One of the chief reasons given by the opponents of the old Bank of the United States for winding it up was to find out whether it had been useful or not. In 1815 it was almost universally believed that this question had been fully answered by experience, and that the experience had been costly.
During the year 1815, the bank note currency became worse and worse. The story is told of a "little Frenchman and his bank notes," who entered the country at Savannah with specie and travelled up the coast to Boston. He found his "money" all the time melting away. His American adviser told him that if he would begin at Boston and go back again, he could recover it all. The Frenchman, "holding up a parcel of ragged, dirty bills, pregnant with filth and disease," said: "Voila! it's like making a difference between the rags of one beggar and the rags of another."[1]
Another traveller gives his own experience: "Such was the state of the currency that, in New Jersey, I met with an instance where a one dollar note I had taken in change, which was current on one side of a turnpike gate, would not pass at an hundred yards' distance on the other side."[2]
The following case illustrates the difficulty of enforcing rights against a bank: A gentleman of Richmond wanted to enforce the payment of ten notes for $100 each against the Bank of Virginia, in 1815, but he could not get a lawyer to take his case until the following year. The president refused to obey the summons of the Court. The Sheriff brought him by force to Court, and, as the bank still refused to pay, the Sheriff closed its doors. The bank then brought suit for damages against the plaintiff, and instituted proceedings against the Sheriff. It re-opened its doors and went on with its business. No means were found to make it amenable to law. The "Richmond Enquirer" said that it was perfectly sound and able to resume, but held its opinion that it was not expedient to do so until others did.[3]
Another cause of irritation with the banks was that they were held to have failed completely as agents for the fiscal operations of the federal government. Gouge quotes a statement from a pamphlet by "A Friendly Monitor," attributed to W. Jones, first president of the Bank of the United States, that the State banks, depositories of the public money, refused to make the necessary transfers for the government expenditures, and finally refused to pay the balances due by them, except in the ordinary course of public expenditure at the places in which they were, claiming indulgence on various pretexts, while they held the paper of the other banks, which had come to them in payment of the public deposits, and prevented those banks from resuming.[4]
The President, in his message for 1815, urged Congress to provide for a "uniform" currency, either by a national bank or by government issues. The Committee on Currency asked Secretary Dallas, December 23d, for his opinion as to the amount of capital, the form of government, the privileges, and the organization of a national bank, and as to the amount of bonus
