Bray Hammond (1886–1968)

In this magisterial work Hammond describes banks and politics from the Revolution to the Civil War.

Jeffersonian Albert Gallatin could lament in 1836:

"the bank paper mania has extended itself so widely that I despair of its being corrected otherwise than by a catastrophe. The energy of this nation is not to be controlled; it is of present exclusively applied to the acquisition of wealth and of stupendous magnitude. Whatever has that tendency, and of course an immoderate expanse of credit, receives favor. The apparent prosperity and the progress of cultivation, population, commerce, and improvement are beyond expectation. But it seems to me a general demoralization was the consequence; I doubt whether general happiness is increased; and I would have preferred a gradual, slower, and more secure progress. I am, however, an old man, and the young generation has a right to govern itself (p. 9)."

Hammond does not fulfill all of my prejudices about Jackson and dispels the notion that the Bank War was simply a sectional issue that came as a result of a lower-class, people's war against the Eastern banking establishment.… (altro)