194 Hadden—Early Banking in Wisconsin. 
under deep obligations to our bankers for the alacrity with which 
they in 1861 advanced money to enable the state to furnish her 
quota of men armed and equipped for the national defense. ]f the 
bonds which they received therefor, had at that time been offered 
in Wall street they could have been negotiated only at a heavy 
discount. They not only relieved the immediate and pressing 
wants of the state treasury, but also manifested their confidence 
in the credit of the state. ” 
When December 1st, 1861 came, the sound banks were ready 
to redeem their issues. On this date only $1,500,000 of cur¬ 
rent Wisconsin bank notes were outstanding. The runs were 
large, but the banks met the runs with ease, and confidence was 
partly restored. 
During 1861 fifty banks went out of existence; bank capital 
was decreased $2,900,000; loans and discounts shrank $3,200,000 
as compared with the year before; public securities were reduced 
$3,100,000; the specie reserve fell to the extent of $68,000; 
while the circulation was contracted from $4,310,175 to $1,419, 
423, or a little less than $3,000,000 in one year. 
The war management of the Wisconsin banks is a fine exam¬ 
ple of public and private co-operation; the splendid financiering 
from April to December, 1861, on the one hand, saved the 
credit of the state, and on the other warded off a commercial, 
financial and stock panic which might have cost the business 
world untold failures, noteholders a loss of millions of dollars, 
and might have overwhelmed the entire Wisconsin state bank¬ 
ing system in ruin. 
Subsequent History and Conclusion. 
Prom December 1, 1861, public confidence was somewhat re¬ 
stored and the banks continued to increase their business until 
the national banking law of 1863 was passed, providing for the 
organization of state banks under the national banking system. 
The securities on deposit now consisted almost entirely of 
Wisconsin and U. S. bonds. The people knew that Wisconsin 
could pay all her indebtedness in one year without being ser¬ 
iously burdened with taxation, if necessary, and they had im- 
