TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bodenhorn,Howard
TI  - Bank Chartering and Political Corruption in Antebellum New York: Free Banking as Reform
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10479
PY  - 2004
Y2  - May 2004
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10479
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10479.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Howard Bodenhorn
John E. Walker Department of Economics
College of Business and Behavioral Science
201-B Sirrine Hall
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634
Tel: 864/656-4335
E-Mail: bodenhorn@gmail.com
AB  - One traditional and oft-repeated explanation of the political impetus behind free banking connects the rise of Jacksonian populism and a rejection of the privileges associated with corporate chartering. A second views free banking as an ill-informed inflationist, pro business response to the financial panic of 1837. This chapter argues that both explanations are lacking. Free banking was the progeny of the corruption associated with bank chartering and reflected social, political and economic backlashes against corruption dating to the late-1810s. Three strands of political thought -- Antimasonic egalitarianism, Jacksonian pragmatism, and pro-business American Whiggism -- converged in the 1830s and led to economic reform. Equality of treatment was the political watchword of the 1830s and free banking was but one manifestation of this broader impulse.
ER  -