The Jacksonians versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the Panic of 1837 (review)

book reviews177 stunted federal powers," and given to "false logic and lofty manners," as well as to "anfractuousities." He stubbornly refused to use the banking system effectively by converting the government's finances to a check and deposit basis but instead drained the banks of their gold reserves so that the Treasury could continue business as usual by paying the nation 's creditors in specie and treasury notes. His loan policies forced both the major banks and the nation to the edge of bankruptcy. He was unduly slow to accept the need of legal tender currency and the national banking system, although a signficant reform in the long run, did little to solve the financial exigencies of the hour. The reader will have long since decided that Mr. Chase could not have made clerk in the Federal Reserve long before Mr. Hammond confides on page 349, "on the whole, it seems to me Chase's administration of the Treasury was a misfortune." This statement is preceeded by a long series of might-havebeens followed by an amazing passage in which the author concludes that the "lasting result" of Chase's program of monetary reform was "the stultifying bureaucratic complex of matchless redundancy with which the country is still blest." (p. 351). Although Mr. Hammond's use of the counterfactual proposition is intriguing , his methods of research were traditional. And we must take his explanations of action in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate largely on faith. Mr. Hammond knew banking and wrote about it with verve and even with passion. The profession can never have enough men who could write about this fundamental business enterprise without being dull. It is doubtful, however, that some of the implicit challenges in this book will long go unanswered. Allan G. Bogue University of Wisconsin The Jacksonians versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the Panic of 1837. By James Roger Sharp. (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970. Pp. 392. $12.50.) The dichotomy in the historical evaluation of the banking issue in Jacksonian politics is illustrated by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who saw the Jacksonians as 'liberals" determined to check a grasping, ambitious business community, and by Bray Hammond, who saw in the Bank War of the 1830's speculators and aspiring new businessmen throwing off the restrictions of the older, conservative mercantile community. Resolution of the dichotomy has been difficult because both Schlesinger and Hammond focused on national policies during Jackson's presidency. It is the thesis of Professor Sharp that resolution requires an examination of the banking controversy's final phase, the party policies toward state banks after the Panic of 1837. To test this thesis the author follows a threestep procedure. He analyzes the banking policies pursued, primarily by the Democrats, in a key state or states in each of four geographical 178CIVIL WAR HISTORY regions. He then examines, through the use of statistical techniques (primarily rank-difference correlations), the bases of the parties' local support. The banking policies of the key state are then compared with those ofthe remaining states of the region. Focusing on the states of Mississippi for the Southwest, Ohio for the Northwest, Virginia for the Southeast, and briefly on New York and Pennsylvania for the Northeast, the author concludes that the Democratic party everywhere was composed largely of "hard-money" and anti-bank men, although there was a difference between the sections as to what hard-money signified. Hard-money "radicalism" was strongest in the Southwest, where Democrats passed from reform of banking abuses to the outright repudiation of state bonds issued to support state banks (Mississippi) and constitutional prohibitions against chartering banks (Louisiana, Arkansas). On the state level, there was a significant correlation between the wealth of a county and its political affiliation: wealthier constituencies voted Whig, poorer ones voted Democratic. However, the author points out that these statewide correlations obscure significant local conditions. Staunchly-Democratic German immigrants were a crucial local factor in Ohio, while in Virginia the presence of a party leadership with national ambitions and orientation was a determining factor. In all states the split in the Democratic ranks between the hard-money majority and the...