas P. Abernethy,
The Formative Period in Alabama, 1815–28
(Montgomery, Ala.: Brown Printing Co., 1922), p. 50ff.; C.F. Emerick,
The Credit System and the Public Domain
(Vanderbilt, Tenn.: Southern History Society Publication No. 3, 1898); U.S. Congress,
American State Papers: Finance
3, p. 10; and 4, pp. 859–61.

³⁵
On a building boom in New York City, see the comment by an influential merchant of the day, John Pintard,
Letters to His Daughter
, vol. 1:
1816–20
(New York: New York Historical Society, 1940), November 16, 1818, p. 154. Also New York
Gazette
, February 4, 1818. On a rental and property value boom in other states, U.S. Congress,
Annals of Congress of the United States
, 17th Congress, 1st Session (1821–22), March 12, 1822, pp. 1281–97; Washington (D.C.)
National Intelligencer
(July 24, 1819); Thomas Cushing, ed.,
History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
(Chicago: A. Warner and Co., 1889), p. 547; William E. Connelley and E.M. Coulter,
History of Kentucky
(Chicago: American Historical Society, 1922), vol. 2, p. 593; Waldo F. Mitchell, “Indiana’s Growth, 1812–20,”
Indiana Magazine of History
10 (December 1914): 385; Hattie M. Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems in Missouri, 1815–28,”
Missouri Historical Review
34 (October 1939): 48ff.; Dorothy B. Dorsey, “The Panic of 1819 in Missouri,”
Missouri Historical Review
29 (January 1935): 79–80; Report of J.H. Brown at 1st Annual Meeting of Kentucky Bar Association, in William Graham Sumner,
History of Banking in the United States
(New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1896), p. 89; Charles H. Garnett,
State Banks of Issue in Illinois
(Urbana University of Illinois, 1898), p. 7; Pennsylvania Legislature,
Journal of the Senate, 1819–21
(February 14, 1820): 311–37. On the rise in the price of slaves during the boom, John L. Conger, “South Carolina and Early Tariffs,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
5 (March 1919): 415–25.

³⁶
U.S. Department of Commerce,
Historical Statistics
, pp. 169, 219–20.

³⁷
Taylor,
Transportation Revolution
, pp. 23, 336.

³⁸
Thomas S. Berry,
Western Prices Before 1861
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1943), pp. 32, 45ff. On the heavy increase in costs of transporting convicts, see Pennsylvania Legislature,
Journal of the Senate, 1820–21
(April 3, 1821): 816.

³⁹
U.S. Congress, House,
Annual Report of the Commissioner of Navigation, 1901
, 57th Congress, 1st Session, House Document No. 14, p. 585.

⁴⁰
Joseph E. Hedges,
Commercial Banking and the Stock Market Before 1863
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938).

⁴¹
U.S. Treasury,
Monthly Summary;
Cincinnati,
Cincinnati Directory, 1819
(Cincinnati, Ohio, 1819), p. 52.

⁴²
Pitkin,
Statistical View of Commerce
, pp. 95–144; Smith,
Economic Aspects
, p. 280.

⁴³
Cole,
Wholesale Commodity Prices
, p. 161; Bezanson,
Wholesale Prices
, vol. 2, pp. 67–70. Also Smith,
Economic Aspects
, pp. 72–75; George Rogers Taylor, “Wholesale Commodity Prices at Charleston, South Carolina, 1796–1861,”
Journal of Economic and Business History
4 (August 1932): 856–70.

⁴⁴
Taylor,
Transportation Revolution
, pp. 200–202.

⁴⁵
The order of magnitude of these earnings was approximately $3 million. See Pitkin,
Statistical View of Commerce
, p. 166.

⁴⁶
On the general attitude of hostility by the public as well as the banks toward attempts to redeem notes in specie, see Crawford,
Report;
Dewey,
State Banking
, pp. 73–79ff., 107ff.;
Niles’ Weekly Register
13 (August 2, 1817): 357; 9 (February 7, 1817): 32; 14 (June 20, 1818): 281, 285; 14 (May 30, 1818): 225; New York Legislature, “Report on Committee on Currency,”
Journal of the Assembly
(February 24, 1818): 307–11; Knox,
A History of Banking
, p. 576. On an agreement by the banks of Philadelphia not to redeem balances against each other without delay, see Harry E. Miller,
Banking Theories in the United States Before 1860
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927), p. 215.

⁴⁷
Condy Raguet to David Ricardo, April 18, 1821, in David Ricardo,
Minor Papers on the Currency Question, 1809–23
, Jacob Hollander, ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1932), pp. 199–201.

⁴⁸
On the silver premium, see Raguet Report, in Ricardo,
Minor Papers
, pp. 223–31; Smith,
Economic Aspects
, pp. 106, 123–24, 283, 286; James Flint,
Letters from America
, vol. 9,
Early Western Travels, 1748–1846
, Reuben G. Thwaites, ed. (Cleveland, Ohio: A.H. Clark Co., 1904–07), p. 136.

⁴⁹
Smith,
Economic Aspects
, p. 49.

⁵⁰
Ibid., pp. 40, 119, 286. Also see Catterall,
Second Bank
, p. 503.

⁵¹
Gallatin,
Considerations
, pp. 45–51; Delaware General Assembly,
Journal of the House of Representatives, 1819
(January 28): 104–06; New Hampshire
Gazette
, August 19, 1817; John J. Walsh,
Early Banks in the District of Columbia, 1792–1818
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1940), pp. 49, 80, 82, 123ff., 168. Massachusetts banks, in contrast, were able to expand their note issues slightly from 1818–21; Gras,
Massachusetts First National Bank
, pp. 44–49. Also see Wismer,
New York Descriptive List
and
Pennsylvania Descriptive List, passim
.

⁵²
Folz, “Financial Crisis,” pp. 170–86; and Louis R. Harlan, “Public Career of William Berkeley Lewis,”
Tennessee Historical Quarterly
7 (March 1948): 13; Sister M. Grace Madeleine,
Monetary and Banking Theories of Jacksonian Democracy
(Philadelphia: The Dolphin Press, 1943), p. 14.

⁵³
On business failures and debt judgments,
Niles’ Weekly Register
16 (May 8, June 7, 1819): 179–80, 258–62; Richmond
Enquirer
, April 23, May 25, June 4, September 3, 1819; Philadelphia
Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser
, June 19, July 29, August 5, 1822. On the difficulties of domestic manufactures in the depression, Bishop,
A History
, vol. 2, 248–53, 256–63; Ware,
Early New England
, pp. 67–68; Cole,
Wholesale Prices
, vol. 1, pp. 147ff.; and Theodore G. Gronert, “Trade in the Blue-Grass Region, 1810–1820,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
5 (1918): 313–23. On the failure of lead mines in the crisis, Ruby J. Swartzlow, “The Early History of Lead Mining in Missouri,”
Missouri Historical Review
29 (January 1935): 114.

⁵⁴
Cole,
Wholesale Prices
, p. 161; Smith and Cole,
Economic Fluctuations
, p. 146; and Berry,
Western Prices
, pp. 71–74, 81–83; Arthur H. Cole,
Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700–1861
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938),
Supplement
, pp. 182–91; Thomas S. Berry, “Wholesale Commodity Prices in the Ohio VaIley, 1816–60,”
Review of Economic Statistics
17 (August 1935): 92; Taylor, “Wholesale Commodity Prices at Charleston;” Walter Buckingham Smith, “Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1795–1824,”
Review of Economic Statistics
9 (October 1927): 181–83; Swartzlow, “Early History,” p. 201; Frederick W. Moore, “Fluctuations in Agricultural Prices and Wages in the South,”
The South in the Building of the Nation
(Richmond, Va.: Southern Historical Publishing Society, 1909), vol. 5, pp. 426–34. For the fall in the price of and return on slaves, Francis Corbin to James Madison, October 10, 1819,
Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings
43 (January 1910): 261; Smith,
Economic Aspects
, pp. 78–79, 280. On the fall in rental and property values, see Clark,
History
, pp. 378–86; Richmond
Enquirer
, August 5, 1820; Connelley and Coulter,
History
, p. 599; Malcolm R. Eiselen,
The Rise of Pennsylvania Protectionism
(Philadelphia, 1932), pp. 44ff.

⁵⁵
Historical Statistics
, pp. 245–48; Pitkin,
Statistical View of Commerce
, pp. 95–144; and James W. Livingood,
The Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry, 1780–1860
(Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical Commission, 1947), pp. 18–20, 89, 142.

⁵⁶
Historical Statistics
, p. 248; Pitkin,
Statistical View of Commerce
, pp. 180–82.

⁵⁷
Historical Statistics
, pp. 239–40, 245.

⁵⁸
Cole,
Wholesale Prices
, pp. 148, 165; Smith and Cole,
Economic Fluctuations
, p. 147; Bezanson,
Wholesale Prices
, p. 353.

⁵⁹
Smith and Cole,
Economic Fluctuations
, p. 185.

⁶⁰
One indication of the general decline in business activity was the considerable decline in total letters carried by the U.S. Post Office, a decline the more remarkable for interrupting a period of rapid secular growth, and despite continuing increase in the number of post offices and miles of post roads. Letters carried declined from a peak of 9.6 million in 1819 to 8.5 million in 1821. Wesley E. Rich,
The History of the United States Post Office to the Year 1829
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1924), p. 183.