II. Direct Relief of Debtors

The plight of the numerous debtors during the panic was particularly arresting, and it inspired many heatedly debated proposals for their relief. One important group of debtors hit by the crisis were those who had purchased public land on credit from the federal government. Congress had established a liberal credit system for public lands in 1800. Purchasers were permitted to pay one-fourth of the total within forty days after the purchase date and the remainder in three annual installments. If the full payment were not completed within five years after the purchase date, the land would be forfeited.¹ In 1804, the minimum unit of land that could be purchased was reduced from 320 to 160 acres, thus further spurring public land purchases and debts. A growing backlog of indebtedness developed, as Congress repeatedly postponed the date of forfeiture for failure to complete payment.² The particularly strong boom in western land sales in the postwar period and the secular trend of extensive sales of public domain in the nation’s expansion westward resulted in a heavy burden of debt owed to the federal government. By 1819, the debt on public lands totaled $23 million.³ With the panic making the debt problem urgent, Congress continued to pass postponement laws, delaying forfeiture for a year—in 1818, 1819, and 1820—but these measures could, at best, temporarily postpone the problem.

What to do about this debt to the federal government was clearly a federal problem. President James Monroe, who is generally considered to have been completely indifferent to the panic and to any remedial measures by government, put the public land debt question before Congress in his annual message of November 1820.⁴ He brought to the fore one of the leading arguments used by all advocates of debtors’ relief: namely, that the debtors had incurred their debt when prices were very high and now had to repay at a time when prices were very low and the purchasing power of the dollar unusually high. Monroe did not elaborate on this argument. He simply stated the fact and suggested that it might be advisable “to extend to the purchasers of these lands, in consideration of the unfavorable change, which has occurred since the sale, a reasonable indulgence.”

Two days after the President’s message, Senator Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky presented a resolution to permit debtors to relinquish a prorated part of the land which they had purchased, in proportion to their failure to pay, while obtaining title to the remainder of the land outright. Thus, a purchaser who was one-quarter in arrears could relinquish one-quarter of his land to the government and acquire clear title to the rest.⁵ It quickly became evident that this measure was the major concern of the movement for relief of the public land debtors. Shortly afterward, similar resolutions were presented by Senators John W. Walker of Alabama, James Noble of Indiana, and Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois.⁶ The Walker Resolution provided for complete forgiveness of any interest due on the outstanding debt—a move to cancel the existing 6 percent interest charged on installments due. Important support for the bill came in the annual report to the Senate, on December 5, 1820, by Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford.⁷ Crawford repeated President Monroe’s argument that much of the public land had been bought at very high prices during a boom period. Crawford was at pains to separate such debt relief from legislative interference with private contracts. But it was certainly legitimate, he asserted, for the government, as a creditor, to relax its own demands. Crawford proposed to allow proportional relinquishment of the unpaid portion of land, a 25–37½ percent forgiveness of the total debt, and permission for the borrower to pay sums due in ten equal annual installments without interest.

The resolutions were referred to the Senate Committee on Public Lands and were the signal for a deluge of petitions on behalf of the measure from all of the western states, where the public land debtors were concentrated.⁸ Several western state legislatures—Alabama, Missouri, and Kentucky—sent resolutions asking for passage of the measure. The resolutions mentioned not only the decline of prices but also other aspects of the depression: The Kentucky legislature cited the unexpected depression of earnings, profits, property values, wages, and the depreciation of local currencies as helping to impose a burden on the debtors, and thus increasing the need for relief. The Alabama legislature cited the “great diminution of the circulating medium.” The authors of the various resolutions did not engage in sustained reasoning to bolster their views.

The relief bill was reported to the Senate by Chairman Thomas of the Public Lands Committee on December 28. It followed the Crawford proposals closely. The major provision was the permission to relinquish the unpaid proportion of the land and attain clear title to the remainder for all those who had purchased public land before July 1, 1820. The bill also discharged the interest in arrears on the outstanding debt and added two further provisions: (1) the remainder of the debt could now be paid in eight annual installments, without interest charges, and payment of the full debt was extended for those who did not wish to take advantage of the relinquishment provision; (2) the grant of a special discount of 37½ percent for debtors who would pay promptly.

Senator Thomas, in his opening speech for the bill, warned that unless the relief were granted, all public land sold on credit would be forfeited to the government.⁹ He emphasized that the “capacity of the community to purchase” was now greatly diminished, compared to the capacity at the time the land was obtained. At the time when most of the debt was contracted the “price of produce of every description was more than 100% higher than at present.” Shortly after the bulk of the purchases, prices of produce fell to less than half their previous height. The burden on the debtors was aggravated by the fact that the banks, in their expansion during the boom, had liberally furnished money to the purchasers of public lands, inducing them to bid up the prices of the land to great heights. During the crisis, bank facilities were withdrawn, and banks were becoming bankrupt, their notes no longer receivable. The resulting destitution of the debtors, concluded Thomas, required governmental relief.

The major controversy over the bill was the question of which groups of debtors merited the relief. As reported by the committee, relief provisions would be restricted to those who had originally purchased the land from the government. They did not apply to those who had bought the public land with its outstanding indebtedness from the previous purchasers rather than from the government directly. Illinois Senator Ninian Edwards immediately called for the extension of the relief clauses to all public land holders.¹⁰ Edwards insisted that the greatest sufferers were those latecomers who had bought the land at a very high price from the original purchasers; in many cases, the original purchasers had sold the land at a great profit to the newcomers, and yet only the original purchasers could benefit from the bill.

In his argument for the relief bill as a whole, Edwards went into great detail to excuse the actions of the debtors. The debtors, like the rest of the country, had been infatuated by the short-lived, “artificial and fictitious prosperity.” They thought that the prosperity would be permanent. Lured by the cheap money of the banks, people were tempted to engage in a “multitude of the wildest projects and most visionary speculations,” as in the case of the Mississippi and South Sea bubbles of previous centuries. Edwards sternly reminded the Senate that the government itself had encouraged public land purchases by making some of its bonds and other claims upon it receivable in payment for the lands.¹¹ He also pointed to the distress prevailing among the debtors citing: the bank failures; the great contraction of the money supply; the loss of property values; unemployment; and general despair, as well as the fall in prices, all highlighting the need for governmental relief. Senator Thomas was apparently convinced by his colleague, and moved to extend the application of the relief bill to all holders of public land. The amendment was adopted by the Senate.¹²

The Thomas and Edwards arguments for relief legislation were repeated by Senator Johnson of Kentucky, who added specifically, in excuse for the debtors, that their distress was not caused by their “own imprudence” but by unforeseen changes in the economy, in prices, the money supply, and the state of the markets.¹³

Senator John Henry Eaton of Tennessee wanted a further restriction on the scope of the relief.¹⁴ He moved an amendment to restrict relief to the actual settlers only, thus withholding relief from the mere “speculators” in the public lands. No one rose to defend his amendment, which was subjected to a storm of criticism from western Senators and from one New Englander.¹⁵ Leading the attack was Walker of Alabama. He saw no reason why the government should discriminate among the purchases since they were sold to the highest bidders in good faith, and saw no reason why there should be a particular premium on settlement. His other major argument was that the government itself had fostered speculation on public lands. The Eaton Amendment was quickly rejected, but another amendment by Eaton drew more support and split the western delegation.¹⁶ This was a provision to grant special relief to the actual settlers by forgiving them an additional 25 percent of their unpaid debt. The amendment, however, was finally rejected.

Aside from the passage of an amendment, offered by Senator Nicholas Van Dyke of Delaware, placing a maximum limit on the size of the purchase to which the relief would be applied, the bill passed through the Senate with little opposition. It passed by a vote of thirty-six to five, and none of the five opponents spoke against the principle of the bill.¹⁷

Meanwhile, Representative John Crowell of Alabama had taken the lead of the pro-relief forces in the House of Representatives by submitting a similar bill to the House Public Lands Committee soon after the President’s address.¹⁸ When the House received the Senate bill, the committee reported it out very quickly without amendments. The House debate was distinguished by the one reported speech in Congress opposing the principle of the entire bill.¹⁹ Interestingly, this statement came not from some ultra eastern congressman far removed from the scene of the public land holders and their problems but from Representative Robert Allen of mid-Tennessee, a state that had been one of the centers of pro-relief agitation. Allen declared himself opposed completely to the whole principle of legislative interference with debt contracts. “If the people learn that debts can be paid with petitions and fair stories, you will soon have your table crowded,” Allen charged. The next step would be debtors demanding refunds of their previous payments. Indeed, where was the line to be drawn? Furthermore, such legislation constituted special privilege for public land debtors. To the argument that the debtors had not got the money for payment Allen calmly retorted that, in that case, the government would get the land back, and would therefore not be the loser.

In addition to these general arguments against government interference with contract, Allen hit hard at the speculation issue, which had been prominent in the Senate debates. He declared that no group could be less deserving of relief than the bulk of the public land purchasers. Allen, indeed, used the same set of facts that had been employed by Thomas and Edwards to denounce rather than excuse the debtors. He declared that the debtors had formed companies, had borrowed heavily from the banks in order to buy public land, and thereby these speculators had bid the land away from the actual settlers. The speculators had gone into debt never intending to pay the price anyway, but only to sell them for a higher price to others. Allen was sure that the actual settlers were a thrifty lot who did not run into debt. In a later speech, Allen retorted that the advocates of the bill, in pleading for the wretched and the poor, did not realize that the really poor never bought land.

There was far more active opposition to the relief bill in the House than in the Senate, and it was a minority of western representatives that took the lead in the opposition. Besides Allen, Representatives William McCoy from wealthy, rural Fauquier County, Virginia, and Benjamin Hardin of rural Nelson County, Kentucky, worked hard to defeat or limit the bill, but without success.²⁰ Kentucky Representative George Robertson from rural Garrard County, tried to amend the bill to exclude speculators from its benefits and confine the bill to actual settlers, but the amendment lost by a small majority. Robertson was a leading lawyer who later became Chief Justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals. The only victory for the anti-relief forces was the defeat of an attempt to make the reduction in debt unconditional instead of as a bonus for prompt payment.²¹

The only reply by the relief forces was that of Thomas Metcalf, from commercial Lexington, Kentucky, who declared that relief was called for particularly since the government’s own policies had “beguiled” these debtors into error.²²

The bill finally passed the House on February 28 by a vote of 97 to 40.²³ Following is a geographic breakdown of the roll-call vote in the House (bearing in mind that the negative was only the hard core of the greater opposition which had made itself felt in the voting on amendments):

Voting on Relief for Public Land Debtors

	For		Against
New England
Maine	3		—
Vermont	2		1
New Hampshire	—		5
Massachusetts	6		3
Connecticut	2		4
Rhode Island	—		1
	—		—
Total	13		14
Middle Atlantic
New York	17		4
New Jersey	3		1
Pennsylvania	13		3
Delaware	—		—
Maryland	5		2
	—		—
Total	24		12
South
Virginia	14		6
North Carolina	2		4
South Carolina	3		2
Georgia	5		—
	—		—
Total	38		10
West
Tennessee	4		3
Other western States
(Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Alabama)	18		—
	—		—
Total	22		3

The relief bill was thus supported by all sections of the country except New England—evenly split on the issue. The hard-core opposition sentiment was pretty widely scattered geographically, with the exception of the West, although proportionally greatest in New England. The opposition was fairly strong in the South, but not in the important large Middle Atlantic States of New York and Pennsylvania. The West, with the exception of Tennessee, was overwhelmingly for the measure, with even such skeptical Kentuckians as Hardin and Robertson joining in voting for final passage.

Since various proposals for debtors’ relief legislation in the states caused indignant opposition in such places as New York City, one might be wondering why the New York representatives agreed to the measure. Perhaps one reason was that much of the public lands were held by eastern speculators. Another reason was that, after all, this particular debt was owed to the federal government itself, so that relief laws or changes in the contract by the government were directly the government’s concern as one of the parties to the contract. There was not here a question of interference in private debt contracts. Hence the disposition, in Congress and out, was to let the relief advocates have their way in this case without much opposition.

Even Hezekiah Niles, influential editor of Niles’ Weekly Register, who had no use for debtors’ relief legislation, reluctantly approved of this bill, although he was critical of the public land speculators and apprehensive that the debtors would relinquish the poorest land to the government.²⁴

And so the public land debtors gained their desired relief measure with little opposition. Large numbers of debtors took advantage of the relief relinquishment provision; half of the public land debt in Alabama—which in turn constituted half of the nation’s total—was paid up within a year. Yet most of those who relinquished the land continued to cultivate it and treat it as their own.²⁵

The major arguments for land debt relief—the plight of the debtors, the distressed conditions, lower prices—could be used on behalf of other, more far-reaching, measures for debtors’ relief, private as well as governmental. They were so used, both for direct relief measures designed to aid the debtor directly and for monetary proposals aimed partly or sometimes wholly at debtors’ relief. Against these proposals, the opposition was far more vocal and vigorous.

The immediate and pressing problem for debtors was the legal judgments accumulating against them for payment of their debts. Consequently, they turned to the state legislatures, which had jurisdiction over such contracts, to try to modify the provisions for payment. The proposed laws either postponed legal executions of property or prohibited sales of debtors’ property below a certain minimum price. The moratoria were known as “stay laws” or “replevin laws,” which postponed execution of property when the debtor signed a pledge to make the payment at a certain date in the future. Minimum appraisal laws provided that no property could be sold for execution below a certain minimum price, the appraised value being generally set by a board of the debtors’ neighbors. Such laws had been an intermittent feature of American government since early colonial Virginia.²⁶

The eastern states were heavily embroiled in controversy over debtors’ and monetary legislation. Delaware, for example, was hard hit by the depression, and its relatively commercial New Castle County, in the north, had a particularly heavy incidence of suits for debt payments. As the Delaware legislative session opened at the beginning of 1819, New Castle County was a hub of agitation for debtors’ relief legislation. Its Representatives Henry Whitely and Isaac Hendrickson submitted petitions from over 450 citizens asking for some sort of relief to debtors of banks. Finally, the Delaware House created a committee headed by Representative Henry Brinckle to consider the issues raised by these petitions, as well as banking proposals which will be considered below.²⁷ The committee took only a week to issue its report.²⁸ It noted that among the major relief legislation proposed were some acts that would prohibit execution of judgments completely, and some that would compel creditors to take such property at a minimum appraised valuation. The Brinckle Committee rejected all such proposals on grounds of unconstitutionality and because suspension of execution would endanger the position of creditors and impair the good faith of contracts.

As was the case in most states where relief proposals were debated, the report provoked a storm. Two members of the five-man committee, headed by New Castle’s Representative John T. Cochran, moved rejection of the paragraph condemning relief laws. The motion was defeated by a vote of sixteen to four.²⁹ The dispute, therefore, cannot be simply described as a geographical split within the state, since the majority of each county voted down the amendment.

The large eastern state of New Jersey gave serious consideration to stay laws on executions. A Committee of Inquiry was appointed by the New Jersey General Assembly, 1820 session, to consider a stay law, which would have postponed executions if the creditor refused to accept the debtors’ property at or above a minimum appraised value. A report strongly in the negative was delivered by Representative Joseph Hopkinson, and this served to send the bill down to a two-and-a-half-to-one defeat in the House.³⁰

The arguments of the Hopkinson Report were a well-considered statement, typical of the opposition to debtors’ relief legislation, as well as to proposals to increase the money supply. The report began with assurances that the committee was deeply sensitive to the prevailing financial embarrassments, and that they had given due weight to the numerous petitions for relief legislation. While the proposed legislation, however, would perhaps alleviate the condition of the debtors temporarily, it would, in the long run, make their distress worse. The contention that relief legislation would eventually intensify the depression was a central argument for the opposition in all the states. The Hopkinson Committee used a familiar medical analogy noting that “palliatives which may suspend the pain for a season, but do not remove the disease, are not restoratives of health; it is worse than useless to lessen the present pressure by means which will finally plunge us deeper in distress.” They added that it was their duty to be truthful with the people and not delude them with promises that could not be kept—even at the expense of their “immediate displeasure”—an indication perhaps that the proposal was popular in New Jersey. The report remarked that suffering men were disposed to complain about their lot and look for rapid remedies rather than admit that the only cure was slow and gradual. As a result they would flee to patent-medicine panaceas, which would only make their condition worse.

Specifically, how would the proposed stay of execution law deepen rather than remedy the distress of the people? First, a stay law would not extinguish the debt, which would still remain outstanding. Second, the real reason for the depression was the lack of “mutual confidence.” Only such confidence could lead to a revival of credit and activity. But it was clear, declared the Hopkinson Committee, that the distress would greatly increase if a potential creditor were prohibited by law from recovering his loan from a delinquent debtor. A stay law would eliminate rather than restore credit, confidence, and business activity.

Unsuccessful attempts to pass a minimum appraisal law and a stay law also took place in conservative New York State. Ultra-conservative Massachusetts considered but did not pass a stay law. The proposed New York minimum appraisal law, in 1819, provided that in all cases of judgments on houses and lands, the court officer shall appoint three disinterested men—one a representative of the creditor, one of the debtor and one picked by the court officer—to appraise the real estate at its “just and true value, in money.” The creditor, in order to obtain payment, would be obliged to accept the property at such value. This bill was defeated by a three-to-one margin.³¹ A proposal for a stay law was also offered and rejected by a two-to-one margin. A bill was later passed, however, relaxing the processes against insolvent debtors.³²

Maryland, on the other hand, passed a stay law by a near two-to-one majority. It also passed a law in 1819–20 exempting household articles worth up to $50 from sales at execution—a considerable aid to harassed debtors.³³ There was much agitation for a special session of the Maryland legislature to enact a stay law. Citizens of rural Somerset County in southeastern Maryland, for example, called for a special session, citing the high proportion of enterprising citizens in serious debt.³⁴ The agitation drew the criticism of the alert, conservative New York Daily Advertiser, Federalist organ for merchants.³⁵ It pointed out that the distress of farmers and those trading with them, stemmed from the low prices of agricultural produce, and no legislative tempering with debt contracts could raise these prices in foreign markets. Furthermore, “the shock which business of every description . . . receives from [these] measures . . . is more than a counterbalance to any monetary relief.” It went on to criticize the debtors for speculations and extravagance.

That the West had no monopoly on debtors’ relief agitation is attested by the furious fight over stay laws in the Vermont legislature. In the fall of 1818, the Vermont House defeated numerous attempts to postpone consideration of the bill, and finally passed it by a three-vote margin.³⁶ The Senate failed to pass the bill in that session, and this precipitated another battle in the 1820 session. Repeated motions to postpone were rejected by two-to-one majorities, and the bill was passed by a similar margin, after limiting amendments to force the debtor to swear to inability to pay and to limit the bill to debtors with families had overwhelmingly failed.³⁷ The Senate still persisted in its failure to pass the bill, however, and so the House finally surrendered in the next session, by a three-to-one majority.³⁸ The legislature finally passed a law staying all executions for debt in the spring of 1822, after the crisis had ended. But that summer, the new law met the fate of many similar state laws, and was declared unconstitutional by the Circuit Court.³⁹

In Rhode Island a unique situation faced the debtors. Since the establishment of Rhode Island’s first chartered bank in 1791, a unique “bank process” privilege had been granted to banks of the state. When obligations to a bank fell due, the bank officers had only to give legal notice to the debtor. The courts were then forced to enter judgment against the defendant immediately and issue executions without the customary legal trial—although the debtor was permitted a trial if he denied the legality of the debt. All other debtors, including banks themselves, were entitled to the usual judicial proceedings. One of Rhode Island’s first acts on the onset of the panic late in 1818 was to repeal the summary bank process laws.⁴⁰

One of the most interesting of the controversies over the debtor’s relief legislation occurred in Virginia—a stronghold of economic conservatism. Virginia’s leading statesmen were noteworthy for their opposition to fiduciary banking, expansion of paper money, and government interference with the economy.⁴¹ Yet, the Virginia General Assembly engaged in a spirited debate over a proposed minimum appraisal law. This law would prevent any sale of property under execution unless the property sold for at least three-fourths of its “value,” as appraised by a governmentally appointed commission.⁴² The chief advocate of the bill was Representative Thomas Miller, from rural Powhatan County. Miller concentrated on the plight of the large number of debtors.⁴³ In Virginia, he explained, most business was transacted on credit. The farmers, in borrowing to work on their crops, had done so when tobacco sold at $12 a pound, and wheat at $2 a bushel. Naturally they had anticipated that this prosperity would continue. Then, when they had to repay their debts, they were confronted with tobacco at $5 and wheat at $1. The value of the resources that they could use to pay debts had been reduced by more than half, yet the price of imported articles, such as woolens, sugar, and coffee had remained unchanged. This situation was general throughout the state.

Miller emphasized that the debtors could not be blamed for their plight. The change was a sudden one and was not due simply to their “extravagance.” The expansion of banks and bank credit had raised the prices of property and produce, and induced the people to go into debt. Then, swiftly, the banks stopped expanding and contracted their loans and notes; the result was contraction of money and prices, and a great burden of debt. The responsibility for the debtors’ plight was therefore that of the banks, and not of the debtors themselves. Miller laid blame on the state banks and the Bank of the United States; the latter for serving as an expansionist force from its inception, then initiating the contraction, thereby causing a multiple contraction by the state banks. Since extravagance was not the cause of the crisis, mere calls for “industry and economy” would not effect a rapid cure; and the legislature, which had assured the people that its chartered banks were good for the community, owed it to them to throw them a plank in the present sea of distress.

Miller’s argument is particularly interesting in harmonizing the general anti-bank sentiment in Virginia with an argument for debtors’ relief. The advocates of debtors’ relief laws generally favored monetary expansion plans as remedies for the crisis. In many states the two were tied together, so that creditors were penalized with stay laws if they should refuse the new paper money, which would be loaned to debtors, to enable them to repay their debts. Yet, in this case, in a state of generally anti-paper money opinion, the leading advocates of debtors’ relief linked together anti-bank ideas with pleas for a minimum appraisal law.

The same argument was advanced by another leading supporter, Representative William Cabell Rives of Nelson County.⁴⁴ He denounced the banks and called the relief law essential to the salvation of the people. In lurid terms he denounced the shylock creditors, who were bent on extracting their pound of flesh from the hearts of the people.⁴⁵

The most comprehensive attack on the relief proposal came from Representative William Selden, of Henrico County, a middle-sized farming county adjacent to Powhatan and similar in the composition of its population.⁴⁶ He recognized that the value of money had changed, but asserted that it was not subject to regulation by the government. The value of money depended on the quantity of circulating medium and the quantity of goods; “money itself is an article of traffic” like any other. “Human legislation on this subject is worse than vain.”

Selden proceeded to attack the idea of special privilege legislation for any class of citizens, such as farmers or debtors. The fact that debtors might be in the majority does not make such legislation just. Such class legislation would confiscate the property of the creditor and ruin the merchants who gave credit to their customers. Selden stressed the importance of personal responsibility for contracts and actions; the debtor should “pay the consequence of his own folly of imprudence.” In short, freedom of contract must be maintained; “Leave men alone to make their own contracts, and leave contracts alone when they are made.”⁴⁷

Representative Robert T. Thompson, of wealthy Fairfax County, added another argument against the law. Objecting to the appraisement provision, he declared that property had only one value: the “price which it could command” at a fair public sale, and that its value could not be determined by any commission. Furthermore, Thompson wondered why there was no pressure for acceleration of debt payment during boom periods. He concluded by urging that the legislature let the “cure . . . go on,” this cure being the elimination of the common habits of extravagance and luxury.

The outcome of the debate was rejection of the minimum appraisal bill by a vote of 113 to 74.⁴⁸ The relief forces, however, tried again with two proposed stay laws in the 1820–21 session. These were rejected by a narrow margin.⁴⁹

The conservative attitude toward the financial difficulties was reflected in the message to the Virginia legislature of Governor James P. Preston.⁵⁰ The embarrassments were caused by general imprudence, extravagance, love of ease, and an inordinate desire to grow rich quickly. Preston declared that the remedy for the crisis was a return to the old habits of industry and economy.⁵¹

North Carolina, plagued by a rapid fall in prices and land values, and beset by bankruptcies and failures, also saw a controversy over a stay law. Governor John Branch, in his message to the legislature in the 1820 session, proposed a stay and a minimum appraisal law to appraise the debtor’s property at its “intrinsic value.” There was too much opposition, however, for the bill to pass. Branch did succeed in passing a stay law for debtors who had purchased former Cherokee Indian land from the state.⁵²

The pivotal state of Pennsylvania, which gave a great deal of thought to proposals for remedying the depression, considered stay laws and minimum appraisal laws. A minimum appraisal law was first suggested by two Representatives from widely separated rural areas, John Noble and James Reeder.⁵³ They urged a law forcing creditors to accept the real estate of debtors at a value set by an official. If they refused, execution of the judgment against the debtor was to be stayed for three years. Their major argument was that, while debtors generally had enough paper currency to have discharged the debt, the widespread depreciation of paper had placed a danger of forced sales on a great portion of Pennsylvania farmers and rural citizens.

The legislature never considered this bill seriously, despite the fact that Governor William Findlay urged its passage.⁵⁴ Attempts to pass such legislation were killed by the reports of several special committees on the economic distress in the next sessions of the legislature. One report was submitted by the fiery Representative William Duane, editor of the daily Philadelphia Aurora—the old stronghold of arch-Republicanism.⁵⁵ Duane, as chairman of the Special Committee on the General State of the Domestic Economy, declared that widespread distress prevailed among creditors, farmers, and mechanics throughout the state. In county after county, citizens testified to daily sacrifices of property and defaults on debts. Granting that a minimum appraisal law would afford some relief to specific debtors, such a law would be economically unsound, as well as an unjust special privilege for the debtor. Duane, like Hopkinson in New Jersey, declared that one of the greatest obstacles to a return of prosperity was the “absence of credit or confidence,” and nothing could better delay a revival of confidence than such a measure.⁵⁶The famous Raguet Report, in the 1821 session, also rejected such debtors’ legislation, but, without engaging in analysis of the proposal, stated simply that it was impracticable and dishonorable.⁵⁷

Despite this recommendation, Pennsylvania passed a minimum appraisal law in March, 1821, providing that bankrupt property must be sold for two-thirds of its assessed valuation, else the debt would be stayed for one year.⁵⁸ Further, the legislature, without controversy, modified the provisions of the execution laws in order to alleviate some of the burdens of the insolvent debtors. Specifically, a defendant could prevent sale of his landed property, if the property was considered to be unprofitable.⁵⁹

One of the most acute and original critiques of stay and minimum appraisal legislation was the product of “A Pennsylvanian” writing in the conservative—formerly Federalist—Philadelphia Union.⁶⁰ “A Pennsylvanian” noted that these laws were being advocated in many petitions to the legislature. Aside from their impairment of contract, such laws would, rather than relieve the distress, have a “most pernicious effect.” For the distress was caused by two factors, a lack of money and a lack of confidence. Such laws would not increase the amount of money in circulation, and therefore would not relieve the first cause. On the other hand, they would destroy the little confidence that now remained; they would induce the withdrawal of large amounts of capital now employed and mitigating the distress. The withdrawn capital would

be either invested in the public funds or perhaps [be driven] to other states, where a higher rate of interest already holds out a sufficient temptation, and the people are too wise to destroy public confidence by laws impeding the recovery of debt.

“A Pennsylvanian” pointed to United States and City of Philadelphia 6 percent bonds being currently at 3 percent above par—indicating a great deal of idle capital waiting for return of public confidence before being applied to the relief of commerce and manufacturing. Thus, in the process of criticizing debtors’ relief legislation, the “Pennsylvanian” was led beyond a general reference to the importance of “confidence” to an unusually extensive analysis of the problems of investment, idle capital, and the rate of interest.

In the heavily indebted agricultural states of the West, there was greater agitation for debtors’ relief legislation. These states passed more such legislation than the eastern states, but generally only after an intense and continuing controversy. Although the relief sentiment was greater in the West, there were strong groups of advocates and opponents in each state.

Although Ohio was hit very heavily by the crisis, debtors’ relief proposals did not make too much of an impact or generate great controversy. Ohio had had a minimum appraisement law since its inception as a state in 1803. The law set a minimum price at forced sale at two-thirds an official appraisal of the debtor’s property—the appraisement to be performed by a board of the debtor’s neighbors. If the auction sale brought less, the property would be retained by the insolvent debtor.⁶¹ The laws were effective in shielding the debtor, although there were complaints that often the officials’ appraisals were at a very low value, hardly higher than the market value itself.⁶² In other cases, where appraisals were set at a high value, there were complaints in the press that creditors were being victimized. The Cleveland Herald cited one case of a creditor obliged by the law to accept miscellaneous articles of personal property (such as watches, dogs, barrels) at an inflated value or be forced to wait at least six months to collect. The Herald called for repeal of the appraisement law.⁶³ In sum, the plight of the debtors in Ohio was urgent, but their attention was concentrated on measures other than direct intervention in debt contracts.⁶⁴

Thinly populated and overwhelmingly rural, Indiana was also heavily in debt and hard-hit by the economic crisis. As soon as the crisis struck, Indiana moved swiftly to pass debtors’ relief legislation. The main argument was that such laws benefited debtor and creditor alike, since the creditors could only be harmed by the ruin of their debtors, a ruin inevitable should the rapid debt-collection system remain in effect.⁶⁵ In 1819, the Indiana legislature passed two relief laws; one increased the amount of personal property exempted from execution sales; the other stayed executions for one year unless the creditor agreed to accept at par the new paper money of the State Bank of Indiana, or to accept at par money of the other chartered banks in the state.⁶⁶ The measures passed in the Senate with only one dissenter.⁶⁷ On January 18, 1820, Indiana passed a minimum appraisal law providing for sales at a value of two-thirds of appraisal value and a one-year stay for creditors refusing these terms. The opposition to the Indiana relief laws centered on the banking proposals and the State Bank paper, rather than on the stay provision itself.

In the next session, the Indiana legislature passed a stronger minimum appraisal law, patterned after the Ohio measure. It provided that, in the case of insolvency, the sheriff request seventy-five freeholders to estimate the value of the debtor’s property, and then the property could not be sold for less than two-thirds of this appraised value. If the property did not sell for at least this amount, the debtor was granted a year’s stay. With almost all the freeholders being debtors, the appraisals were generally set at a very high rate, discouraging almost all forced sales.⁶⁸ In 1824, amid revived business activity, the anti-reliefers succeeded in repealing the appraisement law.

In Illinois, the major concentration in the state legislature was on the establishment of a new state-owned bank for issuing large amounts of paper money. The debtor’s relief legislation was originally linked with the new bank. It provided that if creditors refused to accept the new state bank paper as payment for their debts, all executions would be stayed for nine months. Furthermore, the debtor would have the right to reclaim the property (to replevy) if he made full payment within three years. Thus, Illinois enacted the equivalent of a three-year stay of execution if the creditor refused to accept the new paper at par for payment of the debt.⁶⁹ Even if the creditors accepted the notes, however, the debtors could claim rights of replevy for sixty days and judgments were stayed for one month. Debt contracts explicitly made in gold and silver, and which therefore had to be repaid in kind, were stayed for a period of one to five months. As further relief for all debtors immediate judgment could only be rendered against one-third of a debt, while all real estate, except that previously mortgaged, was exempted from judgments.⁷⁰

Interestingly enough, the most bitter opponent of the inconvertible bank paper plan—Representative Wickliff Kitchell, of rural Crawford County in eastern Illinois—introduced a substitute debt-relief program of his own, albeit more modest than the three-year replevy law. Kitchell proposed a flat one-year stay on all executions for pending judgments on past debts. The execution would apply if the creditor swore that the property was in danger of being lost, in which case the debtor would have the right to replevy the property for one year, and for two years for debts over $500. There would be no stay or replevy for debts contracted in the future. The substitute bill was rejected in the Illinois House by a vote of 16 to 10. However, the legislature passed an additional mandatory nine-month stay law on all pending executions.⁷¹

Extreme western Missouri, just in the process of becoming a state, was the scene of one of the most comprehensive programs of relief legislation, and also of one of the most vigorous controversies over relief. Missouri had had particularly widespread speculation in land, and incurred heavy indebtedness in the course of this speculation.⁷² Most of this speculation during the prosperous postwar years, in town lots as well as in farms, was predicated on a continued heavy wave of migration to the West by men with money to spend. The wave came to a halt during the depression, adding to the crisis and fall in prices, and spreading insolvency among the debtors and landholders in the state.⁷³ One striking result during the era (and this was also true in Illinois) was the large number of ghost towns—built during the boom—now mute evidence of the highly erroneous expectations of a few years before. As was the case throughout the West, a good part of the indebtedness was committed in public lands and was owed to the federal government. We have already seen the action that the government took to relieve this problem. This relief did not solve the problem of the private land-debtors or of the merchants deeply in debt, who had anticipated heavy demand from relatively well-to-do immigrants. The press reported widespread imprisonments for debt and noted that few could afford to attend the sheriff’s sales to purchase the debtors’ property. There were many cases of forced sale of land for tax delinquency. Close to the barter of the frontier, it is not surprising that many business firms announced their willingness to take produce in payment of debts.

In the spring of 1821, public pressure erupted for relief legislation by the state, and the pro-relief forces agitated for a special session of the legislature.⁷⁴ Many newspaper articles, in April and May of 1821, cited the mass of unpayable debts and urged governmental relief. The author of one such article signed himself “Nine-Tenths of the People.”⁷⁵ There had been rumors of a special session since early March, and the supporting articles were responses to these rumors.

Opposition to such legislation, however, was also vocal. As early as August 16, 1820, thirteen members of the grand jury of St. Louis—the urban center of Missouri—denounced any stay or minimum appraisal law. They declared that stay laws for land debts alone (which were being proposed) would be special privilege for landholders.⁷⁶ Opposition was expressed on constitutional grounds also. A citizens’ meeting in May at Boonville, Cooper County, in central Missouri, denounced any debt interference legislation as immoral and unconstitutional. The sacredness of contracts was emphasized in an article in the Missouri Gazette, in March; the author declaring that only regular bankruptcy laws were just, and that the only leniency should be by voluntary act of the creditors themselves.

Other writers stressed the pernicious economic effect of stay and other debtors’ relief laws. They declared that creditors would cease to lend their money, and that such laws would interrupt business calculation and discourage regular trade. The laws would only aggravate the crisis further.⁷⁷

Despite this strong opposition, on April 24 the Governor called a special session to be convened on June 1, ostensibly only to consider imminent statehood. The conservative forces sensed that the major aim was relief, however, and became very vocal in opposing the expected storm. The Jackson Independent Patriot, from rural southeastern Missouri, and the St. Charles Missourian took the lead in expressing fears of a replevin law. This opposition was echoed by most of the other leading newspapers, such as the Missouri Intelligencer and the St. Louis Enquirer.⁷⁸

The fears of the conservatives proved justified. In his message of June 4, Governor Alexander McNair cited the “Pecuniary embarrassments . . . heretofore unknown to us,” and five days later a debtors’ relief bill was introduced in the House.⁷⁹ The bill, which became law in this session, provided for a two-and-one-half-year moratorium for executions on land debts only. Under the law, the debtor could at any time replevy all land sold at sheriff’s auction by a mere payment of his debt plus 10 percent interest. The theory of the legislation was that most Missourians in the state were landholders, and that therefore this form of relief was particularly needed. It was hoped that in two and one half years revived prosperity would permit the farmer-debtors to keep their land. The special session also established a state loan office to issue paper money, reduced the penalties of imprisonment for debt, and exempted various personal necessaries from forced sales at auction.

The major act of the special session was the establishment of the loan office. When the fall session convened in November, the relief forces were anxious to enlarge the system through a strong stay and minimum appraisal law. This law was desired for its own sake, as well as to assist circulation of the new notes, and to supersede the previous law that applied only to land. The proposed law became the most vehemently debated issue of the fall session. Governor McNair’s opening message was extremely cautious. He hoped for “some effective plan of relief” which would “blend with our humanity for the unfortunate debtor a due respect for the principles of the Constitution and the rights of creditors.”⁸⁰ On this hotly controversial issue, the Governor was leaving the initiative strictly to the legislature. The battle was extremely close in the House, which at one time rejected the bill by a tie vote of 21 to 21, but the bill finally passed, after high pressure by the relief forces, on a vote of 23 to 18. The bill barely passed the Senate by a vote of 7 to 5 and became law.⁸¹ The voting on the stay-minimum appraisal law, as well as on the loan office bill, cut sharply across sectional lines. The constituencies, such as St. Louis, Jackson, and Boonville, were closely divided within themselves.⁸²

Considered by the relief forces—headed by Representative Duff Green—as the climax of the relief program, this law featured a minimum appraisal provision.⁸³ In each township, the county court was to appoint three people to appraise the worth of the debtor’s property. The creditor was forced to accept the property at least at two-thirds of the official value. On the other hand, if, at the public sale, the property sold for more than two-thirds the official appraisal, the creditor was still entitled to only two-thirds of the sale price, while the debtor could keep the remainder. If the creditor refused to accept the property under this provision, the debtor was granted a stay of two and one half years in payment.

This was a very strong minimum appraisal law, yet the relief forces were not satisfied. They were disappointed that the law did not force the creditor to accept the new loan office certificates as an alternative to the two-and-one-half-year stay. Without such a clause the law was too narrow of application. Consequently, the relief forces were able to pass a supplementary stay law, which gave the creditor the choice of accepting two-thirds of the appraised value of the property in loan-office certificates at par or suffer a two-and-one-half-year stay.⁸⁴ Again, the division in the legislature was very close, 17 to 15 in the House and 6 to 4 in the Senate, and again the voting cut across sectional lines in every county.⁸⁵

During the course of relief agitation in the summer and fall of 1821, the bulk of the Missouri press swung over to support the relief program. The opposition branded the relief laws as the work of selfish groups of “spendthrifts” and “big speculators” working their influence on the state legislature. The theme of the opposition, as in the case of public land debtors described previously, was that the law was being pushed by bankrupt speculators and spendthrifts, and not by the “honest” debtors, although no criterion was laid down to distinguish between these groups of debtors.⁸⁶ The speculators were also accused of buying the support of the press.⁸⁷ Another common opposition theme held that pressure for relief came from the wealthy debtors rather than from the mass of poor. Thus, the Missouri Republican declared that the relief legislation was intended to preserve the “wealthy debtor in his palace,” and that, in general, it benefited the dishonest man and burdened the just.⁸⁸

As was the case with most debtors’ relief and monetary expansion laws passed in this period, the stay laws ran into trouble with the courts and were declared unconstitutional by the State Circuit Courts in July, 1822. The furious relief advocates called for a purge of the judiciary, and the battle over the relief issue continued to rage.⁸⁹ In the fall of 1821, before the climactic stay law legislation, the elections, drawn on the relief question, had yielded victory for the relief forces. Thus, in October, 1821, Pierre Chouteau, merchant and son of an eminent family in the state, ran as a debtors’ relief candidate. He defeated Robert Walsh, running in opposition in a special election for State Senator from St. Louis. A similar victory for the relief forces was gained in Howard County, a rural district in central Missouri, adjacent to Boonville. Now, after the court decision and a turning of the tide in public opinion, the general election to the legislature on August 7, 1822 hinged directly on relief as the critical issue. The relief forces advocated constitutional amendments to smash judicial opposition to the relief laws, while the opposition advocated repeal of the entire relief structure. The elections were a victory for the anti-relief forces. The pivotal city of St. Louis returned three reliefers and three anti-reliefers in the House, and John S. Ball, an anti-reliefer, to the State Senate; and in another special Senatorial election in St. Louis, in October, 1822, an anti-reliefer triumphed.⁹⁰

Sensing the political currents, Governor McNair, who had started it all the previous year, strongly recommended, in his opening message of November 4, the elimination of the chaos by repealing all of the relief laws.⁹¹ He declared that they had not proved successful in alleviating the financial distress, and that, furthermore, the crisis was ending from natural causes. In final analysis, the only true remedies were the gradual ceasing of speculation, a change from luxury to economy, avoidance of debts or extravagance, and a growth in industry and enterprise. The legislature lost no time in complying with McNair’s wishes. On November 27, a bill to repeal the stay-minimum appraisal laws was introduced and passed by a large majority.

In early 1821, Louisiana passed—with little or no controversy—a stay law suspending execution sales for two and one half years and imposing a minimum of personal property that could be retained by the debtor.⁹²

Relatively developed, compared to the other western states, were Tennessee and Kentucky. These were the best-known centers of debtors’ relief agitation and legislation. Tennessee had experienced a pronounced boom since the war with the opening of new lands, increased production of cotton at booming prices, and a great expansion of the credit system.⁹³ The monetary contraction and the fall in the cotton price wreaked extensive damage on the numerous debtors, particularly in the cotton-growing regions. Insolvencies and forced sales abounded.⁹⁴

As in many other states, debtors turned to the state legislature for aid.⁹⁵ The center of relief agitation was the predominantly cotton-growing middle Tennessee, particularly Nashville, the most populous city in the state. The acknowledged leader of the relief agitation was the wealthy, influential merchant and politician, Felix Grundy of Nashville. Grundy, formerly Chief Justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals and a leading Representative in the Tennessee legislature, became a candidate again for his old post as State Representative in the summer of 1819, basing his campaign on a relief platform.⁹⁶ The relief proposals centered on the banking system and on stay laws for debts. Many other legislative candidates also ran on a relief platform and were active in proposing plans of action. Many of the candidates gathered in the Davidson County courthouse (Nashville is in Davidson County), on July 19, to discuss the need for relief. They were supported by the influential Nashville Clarion, which urged the legislature to suspend execution of debt judgments.⁹⁷ Grundy and numerous other reliefers were elected, and, soon after the legislature opened, Grundy opened the relief struggle by introducing a set of resolutions.⁹⁸ The resolutions began by pointing to the distress prevailing in the state, which “requires the early and serious attention of the legislature.” The Grundy resolution did not mention a stay law, but implied it and urged that creditors be prohibited from forcing debtors to pay in specie. It advocated forcing creditors to accept the notes of state banks at par or forfeit their debt.

Following up his resolutions, Felix Grundy introduced a bill in the Tennessee House staying all executions of judgments for two years, unless creditors accepted notes of the leading banks in the state at par.⁹⁹ Passage of this bill in October, 1819, by an overwhelming vote of 24 to 10 in the House and a similar majority in the Senate, constituted the first major victory for the debtors’ relief forces in Tennessee.¹⁰⁰ Another conditional stay law passed in the 1819 session was one introduced by Representative William Williams, of Davidson County. This provided that when a bank was the creditor and refused to accept at par, in payment of a debt judgment, either its own notes or the notes of the two leading banks in Tennessee, the execution would be stayed for two years. This bill was passed overwhelmingly with very little opposition. Another aid to the debtors passed in this session was a bill by Williams tightening the usury laws, by setting maximum rates of interest on loans.¹⁰¹

During early 1820, relief agitation grew in strength, this time centering on proposals for a new state loan office or bank to issue inconvertible paper along with further stay provisions. The reliefers called for a special session in the spring of 1820. It is interesting to note the Nashville Clarion proudly proclaimed that several men of wealth had taken the lead in the call for an extra session. Typical of the appeals for a special relief session was the petition of citizens from Williamson County, adjacent to Davidson.¹⁰² The petition pointed to the great decline in the price of produce, to the contraction of bank credit, and to the consequent multiplying suits for debt payment. Blame was laid on the “avidity of the creditors to collect,” which seems to increase “in an inverse ratio to the ability of the debtor to pay.” Unless relief were offered quickly, warned the petition, most of the citizens would suffer insolvency and ruin. East Tennessee, the region centering on Knoxville as its leading city, was largely opposed to the relief program and to the proposed special session.¹⁰³ Typical was the vigorous disapproval of the Knoxville Register.¹⁰⁴ It declared that the people were opposed, and charged that the huge number of petitions for relief and a special session, as described in the Nashville press, had come from only three counties endorsed by “but half a dozen signatures.” The honest, the industrious, the prudent citizens needed no relief and desired no special session. The demand for relief, charged the Register, was coming from those who had made purchases without capital, and lived in luxury beyond their means. “Now that they have run their race, they wish the Legislature to pass a law that they may keep their honest creditor from recovering his debts.” A grand jury from Sumner County, adjacent to Davidson County, declared that those seeking relief were not the poor and needy but those large businesses and speculators who had extended their credit with the banks; moreover, only these wealthy debtors would benefit from relief.¹⁰⁵ The Courier, from Murfreesboro, a town near Nashville, replied that the debtors’ distress was not owing to their own imprudence but to a “fall of foreign markets, and the domestic scarcity of a circulating medium,” resulting in a great fall in the value of property. Legislative interference, it concluded, was necessary to save the people from bankruptcy and ruin.¹⁰⁶ The East Tennessee opposition had a different view of the consequences of stay legislation. Thus, the Knoxville East Tennessee Patriot admitted that a stay law might give temporary relief to some people, but warned that its impairment of contracts would lead to increased rather than diminished bankruptcies.¹⁰⁷ The East Tennesseans had even made a strong but unsuccessful effort to nip the debtors’ relief campaign in the bud by sending Enoch Parsons, losing gubernatorial candidate in 1819, to Nashville to campaign against Felix Grundy’s election.¹⁰⁸

While the opponents of debtors’ relief charged that wealthy debtors were behind the movement, the relief forces made a similar charge. The Nashville Clarion, ignoring the eastern Tennessee opposition and its own praise for the wealthy supporters of relief, bluntly charged that the only opposition to relief came from land speculators and the “monied aristocracy of Nashville” opposed to the relief of the people.¹⁰⁹ In fact, much vigorous opposition to debtors’ relief centered in Nashville and Davidson County itself, despite the fact that the relief forces stemmed from that area. The Nashville Gazette retorted to the Clarion’s charge that in the opposition there were “men who have money—and men who have none.” The opposition to relief legislation cut across lines of wealth.¹¹⁰

Governor Joseph McMinn, elected in 1819, granted the wish of Grundy and the relief forces, and called a special session for June 26.¹¹¹ In his opening address, McMinn pointed to the unprecedented general pressure and urged that debtors be saved from destruction.¹¹² “The people should be made to see,” he declared,

that public agents . . . have not abandoned them in their affliction. Men’s confidence in each other’s solvency will be restored; the thirst for purchasing at sheriff’s sales will be allayed; treasures which are now hoarded up to be used in fattening on calamity will be drawn out and again circulated in the ordinary channels of useful industry.

Thus, McMinn emphasized the ending of hoarding as a prime element in recovery. The relief advocates agreed with their opponents that the restoration of confidence was important to recovery, but urged that only aid to debtors would accomplish this end.

To gain the objective of relief, Governor McMinn advocated a loan office measure to increase the supply of paper money, a stay law, and a minimum appraisal law. The major controversy in that session was the loan office bill. He recommended a stay law as a corollary to the loan office bill, providing for a stay of execution for two years, unless the creditor were willing to accept the new paper notes at par in payment for the debt. McMinn further suggested a minimum appraisal law which would compel the creditor to accept the debtors’ property at a valuation fixed by a governmentally appointed committee of arbitration.

The next day, June 27, Felix Grundy moved to refer the three proposals of the Governor to a Joint Select Committee on the Pecuniary Distress. The committee included the leading anti-relief stalwarts in the legislature, in addition to Grundy. But the McMinn-Grundy leadership counted on Representative Samuel Anderson, from Robertson County in mid-Tennessee, to cast the deciding vote in favor of the relief proposals. Instead, Anderson turned against the stay and appraisal bills and caused alarm in the relief camp by submitting the committee report on the next day, rejecting any stay or minimum appraisal law as “inexpedient and unpolitic.”¹¹³ Grundy acted swiftly, however, and a day later succeeded in “packing” the committee with four more of his supporters, with Grundy himself becoming chairman. Backed by petitions from citizens of Warren and Smith Counties (in mid-Tennessee) supporting the relief proposals, Grundy reported the stay and loan office bill to the House on July 4. He allowed the minimum appraisal bill to die in committee, rejecting it as too extreme.

In the debate on and eventual passage of the bills, most of the effort was centered on the loan office. The stay law was opposed almost singlehandedly by Representative Williams, now a staunch opponent of relief. He moved to strike out the requirement that the creditor must receive loan-office notes or suffer a two-year stay in execution. This amendment was overwhelmingly defeated by a vote of 14 to 3, despite a petition from rural Giles County of mid-Tennessee, condemning the law as “impolitic and improper.”¹¹⁴ Williams tried a similar motion a week later, but lost by a vote of eleven to four, and the stay provision became law along with the new state bank.¹¹⁵

Although the relief movement triumphed in 1819 and 1820, the climate of public opinion had changed sharply by mid-1821. The new state bank and its paper were not faring well, the nationwide depression was receding, and the Supreme Court of Tennessee handed down a decision in June declaring the stay provision unconstitutional for compelling acceptance of the new bank notes. In the gubernatorial campaign of the summer of 1821, both candidates vigorously opposed the relief program. Colonel Edward Ward and William Carroll were wealthy merchants and prominent citizens of Nashville, and both were firm friends of Andrew Jackson. It is instructive that Carroll ran his campaign as the “people’s candidate” against the wealthier Ward.

Carroll’s decisive victory in the gubernatorial race did not intimidate Governor McMinn, who, in his farewell message to the legislature, again urged a minimum appraisal law, and also suggested a replevin law, so that the debtors could win back their forfeited property.¹¹⁶ McMinn’s proposals were referred to Felix Grundy’s Committee on Pecuniary Embarrassments, and Grundy’s report signaled the turn of the tide for the relief movement in Tennessee.

Grundy noted that the greatest distress during the crisis had been caused by the large accumulated debt. He declared that, since 1819, three-fifths of the debt owed to easterners had been liquidated, and that this relieved the pressure on the numerous Tennesseans in debt to eastern creditors. The economy was reviving, and the situation was no longer grave. He therefore rejected an appraisal law as a violation of contract, but staunchly defended the worth of the stay law in averting debtors’ ruin.¹¹⁷ Later, Grundy attacked the courts for ruling against the stay laws, and was joined by the Knoxville Intelligencer and the Nashville Whig.

The anti-relief tone of the new administration was set by Governor Carroll’s opening address.¹¹⁸ It was mainly devoted to paper money, but he also attacked the stay and proposed appraisal and replevin laws as violations of contract.¹¹⁹ Carroll declared that the relief measures had brought momentary relief for some, at the expense of increasing the general distress, and had caused the ruin of thousands through sudden fluctuations of credit and extreme depreciation of currency. The debtors’ situation was still troublesome despite Grundy’s optimism, and the press continued to advertise many sheriff’s sales. The relief forces again tried to pass a stay and an appraisal law, but without success. As a matter of fact, Grundy managed to push through another minimum appraisal law in October, 1823, but the court decision effectively ended any such stay law in Tennessee. By the fall of 1822, Governor Carroll could report a virtual ending of the economic crisis in Tennessee.¹²⁰

The citizens of the state of Kentucky found themselves heavily burdened with insolvent debtors and forced sheriffs’ sales for execution of suits against debtors.¹²¹ As in Tennessee, the major focus of agitation on the state level was the banking system; but agitation over stay laws was also widespread. In Kentucky, a stay law had long been embedded in the state’s legislation. As early as 1792, the state had passed a minimum appraisal law; and it had passed a stay law in 1814–15, providing a twelve-month stay should any creditor refuse to accept at par the notes of the state’s leading bank—the Bank of Kentucky—and a mandatory three-month stay even if the creditor accepted the notes.¹²²

The campaign of the relief forces was waged largely over stay-replevin legislation, and the elections in the fall of 1819 were an overwhelming victory for the relief forces. In the bitter fights over proposed stay legislation, two new newspapers were inaugurated in the city of Frankfort: the Patriot, to support the relief program, and the Spirit of ’76, to oppose it.¹²³ The first relief act to pass was an “emergency” stay law, staying all executions for sixty days; this was passed on December 16, 1819.¹²⁴ Governor Gabriel Slaughter, opposed to relief, vetoed the law, but the legislature was able to override the veto. A very strong stay law was passed the following February 11, providing a mandatory one-year stay of execution if the creditor accepted Bank of Kentucky notes at par in payment, or a two-year stay if the creditor refused.

The crisis was intensified by the alarm felt by creditors at this law and by their growing reluctance to lend.¹²⁵ The depression continued in full force during 1820, and the reliefers began to concentrate their attention on proposals for a new state bank. Postponement of payment does not after all liquidate the debt burden, and it has been estimated that over $2 million of debt was under execution in this period. A bank was expected to grant indirect but effective relief by supplying new money to debtors. Passage of such a measure was assured by the election of Governor John Adair, a leader of the relief forces. A bank was established and, further, a new stay law passed on Christmas Day, 1820. The new law extended existing provisions, but now provided a stay of two years, unless the creditor accepted either Bank of Kentucky or the new state-owned Bank of Commonwealth notes. The law gave preference to the new bank by continuing the mandatory one-year stay even if the creditor accepted Bank of Kentucky notes, while only imposing a three-month stay for acceptance of Bank of Commonwealth notes. This was succeeded by a full mandatory twelve-month stay in February, 1820. Further relief to debtors was granted by a law exempting various tools and implements from forced sale for debt payments and by special stays for executions on real estate.

Throughout 1820, the cherished goal of the relief forces was the passage of a general “property law,” which would have been the most drastic relief legislation in the nation. This would have indefinitely postponed all sales of property under execution. However, this ambitious attempt never came to a vote. In the fall of 1821, the legislature moved again to block the infuriated creditors; by December, 1821, a minimum appraisal law was passed. It prohibited the sale of property at forced sale for less than three-quarters the value set by a jury, unless the creditor agreed to receive Bank of Commonwealth or Bank of Kentucky notes in payment.¹²⁶

For a few years, the debtors reaped a substantial harvest from the stay and from bank legislation. The Bank of Commonwealth notes soon depreciated to half, as compared to specie. The juries and judges of Kentucky during 1821 and 1822 adopted a “scaling system” in their verdicts on damages and executions for debt contracts. For example: if a creditor sued a debtor for payment on a debt of one hundred dollars, and the debtor had already paid fifty dollars, the magistrate or jury “assumed” that the fifty “dollars” paid consisted of specie rather than notes (which, of course, was not the case), on the grounds that there was no proof to the contrary. Then, as a one dollar specie was now worth two dollars of Commonwealth notes, the debt was judged fully canceled, and, in addition, a judgment for court costs was levied against the creditor.¹²⁷

The proponents of debtors’ relief argued that the legislature was obliged to provide relief in times of distress. Indeed, they considered themselves generous for not going so far as to repudiate all private debts completely.¹²⁸ The opposition assailed the measures as repudiating contracts, and asserted that the only remedies to help the debtors in the long run were thrift and industry. Stay laws were attacked as leaving the creditors’ property in the hands of speculators and as greatly hampering credit.¹²⁹ The bitterness of the opposition increased as the relief system continued, and, as the economy recovered, it succeeded in turning the relief tide. As early as the 1822–23 session, the legislature reduced the stay provision from two years to one year, and by 1824 the stay laws were repealed.¹³⁰ In the meanwhile, the decision of the state courts that the relief legislation was unconstitutional precipitated a vigorous and prolonged political controversy over the judiciary, the anti-reliefers finally winning by 1826.

One of the most interesting approaches to the problem of debtor’s relief was that of Amos Kendall, at this time editor of the influential Frankfort Argus of Western America, and later one of the chief theoreticians of the war against the Second Bank of the United States. Kendall, though not completely opposed to relief, was disturbed at some of the extreme stay legislation, particularly the proposed property law, which would have repudiated all debts. In a series of articles in the Argus,¹³¹ Kendall considered one of the favorite relief arguments: that debtors were unduly burdened because they had borrowed when the money unit had a lower value in purchasing power, and must now repay their debt when money had a higher value. Kendall began with a discussion of utility, developing in essence the subjective theory of value and the law of diminishing utility. He deduced that, since value depended on the desires of men, and since these desires were always changing, desires and values could not be reduced to any standard of measurement. A unit of measure was always fixed, and yet all values were continually changing. Hence, there was no such thing as a standard of value, and money could not be used for such a standard. Turning to money, Kendall traced its development from barter and indirect exchange, until the money-commodity became a general medium of exchange. This process revealed that money was simply a commodity, albeit the most useful and exchangeable one—a commodity the value of which was always changing. Therefore, money could by no means serve as a standard of value, and from this Kendall deduced that the relief argument, resting on the assumption of money as a standard of value, was untenable.¹³² In the following year, Kendall denounced wasteful governmental expenditures and concluded emphatically that the legislature could not relieve debts. “The people must pay their own debts at last.” They must rely on their own power and resources and not on that of the banks or legislature.¹³³

Thus, faced with widespread debts and insolvencies, states in every region were confronted with, and wrangled over, debtors’ relief proposals. Stay laws were considered in the eastern legislatures of Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Vermont, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, as well as in the western states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Minimum appraisal laws were also considered in almost all of these states. Stay laws were passed in Maryland, Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky; minimum appraisal laws were passed in far fewer states: Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.

If final passage is considered, the western states were the stronghold of relief measures. However, Pennsylvania passed a combined minimum appraisal and stay law, and there were at least sizable minorities demanding stay and minimum appraisal laws in such important and conservative states as Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. Vermont and Maryland passed stay laws, and New York modified its judgment procedure slightly to ease the strain of insolvent debtors. Rhode Island eased the burdens of debtors to banks. Neither was the western experience uniform. Ohio and Indiana, for example, passed their legislation overwhelmingly, while there was bitter controversy in Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Four of the western states passed appraisal laws, while they could not pass in Illinois and Tennessee.

Within the states there was a noticeable lack of sharp division along sectional lines in controversy over this legislation. Within urban centers and rural counties, there was sharp controversy over relief, and tides of opinion impressed themselves in turn up on all sections.

Debtors’ relief proposals were often tied to schemes for monetary expansion, which furnished one of the richest areas of controversy during the depression.

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¹United States, Public and General Statutes, vol. 2, pp. 73, 533.

²Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 96, 433, 515, 555. Postponement of forfeiture laws were passed in 1810, 1812, 1813, 1814, and 1815.

³U.S. Congress, Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 2d Session, p. 15.

⁴Ibid. The message was presented on November 14, 1820. The relief issue had been briefly raised late in the previous session in a resolution of the Louisiana legislature, but consideration was deferred until the 1820–21 session. Ibid., 16th Congress, 1st Session, p. 467.

⁵Johnson was later to become a key leader in the Jacksonian movement and Jackson’s intimate agent. He became vice-president under Van Buren.

⁶Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 17, 22.

⁷U.S. Congress, American State Papers: Finance 4, no. 599 (December 5, 1820): 547ff.

⁸Memorials came from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Ibid., pp. 22, 36, 77, 99, 116, 126, 130, 131, 134, 141, 153, 212, 249, and 436.

⁹Speech of Thomas, January 11, 1821, U.S. Congress, Annals of Congress, 16th Congress, 2d Session, p. 156. Thomas was an aristocratic lawyer, formerly a Representative from Tennessee, and Federal Judge in Ohio. He nominated his friend William Henry Harrison for President in 1840.

¹⁰Ibid., pp. 161–78. Edwards had been Chief Judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals and Governor of Illinois Territory.

¹¹These were its “Mississippi stock,” made receivable in the Southwest, and in claims to its lands in the Northwest.

¹²On January 30, 1821. Ibid., p. 251.

¹³Ibid., pp. 214–22.

¹⁴Eaton was a lawyer, landowner, and land speculator, and an intimate associate of Andrew Jackson, his wife having been Jackson’s ward. He was later to be Secretary of War under Jackson.

¹⁵Ibid., pp. 180, 214–36. The New Englander was Senator Morrill of New Hampshire. Other Senators attacking the amendment were Noble of Indiana, Johnson of Kentucky, Thomas, and King and Walker of Alabama.

¹⁶Thus, arguing for the extra relief to settlers were Senators Johnson, King of Alabama, Ruggles of Ohio, while on the opposite side were Talbot of Kentucky, Edwards, and Noble.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 333. The bill passed on February 10, 1821. Senator Eaton voted for the final bill.

¹⁸Ibid., p. 441.

¹⁹Ibid., pp. 1187–89 and 1221ff.

²⁰Ibid., pp. 1221ff., 1228ff.

²¹In this action, one of the leading advocates of the bill, Richard C. Anderson of Kentucky, head of the Committee on Public Lands, joined forces with the anti-reliefers to defeat the proposal by a narrow vote of 85 to 70. Henry Clay, of Kentucky, was leader of the extreme relief forces on this occasion.

²²Metcalf was later to become Governor and Senator from Kentucky, and to oppose state inconvertible paper plans.

²³For the text of this law, see U.S. Congress, American State Papers, vol. 3, pp. 612–16.

²⁴Niles’ Weekly Register 15 (January 31, 1819): 423; 19 (November 25, 1820): 194.

²⁵Abernethy, Formative Period, p. 56.

²⁶Madeleine, Monetary and Banking Theories, pp. 27ff.; Greer, “Economic and Social Effects,” pp. 228–29.

²⁷Although one of the supporting arguments for proposals for increased paper currency was the consequent relief of debtors, they will be considered separately, because of the many other issues that the monetary proposals presented. In many cases, stay laws were tied together with the monetary plans and were promulgated as attempts to bolster the general acceptability of the new paper, and so to benefit the debtor who could use it in payment.

²⁸Delaware General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1819 (January 26): 91; (February 2): 139.

²⁹Ibid. (February 3): 150ff. Three of the dissenters, however, were from New Castle County.

³⁰The vote was 26 to 10. For the vote, see New Jersey Legislature, Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly, 1819–20 (June 13, 1820). For the report of the Hopkinson Committee, see ibid. (June 2, 1820): 202–05. Hopkinson had been a distinguished Federalist lawyer and Congressman from Philadelphia, and was soon to return there.

³¹New York Legislature, Senate Journal, 1819 (April 5): 251–52.

³²Ibid., 1821 (March 13): 223.

³³Matthew P. Andrews, Tercentenary History of Maryland (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Co., 1925), p. 1741; Boston New England Palladium, February 1, 1820. Maryland also abolished imprisonment for debt in 1819. The movement for abolition, however, is only tangential to our study, since it was a continuing humanitarian movement rather than an economic measure.

³⁴Cleveland Register, July 6, 1819.

³⁵New York Daily Advertiser, June 17, 1819; January 11, 1820.

³⁶By a vote of 62 to 59, after repeated refusal to postpone the bill by fluctuating margins, as high as 97 to 56. Vermont General Assembly, House Journal, 1818–19 (October 10, 1818; November 6, 1818; November 10, 1818): 143ff., 167.

³⁷The bill passed by a vote of 87 to 47. Ibid., 1819–20 (November 10, 1819): 172ff.

³⁸The vote was 115 to 38. Ibid., 1820–21 (October 27, 1820): 101.

³⁹Walter Hill Crockett, Vermont, the Green Mountain State (New York: The Century History Co., 1921), vol. 3, p. 181.

⁴⁰Howard K. Stokes, “Public and Private Finance,” in Edward Field, ed., State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the End of the Century: A History (Boston: The Mason Publishing Co., 1902), vol. 3, pp. 264–71, 291ff.; and Clarence S. Brigham, “The Period from 1820 to 1830,” in ibid., vol. 3, p. 304.

⁴¹Throughout this paper, “conservative” will be used as a term connoting such views.

⁴²Richmond Enquirer, February 1, 1820.

⁴³Ibid. The debate took place in the House of Delegates on January 28.

⁴⁴Ibid., February 5, 1820.

⁴⁵Rives was later to become one of the most prominent Virginia statesmen, a Jacksonian who favored state banking and balked at the sub-treasury scheme. Also supporting the bill was Representative Joseph Lovell of Kanawha, in West Virginia, who pointed to the “unusual embarrassment” of the times. Ibid., February 3, 1820.

⁴⁶Ibid., February 1, 1820.

⁴⁷The danger of setting a precedent in impairment of contract was stressed by Representative Andrew Stevenson, of the city of Richmond. Ibid.

⁴⁸Ibid., February 5, 1820.

⁴⁹One was rejected by a vote of 76 to 47, and the other by 95 to 84. The latter bill had previously been tentatively approved by a vote of 109 to 71. Virginia General Assembly, Journal of the House of Delegates, 1820–21 (January 19, January 25, February 17): 126, 140, 131.

⁵⁰Ibid., 1819–20 (December 6, 1819): 6–9.

⁵¹See below for arguments on industry and economy as the remedies for hard times.

⁵²North Carolina, Historical Records Survey Project, A Calendar of the Bartlett Yancey Papers (Raleigh: North Carolina Historical Society, 1940), p. 4.

⁵³Representative Noble was from Bedford County in far Western Pennsylvania, and Representative Reeder represented Luzerne and Susquehanna Counties in the North. For their proposal, see Pennsylvania Legislature, Journal of the House, 1818–19 (December 10, 1818): 113.

⁵⁴Findlay was later U.S. senator and treasurer of the U.S. Mint under Jackson.

⁵⁵For the text of the report, see Pennsylvania Legislature, Journal of the House, 1819–20 (January 28, 1820): 476–88.

⁵⁶Duane’s own remedies will be considered below.

⁵⁷State Senator Condy Raguet, of Philadelphia, headed a committee to investigate the extent, causes, and remedies of the distress. Its report will be considered further. Its text is in Pennsylvania Legislature, Journal of the Senate, 1819–20 (January 29, 1820): 221–36, and the documentary appendix to the report is to be found in ibid. (February 14, 1820): 311–37.

⁵⁸Kehl, Ill-Feeling, pp. 12–13.

⁵⁹Pennsylvania Legislature, Laws of Pennsylvania, 1819–20 (March 28, 1820): 155.

⁶⁰“A Pennsylvanian” in Philadelphia Union, February 11, 1820.

⁶¹Greer, “Economic and Social Effects,” p. 238.

⁶²Charles C. Huntington, A History of Banking and Currency in Ohio Before the Civil War (Columbus: Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, 1915), pp. 300ff.; comment of Philadelphia Union, August 27, 1821; Cleveland Herald, October 16, 1821.

⁶³Cleveland Herald, March 20, 1821. This attitude contrasts with the tone of the press before the laws were passed when it was angry at the rapacity of the creditors. Thus, see Cleveland Register, May 25, 1819, August 10, 1819.

⁶⁴On the pervasive insolvency in Ohio in this period, see William Greene, “Thoughts”; John J. Rowe, “Money and Banks in Cincinnati Before the Civil War,” Bulletin of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio 6 (July 1948): 74–84; Goss, Cincinnati, pp. 139–41; Davis, “Economic Basis,” pp. 289–90.

⁶⁵Jacob Piatt Dunn, Indiana and Indianans (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1919), p. 326.

⁶⁶Indiana General Assembly, Laws, 3rd General Assembly, p. 68; on debtors’ relief laws in Indiana, see Waldo F. Mitchell, “Indiana’s Growth,” pp. 389–91.

⁶⁷Indiana General Assembly, Journal of the Senate, 1818–19, p. 36.

⁶⁸Indiana General Assembly, Laws, 4th General Assembly, pp. 113ff.; Mitchell, “Indiana’s Growth.”

⁶⁹Garnett, State Banks, pp. 8–13. This law succeeded previous laws, enacted in 1813 and 1817, which had provided stays of one year for refusal of creditors to accept at par the notes of various Illinois banks. George W. Dowrie, The Development of Banking in Illinois, 1817–63 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1913), p. 11; Knox, A History of Banking, p. 712.

⁷⁰Dowrie, Development, p. 32; and Alexander Davidson and Bernard B. Stuve, A Complete History of Illinois (Springfield, Ill.: Rokker Co., 1881), p. 307.

⁷¹Illinois General Assembly, House Journal, 1820–21 (January 13, 1821): 157.

⁷²See the excellent articles by Dorsey and Anderson.

⁷³The existence of this special immigration boom helped to delay the crisis in Missouri to the end of 1819. Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems,” Part I.

⁷⁴On the controversy over debtors’ relief legislation in Missouri, see the articles by Dorsey, Anderson, and Hamilton.

⁷⁵Primm states that the St. Charles Missourian, May 3, 1821, itself declared that “nine-tenths of the people were demanding economic relief.” James Neal Primm, Economic Policy in the Development of a Western State, Missouri, 1820–60 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 3. But see Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems,” Part I, p. 58n.

⁷⁶Only two members of the grand jury refused to sign this presentment, and they reasoned that discussing such legislation was none of the grand jury’s business. See Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems,” vol. 1.

⁷⁷“A Citizen” in St. Louis Enquirer, March 3, 1821; Franklin Missouri Intelligencer, May 28, 1821.

⁷⁸Primm gives the impression that overwhelming sentiment in this period favored relief legislation. While mentioning letters favoring relief legislation and a rural citizens’ meeting, however, Primm omits the opposition of the bulk of the press and of the rural citizens’ meeting at Boonville. Primm, Economic Policy, pp. 2–5.

⁷⁹McNair was an influential merchant of St. Louis. Missouri General Assembly, Laws, 1st General Assembly, Special Session, 1821, pp. 32–34.

⁸⁰Missouri General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1st General Assembly, 2d Session, 1821, pp. 7–10.

⁸¹Missouri General Assembly, Laws, 1st General Assembly, 2d Session, 1821, pp. 46–52.

⁸²Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems,” vol. 1, p. 65.

⁸³Green was a wealthy merchant, leading lawyer, and land speculator. He was brother-in-law of Ninian Edwards, of Illinois. Green’s son later married John C. Calhoun’s daughter, and Green became Calhoun’s chief editorial arm, as editor of the Washington United States Telegraph. Green later became President Tyler’s unofficial representative to Europe.

⁸⁴Missouri General Assembly, Laws, 1st General Assembly, 2d Session, 1821, p. 74.

⁸⁵Hamilton, Relief Movement.

⁸⁶“Friend of Justice” in Franklin Missouri Intelligencer, September 4, 1821; W.J. Hamilton, “The Relief Movement in Missouri, 1820–22,” Missouri Historical Review 22 (October 1927), 78.

⁸⁷Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems,” p. 67.

⁸⁸St. Louis Missouri Republican, October 9, 1822. The charge that wealthy debtors rather than poor ones were responsible for the relief drive was common to the opposition in many states. Anderson, “Frontier Economic Problems,” believes that this charge was correct, at least in Missouri. She states that the relief measures were largely for the benefit of the large land speculators, and that Representative Duff Green, the well-to-do relief leader, was himself heavily in debt at the time. Primm, Economic Policy, pp. 8–9, errs in asserting that the opposition to relief legislation based itself purely on a defense of wealth and on attacking the reliefers as poor and enemies of property.

⁸⁹Hamilton, Relief Movement.

⁹⁰On the 1821 election, see Primm, Economic Policy, pp. 10ff. Primm, by failing to mention the hotly fought 1822 election, vastly underestimates the extent of popular opposition to the relief program. He also neglects to mention that Governor McNair, in urging repeal of the relief legislation, specifically mentioned its failure to have the desired effects. Ibid., p. 15.

⁹¹Missouri General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 2d General Assembly, 1st Session, 1821, pp. 7–8.

⁹²Richmond Enquirer, July 31, 1821; Folz, “Financial Crisis,” pp. 186ff.

⁹³Thomas P. Abernethy, “The Early Development of Commerce and Banking in Tennessee,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 14 (December 1927): 311–25. Claude A. Campbell, The Development of Banking in Tennessee (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 1932); Joseph Howard Parks, “Felix Grundy and the Depression of 1819 in Tennessee,” Publications of the East Tennessee Historical Society 10 (1938): 20.

⁹⁴William E. Beard, “Joseph McMinn, Tennessee’s Fourth Governor,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 4 (June 1945): 162–63; and Philip Hamer, Tennessee, A History, 1673–1932 (New York: American Historical Society, 1933), pp. 229–40.

⁹⁵Parks, Abernethy, Hamer, passim.

⁹⁶Grundy later became a supporter of Andrew Jackson, a United States senator, and attorney general under Van Buren.

⁹⁷Nashville Clarion, August 10, 1819. Cited in Joseph Howard Parks, Felix Grundy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1940), p. 21. The Clarion was owned by Thomas G. Bradford, a political follower of the wealthy land speculator from rural Bedford County in mid-Tennessee, Andrew Ervin. See Charles G. Sellers, Jr., “Banking and Politics in Jackson’s Tennessee, 1817–1827,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41 (June 1954): 61–84.

⁹⁸Parks, “Felix Grundy,” p. 22.

⁹⁹For example, the Bank of the State of Tennessee and the Nashville Bank.

¹⁰⁰Tennessee General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1819, p. 245; Public Acts of Tennessee, 1819, p. 44. Sellers’ contention that this bill was a weakening of support for relief by Grundy does not seem convincing. Rather it appears to be the first step by the relief forces toward a comprehensive relief program. Sellers, “Banking.”

¹⁰¹Parks, “Felix Grundy,” pp. 25ff.

¹⁰²Hamer, Tennessee, p. 233.

¹⁰³West Tennessee was not a factor in public sentiment, since it was practically unpopulated.

¹⁰⁴Issue of June 20, 1820.

¹⁰⁵Nashville Whig, June 7, 1820. Cited in Sellers, “Banking,” p. 69.

¹⁰⁶Nashville Whig, May 24, 1820; June 14, 1820.

¹⁰⁷Parks, “Felix Grundy,” pp. 27ff. The Patriot declared that times were very hard in East Tennessee as well, but that this measure could not improve conditions.

¹⁰⁸Ibid., p. 29.

¹⁰⁹Issue of May 23, 1820.

¹¹⁰Nashville Gazette, June 14, 1820. Cited in Parks, “Felix Grundy,” p. 29. The Nashville Gazette, edited by George Wilson, was established by the dominant Overton faction of Tennessee politics, headed by Nashville land speculator, John Overton, reputed to be the wealthiest man in Tennessee. See Sellers, “Banking.”

¹¹¹McMinn was an eminent politician of Tennessee, three times elected to the United States Senate, and three times Governor.

¹¹²Tennessee General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1820 (June 26, 1820): 6–17.

¹¹³Ibid., June 28, 1820, p. 23.

¹¹⁴Tennessee General Assembly, Journal of the Senate, 2d Session, 1820 (July 7 and July 14, 1820).

¹¹⁵Ibid., July 21, 1820.

¹¹⁶Tennessee General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1821 (September 17, 1821): 6ff.

¹¹⁷Ibid., October 2, 1821, pp. 114–15.

¹¹⁸Hamer, Tennessee, p. 238.

¹¹⁹This address was praised by the influential Hezekiah Niles, who denounced state relief laws—particularly those of Kentucky and Tennessee—as the work of dishonest debtors seeking special privilege. Niles’ Weekly Register 21 (November 3, 1821): 146.

¹²⁰Gabriel H. Golden, “William Carroll and His Administration,” Tennessee Historical Magazine 9 (April 1925): 19.

¹²¹Thus, see Arndt M. Stickles, The Critical Court Struggle in Kentucky, 1819–29 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1929), pp. 20ff. Also see General Basil W. Duke, History of the Bank of Kentucky, 1792–1895 (Louisville: A.C. Morton and Co., 1895), pp. 14–21. For a contemporary account of debt burdens in Kentucky, Philadelphia Union, July 3, 1821.

¹²²Connelley and Coulter, History, vol. 2, pp. 608ff.; Samuel M. Wilson, History of Kentucky (Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1928), vol. 2, pp. 121–27; Sumner, History of Banking, p. 121.

¹²³Orval W. Baylor, John Pope, Kentuckian (Cynthiana, Ky.: The Hobson Press, 1943), pp. 153–63. Pope, Secretary of State under Governor Slaughter and a director of the Bank of Kentucky, became the leading opponent of the debtors’ relief program.

¹²⁴Kentucky General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1819 (December 16, 1819): 811.

¹²⁵Stickles, Critical Court Struggles, p. 23.

¹²⁶Kentucky General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1821–22 (December 19, 1821): 475.

¹²⁷Kentucky General Assembly, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1819, p. 161.

¹²⁸”Solon,” Liberty Saved (Louisville, Ky.: by the Author, no date), p. 8.

¹²⁹Thus, Frankfort Argus, quoted in Washington (D.C.) National lntelligencer, June 9, 1819.

¹³⁰Wilson, History of Kentucky, p. 133.

¹³¹Frankfort Argus, April 27, 1820 and following. See Amos Kendall, Autobiography, William Stickney, ed. (Boston: P. Smith, 1872), pp. 230–35.

¹³²Kendall, Autobiography, p. 244.

¹³³Frankfort Argus, July 5, 1821, in Kendall, Autobiography, p. 245.