Most of the nation's economy, even late in the antebellum period, was directly affected in some way by slave agriculture. Much of the livestock employed on slave plantations was raised in places like Kentucky and Ohio, as were a significant amount of foodstuffs as well. Whole manufacturing concerns in New England produced exclusively for slave consumers; whether shoes, clothing, or hats. But the most important contribution of slave agriculture to the nation's economy as a whole were the vast amounts of foreign exchange generated by slave agriculture. Sterling bills drawn at places like New Orleans and made payable in London, often arose from actual consignments of southern staples to agents and buyers abroad. But some portion of those bills were also predicated on more-or-less permanent credit facilities extended by foreign agents as a precondition for obtaining some portion of the consignment business. An agent in New York, London, or Paris, might attract consignments of sugar, cotton, and tobacco from agents at New Orleans or elsewhere in the region, provided he could absorb some portion of the risks inherent in producing those staples. Production costs were very high, considering that labor costs were fixed.

The Second Bank of the United States, by the time its charter expired, had made itself the primary market maker for bills, both domestic and foreign. It's circulation thus obtained a measure of currency which no other institution was remotely prepared to match. The derangement of the domestic exchanges in the aftermath of Andrew Jackson's veto of the Second Bank's re-charter, in 1832, was an inevitable consequence of its operational attempts to wind down and withdraw its capital from disparate locations around the country.