the United States Bank here, Humphreys & Biddle, have an immense stock on hand, and are daily receiving more. * * * The policy of delaying the resumption of specie payments in the South, whatever be the morals of it, has undoubtedly realized $10 millions to the United States that would have been thrown away here. Recollect I do not approve of any banks going into commercial operations; but our banks were forced into that position by an overruling emergency, and the doctrines held forth and violently persisted in by the Barings and their agents in New York were narrow, selfish, suicidal, and destructive to southern interests and southern property." "Humphreys & Biddle will make large profits by their commissions; the Bank will lose."[1] Ten days later the same correspondent wrote that the buyers and sellers of cotton differed greatly as to price. Humphreys & Biddle were carrying an immense stock, and the spinners were only buying for immediate needs.[2] In September the report was: "Cotton is offered in abundance and prices are supported in a remarkable manner; holders not submitting to any decline."[3]
In October, the New York "Journal of Commerce" said: "A large part of two cotton crops has now been exported by incorporated banks. It was well for them, perhaps, to come forward at the moment of extreme panic eighteen months ago—for there seemed to be no other means of moving the produce of the country. But their interference extensively with the last crop was of very questionable propriety, and their further interference now ought to meet the most determined resistance."
"The Bank of the State of Alabama has already announced its intention of dealing in cotton again, and on a plan which is especially objectionable. That bank has already so mismanaged its affairs as to throw the State into great difficulty, and if it is suffered to go on, the credit of the State and its merchants cannot be resuscitated. Specie payments will never be facilitated in this way."
The plan was put forth by the Branch at Tuscaloosa, apparently as an improvement on the scheme which the Mobile Branch had published in the previous January. It was dated August 29, 1838; proposed that cotton should be sent to the warehouses, the warehouse receipts being taken as vouchers; shipments at the expense and risk of the owner; to be made only to agents of the bank at Mobile, New Orleans, New York or Liverpool; sales to be made in four months. The owner must give for advances a bill at nine months with two endorsers; differences to be adjusted, if in favor of the bank, by a bill running not beyond the following February 15th. No advance was to be made for more than twenty-five per cent in excess of the value of the cotton when it was received; all exchange to inure to the shipper, the bank taking only one and one-half per cent. commission (later one per cent.). Advances might be made before the delivery of the cotton if the citizen was in danger of having his property sacrificed. If he will give proof of solvency,
