FOOTNOTES:
[437] M'Culloch vs. Maryland, see infra, chap. vi.
[438] See vol. ii, 60, of this work.
[439] Sumner: History of American Currency, 63.
[440] See Memorial of the Bank for a recharter, April 20, 1808 (Am. State Papers, Finance, ii, 301), and second Memorial, Dec. 18, 1810 (ib. 451-52). Every statement in these petitions was true. See also Dewey: Financial History of the United States, 100, 101.
[441] See vol. ii, 70-71, of this work.
[442] Annals, 1st Cong. 2d. Sess. 1945. By far the strongest objection to a National bank, however, was that it was a monopoly inconsistent with free institutions.
[443] Jefferson to Gallatin, Dec. 13, 1803, Works: Ford: x, 57.
[444] "Fully two thirds of the Bank stock ... were owned in England." (Adams: U.S. v, 328.)
[445] Dewey, 127; and Pitkin: Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States, 130-32.
[446] Adams: U.S. v, 328-29.
[447] Annals, 11th Cong. 3d Sess. 118-21.
[448] Ib. 153, 201, 308; and see Pitkin, 421.
[449] Adams: U.S. v, 327-28. "They induced one State legislature after another to instruct their senators on the subject." Pitkin, 422.
[450] Ambler: Ritchie, 26-27, 52.
[451] Ib. 67.
[452] Branch Hist. Papers, June, 1903, 179.
[453] Annals, 11th Cong. 3d Sess. 145.
[454] "It is true, that a branch of the Bank of the United States ... is established at Norfolk; and that a branch of the Bank of Virginia is also established there. But these circumstances furnish no possible motive of avarice to the Virginia Legislature.... They have acted ... from the purest and most honorable motives." (Annals, 11th Cong. 3d Sess. 200.)
[455] Pitkin, 421.
[456] The "newspapers teem with the most virulent abuse." (James Flint's Letters from America, in Early Western Travels: Thwaites, ix, 87.) Even twenty years later Captain Marryat records: "The press in the United States is licentious to the highest possible degree, and defies control.... Every man in America reads his newspaper, and hardly any thing else." (Marryat: Diary in America, 2d Series, 56-59.)
[457] "The Democratic presses ... have ... teemed with the most scurrilous abuse against every member of Congress who has dared to utter a syllable in favor of the renewal of the bank charter." Any member supporting the bank "is instantly charged with being bribed, ... with being corrupt, with having trampled upon the rights and liberties of the people, ... with being guilty of perjury."
According to "the rantings of our Democratic editors ... and the denunciations of our public declaimers," the bank "exists under the form of every foul and hateful beast and bird, and creeping thing. It is an Hydra; it is a Cerberus; it is a Gorgon; it is a Vulture; it is a Viper....
"Shall we tamely act under the lash of this tyranny of the press?... I most solemnly protest.... To tyranny, under whatever form it may be exercised, I declare open and interminable war ... whether the tyrant is an irresponsible editor or a despotic Monarch." (Annals, 11th Cong. 3d Sess. 145.)
[458] Annals, 11th Cong. 3d Sess. 826.
[459] Ib. 347.
[460] Pitkin, 430.
[461] Adams to Rush, Dec. 27, 1810, Old Family Letters, 272.
[462] Sumner: Andrew Jackson, 229.
[463] Dewey, 145.
[464] Twenty-one State banks were employed as Government depositories after the destruction of the first Bank of the United States (Ib. 128.)
[465] Dewey, 127.
[466] Adams to Rush, July 3, 1812, Old Family Letters, 299.
[467] William Faux's Journal, E. W. T.: Thwaites, xi, 207.
[468] Speech of Hanson in the House, Nov. 28, 1814, Annals, 13th Cong. 3d Sess. 656.
[469] Catterall: Second Bank of the United States, 13-17.
[470] Calhoun's bill.
[471] Webster to his brother, Nov. 29, 1814, Van Tyne, 55.
[472] Webster's bill.
[473] Annals, 13th Cong. 3d Sess. 189-91; Richardson, i, 555-57.
[474] Richardson, i, 565-66. Four years afterwards President Monroe told his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, that Jefferson, Madison, and himself considered all Constitutional objections to the Bank as having been "settled by twenty years of practice and acquiescence under the first bank." (Memoirs, J. Q. A.: Adams, iv, 499, Jan. 8, 1820.)
[475] Annals, 14th Cong. 1st Sess. 280-81.
[476] Annals, 1st Cong. 2d and 3d Sess. 2375-82; and 14th Cong. 1st Sess. 1812-25; also Dewey, 150-51.
[477] Catterall, 22.
[478] Dewey, 144.
[479] Sumner: Hist. Am. Currency, 70.
[480] In November, 1818, Niles estimated that there were about four hundred banks in the country with eight thousand "managers and clerks," costing $2,000,000, annually. (Niles, xv, 162.)
[481] "The present multitude of them ... is no more fitted to the condition of society, than a long-tailed coat becomes a sailor on ship-board." (Ib. xi, 130.)
[482] King to his son, May 1, 1816, King, vi, 22.
[483] King to Gore, May 14, 1816, Ib. 23-25.
[484] Niles, xiv, 109.
[485] Ib. xvi, 257.
[486] Niles, xvi, 257.
[487] Ib. xiv, 110.
[488] Ib. 195-96.
[489] "Niles' Weekly Register is ... an excellent repository of facts and documents." (Jefferson to Crawford, Feb. 11, 1815, Works: Ford, xi. 453.)
[490] Niles, xiv, 426-28.
[491] Niles, xiv, 2-3.
[492] "Report of the Committee on the Currency of this [New York] State," Feb. 24, 1818, ib. 39-42; also partially reproduced in American History told by Contemporaries: Hart, iii, 441-45.
[493] "Report of Committee on the Currency," New York, supra, 184.
[494] Niles, xiv, 108.
[495] Jefferson to Yancey, Jan. 6, 1816, Works: Ford, xi, 494.
[496] Dewey, 144; and Sumner: Hist. Am. Currency, 75.
[497] Niles proposed a new bank to be called "The Ragbank of the Universe," main office at "Lottery-ville," and branches at "Hookstown," "Owl Creek," "Botany Bay," and "Twisters-burg." Directors were to be empowered also "to put offices on wheels, on ship-board, or in balloons"; stock to be "one thousand million of old shirts." (Niles, xiv, 227.)
[498] Dewey, 144.
[499] Ib. 153-54.
[500] Flint's Letters, E. W. T.: Thwaites, ix, 136; and see "Report of the Committee on the Currency," New York, supra, 184.
[501] Tyler: Tyler, i, 302; Niles, xi, 130.
[502] Niles, xi, 128.
[503] Ib. iv, 109; Collins: Historical Sketches of Kentucky, 88.
These were in addition to the branches of the Bank of Kentucky and of the Bank of the United States. Including them, the number of chartered banks in that State was fifty-eight by the close of 1818. Of the towns where new banks were established during that year, Burksville had 106 inhabitants; Barboursville, 55; Hopkinsville, 131; Greenville, 75; thirteen others had fewer than 500 inhabitants. The "capital" of the banks in such places was never less than $100,000, but that at Glasgow, with 244 inhabitants, had a capital of $200,000, and several other villages were similarly favored. For full list see Niles, xiv, 109.
[504] Flint's Letters, E. W. T.: Thwaites, ix, 133.
[505] Niles, xvii, 85.
[506] John Woods's Two Years' Residence, E. W. T.: Thwaites, x, 236.
[507] Flint's Letters, E. W. T.: Thwaites, ix, 133-34.
[508] Ib. 136.
[509] Niles, xiv, 162.
[510] Woods's Two Years' Residence, E. W. T.: Thwaites, x, 274-78: and Flint's Letters, ib. ix, 69.
In southwestern Indiana, in 1818, Faux "saw nothing ... but miserable log holes, and a mean ville of eight or ten huts or cabins, sadly neglected farms, and indolent, dirty, sickly, wild-looking inhabitants." (Faux's Journal, Nov. 1, 1818, ib. xi, 213-14.) He describes Kentucky houses as "miserable holes, having one room only," where "all cook, eat, sleep, breed, and die, males and females, all together." (Ib. 185, and see 202.)
[511] For shocking and almost unbelievable conditions of living among the settlers see Faux's Journal, E. W. T.: Thwaites, xi, 226, 231, 252-53, 268-69.
[512] "We landed for some whiskey; for our men would do nothing without." (Woods's Two Years' Residence, ib. x, 245, 317.) "Excessive drinking seems the all-pervading, easily-besetting sin." (Faux's Journal, Nov. 3, 1818, ib. xi, 213.) This continued for many years and was as marked in the East as in the West. (See Marryat, 2d Series, 37-41.)
There was, however, a large and ever-increasing number who hearkened to those wonderful men, the circuit-riding preachers, who did so much to build up moral and religious America. Most people belonged to some church, and at the camp meetings and revivals, multitudes received conviction.
The student should carefully read the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright, edited by W. P. Strickland. This book is an invaluable historical source and is highly interesting. See also Schermerhorn and Mills: A Correct View of that part of the United States which lies west of the Allegany Mountains, with regard to Religion and Morals. Great Revival in the West, by Catharine C. Cleveland, is a careful and trustworthy account of religious conditions before the War of 1812. It has a complete bibliography.
[513] Flint's Letters, E. W. T.: Thwaites, 153; also Schermerhorn and Mills, 17-18.
[514] "Nature is the agriculturist here [near Princeton, Ind.]; speculation instead of cultivation, is the order of the day amongst men." (Thomas Hulme's Journal, E. W. T.: Thwaites, x, 62; see Faux's Journal, ib. xi, 227.)
[515] Faux's Journal, ib. 216, 236, 242-43.
[516] Ib. 214.
[517] See vol. i, chap, vii, of this work.
[518] Flint's Letters, E. W. T.: Thwaites, ix, 87; Woods's Two Years Residence, ib. x, 255. "I saw a man this day ... his nose bitten off close down to its root, in a fight with a nose-loving neighbour." (Faux's Journal, ib. xi, 222; and see Strickland, 24-25.)
[519] The reports of American conditions by British travelers, although from unsympathetic pens and much exaggerated, were substantially true. Thus Europe, and especially the United Kingdom, conceived for Americans that profound contempt which was to endure for generations.
"Such is the land of Jonathan," declared the Edinburgh Review in an analysis in 1820 (xxxiii, 78-80) of a book entitled Statistical Annals of the United States, by Adam Seybert. "He must not ... allow himself to be dazzled by that galaxy of epithets by which his orators and newspaper scribblers endeavour to persuade their supporters that they are the greatest, the most refined, the most enlightened, and the most moral people upon earth.... They have hitherto given no indications of genius, and made no approaches to the heroic, either in their morality or character....
"During the thirty or forty years of their independence, they have done absolutely nothing for the Sciences, for the Arts, for Literature, or even for statesman-like studies of Politics or Political Economy.... In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans?—what have they done in the mathematics...? under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a Slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?"
[520] Nevertheless, these very settlers had qualities of sound, clean citizenship; and beneath their roughness and crudity were noble aspirations. For a sympathetic and scholarly treatment of this phase of the subject see Pease: Frontier State, i, 69.
[521] Faux's Journal, E. W. T.: Thwaites, xi, 246.
[522] Randolph to Quincy, Aug. 16, 1812, Quincy: Quincy, 270.
[523] Marryat, 2d Series, 1.
[524] See vol. i, chap, vii, of this work.
[525] Marryat, 1st Series, 15.
[526] Marryat, 2d Series, 176.
[527] Woods's Two Years' Residence, E. W. T.: Thwaites, x, 325.
[528] Niles, xiv, 2.
[529] See McMaster, iv, 287. This continued even after the people had at last become suspicious of unlicensed banks. In 1820, at Bloomington, Ohio, a hamlet of "ten houses ... in the edge of the prairie ... a [bank] company was formed, plates engraved, and the bank notes brought to the spot." Failing to secure a charter, the adventurers sold their outfit at auction, fictitious names were signed to the notes, which were then put into fraudulent circulation. (Flint's Letters, E. W. T.: Thwaites, ix, 310.)
[530] Ib. 130-31.
[531] Faux's Journal, Oct. 11, 1818, E. W. T.: Thwaites, xi, 171. Faux says that even in Cincinnati itself the bank bills of that town could be exchanged at stores "only 30 or 40 per centum below par, or United States' paper."
[532] Flint's Letters, E. W. T. Thwaites, ix, 132-36.
[533] In Baltimore Cohens's "lottery and exchange office" issued a list of nearly seventy banks, with rates of prices on their notes. The circular gave notice that the quotations were good for one day only. (Niles, xiv, 396.) At the same time G. & R. Waite, with offices in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, issued a list covering the country from Connecticut to Ohio and Kentucky. (Ib. 415.) The rates as given by this firm differed greatly from those published by Cohens.
[534] Ib. x, 80.
[535] Sumner: Jackson, 229.
[536] Flint's Letters, E. W. T.: Thwaites, ix, 219.
[537] Niles, xv, 60.
[538] Niles, xiv, 193-96; also xv, 434.
[539] Ib. xvii, 164.
[540] Ib. xiv, 108.
[541] A wealthy Richmond merchant who had married a sister of Marshall's wife. (See vol. ii, 172, of this work.)
[542] A writ directing the sheriff to seize the goods and chattels of a person to compel him to satisfy an obligation. Bouvier (Rawle's ed.) i, 590.
[543] Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 16, 1816.
What was the outcome of this incident does not appear. Professor Sumner says that the bank was closed for a few days, but soon opened and went on with its business. (Sumner: Hist. Am. Currency, 74-75.) Sumner fixes the date in 1817, two years after the event.
[544] Niles, xiv, 281.
[545] Ib. 314-15.
[546] Ib. 333; and for similar cases, see ib. 356, 396-97, 428-30. All these accounts were taken from newspapers at the places where criminals were captured.
[547] Niles, xiv, 428.
[548] Ib. xvi, 147-48; also, ib. 360, 373, 390.
[549] Ib. 179.
[550] Ib. 210.
[551] Ib. 208.
[552] Ib. 210.
[553] See Catterall, 39-50.
[554] The frauds of the directors and officers of the Bank of the United States were used, however, as the pretext for an effort to repeal its charter. On Feb. 9, 1819, James Johnson of Virginia introduced a resolution for that purpose. (Annals, 15th Cong. 2d Sess. iii, 1140-42.)
[555] See Catterall, 32.
[556] New Castle County.
[557] Niles, xv, 162.
[558] Ib. 59.
[559] Ib. 418.
[560] Flint's Letters, E.W.T.: Thwaites, ix, 226.
[561] They, too, asserted that institution to be the author of their woes, (Niles, xvii, 2.)
[562] Catterall, 33-37.
[563] Ib. 51-53; and see Niles, xv, 25.
[564] Catterall, 33.
[565] Monster, Hydra, Cerberus, Octopus, and names of similar import were popularly applied to the Bank of the United States. (See Crawford's speech, supra, 175.)
[566] Niles, xv, 5.
[567] Act of April 3, 1811, Laws of New York, 1811, 205-21.
[568] Niles, xvi, 257.
[569] Ib.
[570] Ib. xvii, 147.
[571] "I have known several to calculate upon the 'relief' from them, just as they would do on an accommodation at bank, or on the payment of debts due to them! If we succeed in such and such a thing, say they—very well; if not, we can get the benefit of the insolvent laws.... Where one prudent and honest man applies for such benefit, one hundred rogues are facilitated in their depredations." (Niles, xvii, 115.)
[572] Ib.
[573] Ib. xv, 283.
[574] The bankruptcy law which Marshall had helped to draw when in Congress (see vol. ii, 481-82, of this work) had been repealed in 1803. (Annals, 8th Cong. 1st Sess. 215, 625, 631. For reasons for the repeal see ib. 616-22.)
[575] Annals, 16th Cong. 1st Sess. 505.
[576] Ib. 513.
[577] Ib. 517-18.
[578] Flint's Letters, E.W.T.: Thwaites, ix, 225.
In reviewing Sketches of America by Henry Bradshaw Fearon, an Englishman who traveled through the United States, the Quarterly Review of London scathingly denounced the frauds perpetrated by means of insolvent laws. (Quarterly Review, xxi, 165.)
[579] None of these letters to Marshall have been preserved. Indeed, only a scant half-dozen of the original great number of letters written him even by prominent men during his long life are in existence. For those of men like Story and Pickering we are indebted to copies preserved in their papers.
Marshall, at best, was incredibly negligent of his correspondence as he was of all other ordinary details of life. Most other important men of the time kept copies of their letters; Marshall kept none; and if he preserved those written to him, nearly all of them have disappeared.
[580] Niles, xv, 385.
[581] Ib.
[582] Ib. xvi, 261.
[583] Ib. xvii, 85.
[584] Jefferson to Adams, Nov. 7, 1819, Works: Ford, xii, 145.
[585] Niles, xvii, 85.
[586] Niles, xvii, 185.
[587] Memoirs, J. Q. A.: Adams, May 27, 1819, iv, 375.
[588] Ib. 391.
[589] Collins, 88.
[590] "The disappointment is altogether ascribed to the Bank of the U.S." (King to Mason, Feb. 7, 1819, King, vi, 205.) King's testimony is uncommonly trustworthy. His son was an officer of the branch of Chillicothe, Ohio.
[591] See Article x, Section 1, Constitution of Indiana, as adopted June 29, 1816.
[592] See Catterall, 64-65, and sources there cited.
[593] Spelled Sturgis on the manuscript records of the Supreme Court.
[594] 4 Wheaton, 192.
[595] 4 Wheaton, 192-93.
[596] 4 Wheaton, 194.
[597] Ib. 195.
[598] 4 Wheaton, 196.
[599] "No State shall ... emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any ... ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts."
[600] 4 Wheaton, 196-97.
[601] For the proceedings in the Constitutional Convention on this clause, see vol. iii, chap. x, of this work.
[602] 4 Wheaton, 197.
[603] Ib. 197-98.
[604] 4 Wheaton, 198.
[605] 4 Wheaton, 199.
[606] Ib. 200.
[607] 4 Wheaton, 200-01.
[608] 4 Wheaton, 202.
[609] Ib. 203-04.
[610] 4 Wheaton, 205.
[611] Ib. 206.
[612] Niles, xvi, 76.
[613] "It will probably, make some great revolutions in property, and raise up many from penury ... and cause others to descend to the condition that becomes honest men, by compelling a payment of their debts—as every honest man ought to be compelled to do, if ever able.... It ought not to be at any one's discretion to say when, or under what convenient circumstances, he will wipe off his debts, by the benefit of an insolvent law—as some do every two or three years; or, just as often as they can get credit enough to make any thing by it." (Niles, xvi, 2.)
[614] See infra, next chapter.