Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-05T08:16:35.933Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Panic of 1857: Origins, Transmission, and Containment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Charles W. Calomiris  and
Larry Schweikart
Charles W. Calomiris
Affiliation:
Professor of Finance, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Larry Schweikart
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University of Dayton, Dayton, OH 45469.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

We explain the origins of the Panic of 1857, examine its spread, and compare state banking systems's responses. We describe the decline in western land and railroad investments and the consequent stress on securities brokers and banks in eastern cities, and trace the transmission of the shock to other regions. Bank performance depended not only on regional conditions and links to eastern banks, but on the ability to coordinate behavior. Southern branch banks and coinsuring banks in Ohio and Indiana were particularly successful.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 1991 , pp. 807 - 834
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Boyle, James E., Chicago Wheat Prices for Eighty-One Years (Ithaca, 1922).Google Scholar
Calomiris, Charles W., “Deposit Insurance: Lessons from the Record,” Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 13 (05/06 1989), pp. 10–30.Google Scholar
Calomiris, Charles W., “Is Deposit Insurance Necessary? A Historical Perspective,” this JOURNAL, 50 (06 1990), pp. 283–95.Google Scholar
Calomiris, Charles W., “Microeconomic Data and Institutional Constraints of Antebellum Banking: Sources and Methods” (Mimeograph, Northwestern University, 12 1990).Google Scholar
Calomiris, Charles W., and Gorton, Gary, “The Origins of Banking Panics: Models, Facts, and Bank Regulation,” in Hubbard, R. Glenn, ed., Financial Markets and Financial Crises (Chicago, 1991).Google Scholar
Cashin, Joan, A Family Venture: Men and Women on the Southern Frontier (Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar
Cincinnati Enquirer (various issues).Google Scholar
Cook, James, “Annual Report of the Superintendent of the Banking Department of the State of New York,” in U.S. House of Representatives, Executive Document No. 77 (Washington, DC, 1858).Google Scholar
Dunbar, Charles F., Economic Essays (New York, 1904).Google Scholar
Ecke, Melvin, “Fiscal Aspects of the Panic of 1857” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1951).Google Scholar
Evans, D. Morier, The History of the Commercial Crisis, 1857–1858 and the Stock Exchange Panic of 1859 (London, 1859).Google Scholar
Fehrenbacher, Don E., Slavery, Law and Politics: the Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar
Feiners, Susan F., “The Financial Structures and Banking Institutions of the Antebellum South: 1811–1832” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1981).Google Scholar
Fishlow, Albert, American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-Bellum Economy (Cambridge, MA, 1965).Google Scholar
Gates, Paul W., “Land and Credit Problems in Underdeveloped Kansas,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 31 (Spring 1965).Google Scholar
Gibbons, James S., The Banks of New York, Their Dealers, the Clearing House, and the Panic of 1857 (New York, 1859).Google Scholar
Golembe, Carter H., and Warburton, Clark, Insurance of Bank Obligations in Six States During the Period 1829–1866, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (Washington, DC, 1958).Google Scholar
Govan, Thomas, “The Banking and Credit System in Georgia” (Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University, 1936).Google Scholar
Hammond, Bray, Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, 1957).Google Scholar
Haeger, John D., The Investment Frontier: New York Businessmen and the Economic Development of the Old Northwest (Albany, 1981).Google Scholar
Hawtrey, R. G., A Century of Bank Rate (London, 1938).Google Scholar
Heath, Milton, Constructive Liberalism: The Role of the State in Economic Development in Georgia to 1860 (Cambridge, MA, 1954).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt's Merchants' Magazine (New York, various issues).Google Scholar
Huston, Francis M., Financing an Empire: History of Banking in Illinois (Chicago, 1926).Google Scholar
Huston, James L., “Western Grains and the Panic of 1857,” Agricultural History, 57 (1983), pp. 14–32.Google Scholar
Huston, James L., The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War (Baton Rouge, 1987).Google Scholar
Jevons, W. Stanley, Investigations in Currency and Finance (London, 1884).Google Scholar
McCulloch, Hugh, Men and Measures of Half a Century (New York, 1889).Google Scholar
Nevins, Allen, The Ordeal of the Union, the Emergence of Lincoln, Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857–1859 (New York, 1950).Google Scholar
Potter, David, The Impending Crisis 1848–1861, edited by Fehrenbacher, Don E. (New York, 1989).Google Scholar
Ransom, Roger L., Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation, and the American Civil War (New York, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rolnick, Arthur, and Weber, Warren, “The Causes of Free Bank Failures: A Detailed Examination,” Journal of Monetary Economics, 14 (11 1984), pp. 267–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salsbury, Stephen, The State, the Investor, and the Railroad: The Boston & Albany, 1825–1867 (Cambridge, MA, 1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schweikart, Larry, “Alabama's Antebellum Banks: New Evidence, New Interpretations,” Alabama Review, 38 (07 1985).Google Scholar
Schweikart, Larry, Banking in the American South from the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, 1987).Google Scholar
Sound Currency (New York, various issues).Google Scholar
Speigelman, Mortimer, “The Failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, 1857,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, 57 (1948), pp. 247–65.Google Scholar
Statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom: Accounts and Papers, 71 (1867).Google Scholar
Temin, Peter, The Jacksonian Economy (New York, 1969).Google Scholar
Temin, Peter, “The Panic of 1857,” Intermountain Review, 6 (Spring 1975), pp. 1–12.Google Scholar
Thompson's Bank Note and Commercial Reporter (New York, various issues).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to 1970 (Bicentennial Edn., Washington, DC, 1975).Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives, “Extract from Governor Moore's Inaugural Address to the Legislature of Alabama,” Executive Document No. 77 (Washington, DC, 1858).Google Scholar
U.S. House of Representatives, “Synopsis of the Report of the Trustee of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company,” Executive Document No. 107 (Washington, DC, 02 6, 1860).Google Scholar
Van Court's Counterfeit Detector and Bank Note List (Philadelphia, various issues).Google Scholar
Van Vieck, George W., The Panic of 1857: An Analytic Study (New York, 1943).Google Scholar
White, Eugene Nelson, “The Political Economy of Banking Regulation, 1864–1933,” this JOURNAL, 42 (03 1982), pp. 33–40.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin, The Political Economy of the Cotton South: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1978).Google Scholar