double vote; it did not change the original charter as to the guarantees against loss which were given to the State. The decision of the directors of the bank that the stock was sufficiently secured by the mortgages which were given for it is binding on the State. The sale of the bonds does not appear to have been below par; that sale was neither illegal nor void. The conversion of dollars into sterling, at four shillings and sixpence, does not avoid the sales.
Thus the Courts of Mississippi overthrew every argument which had ever been put forward in defense and support of repudiation. The allegations of fact were treated as trivial or irrelevant, and the constructions of law as unsound and sophistical.
The income from lands which had been set off in 1848, as a revenue with which to pay the interest on the Planters' Bank bonds, was expended for railroads.[1] The Governor urged payment. "The question for your solution is: Are those bonds due and unpaid?"
The subject of those bonds was brought before the Legislature again in 1860. A majority of the Committee to whom it was referred reported that political affairs were so threatening that it was no time to take up that matter. The minority urged payment, and replied to the majority that Mississippi, if she proposed to resume her sovereignty, needed just then most of all to establish her credit.[2]
A constitutional amendment was adopted in 1875: "Nor shall the State assume, redeem, secure, or pay any indebtedness or pretended indebtedness claimed to be due by the State of Mississippi to any person, association, or corporation whatsoever, claiming the same as owners, holders, or assignees, of any bond or bonds now generally known as Union Bank bonds or Planters' Bank bonds."
It is a case of the irony of history that the Mississippians were warned that repudiation would cost their State its credit and make it impossible for them to borrow. This happened, but the only case where the State afterwards tried to borrow was in the carpet-bag days, and its bad credit made it impossible for the carpet-baggers to load it up with debts, as they did the other States.
The Governor of Louisiana, in his message of January, 1842, had reached the point of boldly declaring that the notion was false, that the banks of one city must suspend because those of another did so. He showed that from November 2, 1839, to October 2, 1841, the New Orleans banks reduced their cash assets $300,000, and increased their liabilities $780,000, and he insisted that they would continue in this course so long as the suspension lasted.[3] It was enacted January 24th, that no bank note should be issued which was not payable in specie.
The most remarkable law to regulate banks, which was produced in this period, in any State, was the act of February 5, 1842. It is drawn in
