Chronicles of American Wealth / Nr 3 / September 30, 2001
Content
:
1.
Now Online : Chapter 7 “Bankers part 1 :
Banking in the Early Republic”
2.
Introducing :
Nicholas Biddle - the second most powerful man in America
3.
New at “Encyclopedia of American Wealth” :
wealth classification lists 1800, 1825 and 1850
1.
Now Online :
Chapter 7 “Bankers part 1 : Banking in the
Early Republic”
Banking is so well entrenched in our modern life that it is difficult to
imagine how our great nation functioned at its beginning, as no such
institutions as banks existed to organize the financing of the American
Revolutionary War or the activities of our first Federal government
thereafter. Whereas our nation’s military leaders and political patriots,
such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin are well
remembered as our founding fathers, the not less vital figures of
revolutionary financiers
Robert Morris
and
Haym Salomon
have long been forgotten by the masses. Yet without Robert Morris, the
Continental Army of George Washington would most likely have run out
supplies that proved vital to his 1877 campaigns and American Independence
may have been lost. Robert Morris was made superintendent of finance in
1781 and among his other achievements he created the Bank of North
America, the country’s firs commercial bank. Other commercial banks were
chartered in New York, Massachusetts and Maryland. Under the influence of
Alexander Hamilton and his leading Federalist party, the government
sponsored a national bank, the (First) Bank of the United States.
Capitalized at $ 10 million, the BUS was the largest American corporation
at the time, with a head office in Philadelphia and branches in many other
American cities. It’s charter expired in 1811 and a Republican dominated
Congress refused the renewal of its charter. The BUS was liquidated and
its branches sold to leading state banks. The Philadelphia head office was
taken over by a wealthy shipping merchant of French origins, who also
happened to be the bank’s largest shareholder. Stephen Girard
subsequently became America’s richest man and a great philanthropist. A
Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816 as the country
needed a national bank to warrant its economic development. This second
BUS went under in a violent clash of personalities between its chief
executive, Nicholas Biddle, and the president of the United States of
America, Andrew Jackson.
Read more about the financiers who brought banking to the
early American republic in
Chapter 7
of “A Classification of American Wealth”.
2.
Introducing :
Nicholas Biddle
– the second most powerful man in America
Who is the second most powerful man in the US ? Clearly
assuming that the president is the most powerful, the question regarding
to his second, depends on the times in which we relate. Towards the end of
Civil War, the answer would have probably been General Ulysses Simpson
Grant, during World War II, chief of staff General George C. Marshall.
During the longest economic expansion of the American economy, the name of
Allan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, would naturally
emerge as an answer, given his definite influence on one of our main
concern, the economy. Surprisingly Allan Greenspan has a somewhat less
famous historic predecessor in Nicholas Biddle, the third president of the
(Second) Bank of the United States from 1823-36
A child progeny, born into one of Philadelphia’s most illustrious
families, Nicholas Biddle studied when still in his teens, first at the
University of Pennsylvania, then at Princeton. Biddle graduated in 1801,
at the age of fifteen, too young to engage in a profession. He went on
studying law at home and became the personal secretary to General John
Armstrong, when the latter was named US Ambassador to France in 1804.
During his years in Paris, Biddle forged friendship with James Monroe, the
future president of the United States. After his return to Philadelphia,
Nicholas Biddle practiced law in his brother William’s office, wrote
literary articles for magazines and edited the journals of Lewis and
Clark. Elected to the lower house of the Pennsylvania State Legislature,
Nicholas Biddle impressed with his congressional address defending the
First Bank of the United States in 1811. Congress failed to renew the
charter of the BUS, but Biddle should have a chance to serve as a board
member and later president of the second Bank of the United States. In
1819, his friend James Monroe appointed him a director, and in 1823,
Biddle was named president of the institution, which was then the
country’s largest corporation and foremost banking house. Biddle proved an
able banker both building value for the bank’s shareholders and
maintaining the precarious financial markets in equilibrium. His long
unchallenged position as the nation’s foremost banker conferred him powers
only surpassed by the US president. However, Biddle’s stubborn ignorance
of president Andrew Jackson’s proposed alterations to the bank’s charter
led to the demise of the Second Bank of the United States in 1836. Biddle
went on running the bank on a Pennsylvania State charter and involved it
in a series of cotton speculations, which were first successful but later
produced heavy losses under which the bank eventually failed. Biddle
retired on his country estate “Andalusia” where he had experimented in
agriculture in his pre-banking years. Check out the
profile of Nicholas Biddle
and
other famous wealthy Americans
at “Encyclopedia of American Wealth”
3.
Wealth classification lists
1800,
1825
and
1850
Who are the richest Americans ? How many billionaires are there in the
World ? And how many of them are Americans ? Answers to these questions
are nowadays quite easy to find in such financial magazines as “Forbes” or
“Fortune”. But who were the richest Americans in the past and how much
were they worth ? In our “Encyclopedia of American Wealth” we try to
answer these questions by listing wealthy Americans of the past and
estimating their fortunes. In addition to the still somewhat incomplete
list of the 18th century, we have now published the remaining
lists covering the period of Mercantile America :
1800,
1825
and
1850.
Check out “Encyclopedia
of American Wealth”
to learn who were the wealthy people in America in those days …
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