A School History of the United StatesMcMaster, John Bach
History
A School History of the United States
McMaster, John Bach
United States -- History
%287. "Federal Money."%--The appearance of the new money was followed
by another change for the better. In colonial days the merchants and the
people expressed the debts they owed, or the value of the goods they
sold, in pounds, shillings, and pence, or in Spanish dollars. During the
Revolution, and after it, this was continued, although the Continental
Congress always kept its accounts, and made its appropriations, in
dollars. But when the people began to see dollars, half dollars, and
dimes bearing the words "United States of America," they knew that
there really was a national coinage, or "Federal money," as they called
it, and between 1795 and 1798, one state after another ordered its
treasurer to use Federal money instead of pounds, shillings, and pence;
and thereafter in laying taxes, and voting appropriations for any
purpose, the amount was expressed in dollars and cents. The merchants
and the people were much slower in adopting the new terms; but they came
at last into general use.
%288. Rise of the State Banks.%--Had the people been forced to depend
on the United States mint for money wherewith to pay the butcher and the
baker and the shoemaker, they would not have been able to make their
payments, for the machinery at the mint was worked by hand, and the
number of dimes and quarters turned out each year was small. But they
were not, for as soon as confidence was restored, banks chartered by the
states sprang up in the chief cities in the East, and as each issued
notes, the people had all the currency they wanted.
In 1790, when Congress established the National Bank, there were but
four state banks in the whole country: one in Philadelphia, one in New
York, one in Boston, and one in Baltimore. By 1800 there were
twenty-six, in 1805 there were sixty-four, and in 1811 there were
eighty-eight.
In that year (1811) the charter of the National Bank expired, and as
Congress would not renew it, many more state banks were created, each
hoping to get a part of the business formerly done by the National Bank.
Such was the "mania," as it was called, for banks, that the number rose
from eighty-eight in 1811, to two hundred and eight in 1814, which was
far more than the people really needed.
Nevertheless, all went well until the British came up Chesapeake Bay and
burned Washington. Then the banks in that part of the country boxed up
all their gold and silver and sent it away, lest the British should get
it. This forced them to "suspend specie payments"; that is, refuse to
give gold or silver in exchange for their own paper. As soon as they
suspended, others did the same, till in a few weeks every one along the
seaboard from Albany to Savannah, and every one in Ohio, had stopped
paying coin. The New England banks did not suspend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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