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Indiana University 
or three hundred dollars — that a constant decrease of the circulating 
medium is becoming more and more visible — and that the gold and silver 
brought here by the industry of the farmers, is finding its way to the 
eastward without anything to show for it.^® 
While this is a rather gloomy picture, there was even worse 
distress to come. 
When individuals and communities become financially em- 
barrassed, at that same instant they look for someone other 
than themselves to blame, and then demand relief from the 
source where it appears easiest to obtain and costs least. 
Reference has already been made to the fact that the United 
States Bank was not popular even before the panic of 1819, 
and it may readily be guessed that that institution became a 
target almost everywhere as soon as the pinch of hard times 
came. Indiana attempted by its constitution in 1816 to keep 
any bank not chartered by the state outside its bounds; Illi- 
nois put similar terms in its constitution in 1818. Between 
1817 and 1819 Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, 
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee all passed acts taxing the 
United States Bank.^^ In Ohio a tax of $50,000 on each of the 
two branch banks of that state was voted by the legislature, 
and when the Chillicothe branch refused payment, the money 
was forcibly seized on a warrant issued by state authorities 
in contempt of an injunction from the circuit court of the 
United States.®^ This happened during the very year when 
the United States Bank was hard-pressed financially, and was 
saved, as was maintained by a committee of the Kentucky 
legislature, only by the fortunate arrival of $250,000 in specie 
from Ohio and Kentucky.®^ 
Kentucky’s open hostility took form when the legislature in 
December, 1818, voted a tax of $400 a year on each of the 
two branch banks in the state. The same legislature, seem- 
ingly surprised and aggrieved at its earlier leniency, had the 
temerity to pass a law in January, 1819, to tax each of the 
United States branch banks $5,000 a month, ordering the ser- 
geant of the state’s highest court to collect it by force if neces- 
sary. It is evident that the friends of the local banks in the 
legislature, aided by state-wide hostility to what was called 
Kentucky Gazette, May 29, 1819. 
Turner, The Rise of the Neio West, 137. 
50 Kentucky Gazette, editorial, September 24, 1819 ; Schouler, History of the United 
States of America under the Constitution, 1783-1865, III, 120, 247. 
Niles’ Register, XXIII, 234, 235; Kerr (ed,). History of Kentucky, II, 609. 
