﻿ESAE.EY: STATE BANKING IN INDIANA 



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Stock subscriptions came in slowly, and all the branches except 

 three, Brookville, Coryclon, and Vevay, failed to organize. With 

 scarcely 75,000 people in the state, it was attempted to organize 

 fifteen banks in one day, and float among them bank stock, all 

 told, to the amomit of $2,225,000, an average of about $30 per 

 capita. 



From the beginning there was opposition to the Bank. The 

 leader in this criticism was Elihu Stout,-* editor of the Western Sim 

 of Vincennes. The interests of the Bank were as warmly supported 

 by editor Wiseman of the Centinel, also of Vincennes. Wiseman was 

 an officer of the Bank and thus had the advantage of Stout so far 

 as authentic information was concerned. In general, what was 

 called the aristocratic party of Vincennes, Corydon, and Brookville 

 controlled the Bank. What later became the Jacksonian Democ- 

 racy opposed it. James Noble, Jonathan Jennings, and William 

 Hendricks had political control of the state at this time, and dis- 

 tributed its offices. 25 



During two years there was little said about the Bank except 

 at election times. It had been established at Vincennes, in order 

 to secure the use of the pubhc money collected at the land office. 

 The advantage was mutual, since if there was no bank at that place 

 the receiver of public moneys would have to take his funds to Louis- 

 ville, Cincinnati, or New Orleans to deposit them. During the exis- 

 tence of the old Bank of the United States a number of state banks 

 had been made depositories. An arrangement for this purpose still 

 existed with the banks of New England and with the State Bank 

 of Virginia. As stated above, the Second Bank of the United States 

 had been made the general depository of all pubhc money. But 

 it had no branches in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Mississippi, and 

 Alabama. In these cases it was found almost impossible for the 

 receiver to place the money in the nearest branch of the Second 

 Bank of the United States. When Secretary Crawford was ap- 

 pointed, there were 89 of these banks of deposit. Most of them 

 carried guaranteed deposits of $50,000 and were given sixty days 

 notice of all drafts in favor of the national treasury. -« 



After 1817, the Bank of the United States stopped deposits 

 from being made in the banks that did not pay specie.. This brought 

 forth an effort on the part of the western banks to resume and thus 

 to get the benefits of the public deposits. At a meeting of the north- 

 s' Elihu Stout was born in New Jersey. He had worked at the printer's trade in Lexint?ton, 

 Ky., and Nashville, Tenn. He was a personal friend of Andrew Jackson, with whom he associated 

 in Nashville. He brought materials and printed the first paper in Indiana, at Vincennes, July 4, 1804, 

 » O. H. Smith, Recollections, p. 84. 

 " Am. Sta. Pa., Fin., Ill, 718. 



