CHAPTER IV.
The Earliest Banks in the Mississippi Valley.
T no place and at no time has the history of banking ever been so varied, so bold, and so rich in experience, as it was in the Mississippi Valley in the first thirty years of this century. It was intertwined there with a number of the matters which touch the interests of men and excite their passions in the highest degree. It was thus linked with the political interests which were connected with the growth of the United States into a federal State; with the questions of constitutional law concerning the inviolability of contracts and the independence of the judiciary; with the question of disputed title to land, which of course affected every man in the community; and with the system of execution for the collection of debts.
The Governor of Kentucky, in his message of 1800, complained of a lack of revenue and of the economic situation which he described as "almost destitute of specie." The exports would not pay for the imports. He proposed an effort to open trade down the Mississippi. The notion was that the eastern trade drew off specie because the exchange of commodities was not mutually advantageous.[1] Here we see a recurrence of the ideas and of the misinterpretation of facts which we noticed on the Atlantic coast in the colonial days, in regard to the trade with England. It has been stated that silver ceased to come up the Mississippi Valley after the peace between Spain and England in 1801, but this is certainly a mistake, for that movement of silver continued to be large and important for twenty-five or thirty years more, and it would be difficult to say when it stopped.
By an Act of December 6, 1802, the Kentucky Insurance Company was chartered until January 1, 1818. The purpose was to insure boats and cargoes on their way down the river. This company was not explicitly authorized to issue notes for circulation, but it was incidentally provided that its notes payable to bearer should pass by delivery only. On reading the section of the charter it is difficult to say whether it was very craftily or very
- ↑ Butler, 295.
