however, fell at once to fifty per cent. discount, and so remained until 1833, when they were quoted at ten per cent.[1]
The law which had barred out the Bank of the United States was repealed in 1826, and a branch was established at Nashville.
In 1827, the avails of the Bank of the State were constituted a school fund. A peculiar feature of the history of Tennessee was the excessive degree to which the educational organization of the State was entangled with its banking, which also involved an entanglement with its "improvements."
Gov. Carroll, in his message for 1829, said that the Bank of the State ought to be wound up. Within a year it had taken three hundred judgments against debtors, and the Knoxville branch had taken a hundred more. He added that a statement made by the Bank showed that its debtors were paying, in interest, commissions, and charges, from twelve per cent. to twenty-five per cent. for every dollar which they had borrowed of it. It was employing sixty-two agents, at great risk, and cost the State $14,000 per annum. "Our experience furnishes but too much proof of the bad policy of the State's permitting its citizens to become its debtors."
In that year the Bank of the United States had the business of the Valley almost to itself. Judge Catton of Nashville published an address in which he pronounced the crisis a dangerous one on account of the great debt of the people to the Bank of the United States, and the excessive usury everywhere prevailing, namely, from five to ten per cent. per month. He especially warned the people against endorsing for each other.
The cashier of the Bank of the State of Tennessee at Nashville was found short in his accounts in February, 1830, to the amount of seventy or eighty thousand dollars. He refused to give up the books because the deficiency was due to overdrafts by persons whom he would not expose. The charter was amended so that the Legislature should elect the cashier. The total overdrafts by "distinguished persons" were two or three hundred thousand dollars. Lest they should be exposed the matter was hushed up and the cashier was allowed to go.[2]
The Legislature, however, demanded of the president and directors of the Bank of the State, December 20, 1831, that they should report the defalcation of the cashier and the names of the persons who had made the overdrafts, with the amount, and whether they had settled.
In 1831, the State was draining the life out of the Bank of the State No. II., by exactions for internal improvements, etc. The president and directors were ordered to find out how much money there was in the agencies, and also to find out the county apportionment of the total of it, according to the census of 1830, and to apportion it. The School Commissioners of each county were incorporated in order that they might take and hold it. The county loan agencies were to be discontinued, May 1, 1832.
Senator White said, in 1838, that this bank had been converted into a
