Can you imagine people getting themselves all worked up over banks and money today? Having that intensely boring issue so thoroughly dominate political life that presidents and parties rise and fall on this one subject alone? No one today knows anything about the Fed and no one wants to know about the Fed. People back in the 1830s and ‘40s, were in a constant state of agitation about it. It seemed to Jacksonian Americans that the individual pursuit of self interest was natural and inevitable.

What was important about Adam Smiths’ Wealth of Nations? Were banks corrupt? Have banks always been corrupt? How did views of banks and the Fed change since Jacksonian America?

Further Reading:

The Myth of Class in Jacksonian America, Cambridge University Press

The Bank War and the Partisan Press, written by Stephen W. Campbell

Andrew Jackson, Banks and the Panic of 1837, Lehrman Institute

Related Content:

Jackson Kills the Bank, Part One, written by Andrew Jackson

Jackson Kills the Bank, Part Two, written by Andrew Jackson

Make America Young Again, Liberty Chronicles Podcast

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