CHAPTER IX.
The Liquidation on the Atlantic Coast.
URING the summer and fall of 1819, on the Atlantic Coast, the good and bad banks were being rapidly separated from each other, the former growing steadily stronger, and the latter rapidly falling or their notes becoming uncurrent. In July, the Committee on Banks of New Hampshire reported all the banks solvent, although one was thought to have made excessive issues, and the New Hampshire Bank, in which the State owned $25,000 stock, had made some bad debts. A legislative committee in Massachusetts reported all the banks solvent. From Connecticut it was reported that no bank had failed or suffered a run.[1] In the Middle States laws to restrain banking were passed by nearly all the States. In New York there was a penalty of ten per cent. for non-redemption. Pennsylvania passed an act, March 29, 1819, providing that any one of "the forty" banks incorporated in 1814, which did not pay specie on and after August 1st, on demand, should forfeit its charter. The Governor in his next message said that this act had not been enforced against any one of them,[2] but the Treasurer of the State gave notice, in February, 1820, that the charters of five specified banks were null and void.[3] In Maryland a law was passed providing for a scire facias to annul the charter of any non-specie paying bank. Several of the New England and Middle States passed laws within a year or two, forbidding notes under $5. Thus the currency was steadily improved during 1820. As early as October 16, 1819, the Bank of the United States gave notice that it would receive, at any office, its notes for $5 issued at any office. It had saved itself and thrown the consequences of all its folly and misdoings on its customers (who were not indeed blameless), and on the public. The loans and discounts of the Bank, in July, 1817, were $26.2 millions. They steadily increased to $41.4 millions one year later. Then they declined to their minimum for the period, $28.0 millions, in January, 1822. The circulation was lowest in July, 1820; $3.5 millions.[4]
