This book is the first full length work in forty years on the history of early American banking. It reveals new interpretations of early banking practices and why there was a need to change and progress with the times. This volume compares early banking with today's more advanced economic...

Early American firms were shaped by contemporary social conceptions of appropriate horizontal power relations inside the firm and the Federalist era bank was shaped by these conceptions. The Federalist era debate on the corporation was much broader than how shareholders would treat with one...

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...