Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/402

 a committee of the Legislature, not more than $200,000 could be realized in the course of four years.

May 23d, the "Free Trader" said that there was not a dollar of par funds in the Treasury. The public printer would not print a document until he was paid in good money.

Under the resumption act of February 21st, the Governor proclaimed, July 10th, that the Union Bank had forfeited its charter by suspending the payment of its notes. Some time in the autumn, that bank made an assignment. The report in December was that lands and negroes had lost one-half their value; that on the expiration of the year of delay, under the appraisement law, the population was leaving the State for Texas. "Banks are in the worst odor possible."

The Commercial and Railroad Bahk of Vicksburg made an assignment, in 1840, in order to cut off the creditors of the bank, that is, the note-holders, until the railroad should be built. This assignment was overthrown, being a withdrawal of the assets from the rightful claim of the creditors.

We can learn scarcely anything about the liquidation of the Union Bank. The State ignored it. There is scarcely a trace of it in legislation or court records. The trustee of the Bank of the State of Alabama, in 1847, speaking of the plan of selling the credits of the bank at auction, objected that that plan, in the case of the Union Bank of Mississippi, had proved to be almost a complete sacrifice of them.

Among the first acts at the session of 1841 was one to repeal the law of May 12, 1837; to guard against the insolvency of banks, and to secure the rights of creditors.

Governor McNutt, in his message, January 5th, stated that the Union Bank had $4,349 in specie on hand; suspended debt in suit, $2.6 millions; ditto not in suit, $1.7 millions; resources chiefly unavailable, $8 millions; immediate liabilities, $3 millions; not more than one-third of the debts could be collected and the whole capital was lost. "The bank has seven thousand bales of cotton in Liverpool unsold, on which it has drawn $267,116.14. An advance of $60 per bale was made to the planters upon that cotton in 1838. They will sustain a clear loss, including interest, of $30 per bale; equal, in the aggregate, to $210,000. The bank has been irretrievably ruined by making advances upon cotton, issuing post-notes, and loaning the principal portion of her capital to insolvent individuals and companies. The situation of the Mississippi Railroad Company and of the Planters' Bank is equally bad. The former, in the year 1839, issued about a million and a-half of post-notes, and expended them in constructing the railroad and building extensive depots. I certainly would not have approved the transfer act, had I anticipated this improvident course." The company has failed to pay the interest on the Planters' Bank bonds. The Bank of the United States has