Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/419

 American Trust Company, i.e., for the amount received on the Holford bonds.

January 16, 1861, an act was passed to enable the State to foreclose lands mortgaged to the Real Estate Bank; all the stock mortgages were to be assessed to make up the deficiency of assets, to pay the principal of the bonds which fell due in that year.

We meet, once more, with an act, March 8, 1867, to appoint an agent to settle the accounts of the Bank of the State. An act of April 6, 1869, provided that all assets of the State Bank and the Real Estate Bank should be held as a sinking fund for the bonds which were then issued to refund the old bonds which had been issued for the banks. A further act of February 5, 1879, provided that the bonds issued to refund the Holford bonds should not be received for debts to the Real Estate Bank. A resolution was also passed, without the Governor's signature, proposing a constitutional amendment that the Legislature should never have power to lay a tax or make an appropriation to pay the Holford bonds. In 1881, the Auditor and Treasurer were instructed that they were not required to report railroad aid and levee bonds and Holford bonds in the indebtedness of the State. A large section of the revised statutes of 1884 deals with foreclosures of lands mortgaged to the Real Estate Bank, and with a land office system to dispose of them again in the interest of the State.

.—The Bank of the State was authorized, January 25, 1842, to issue notes between $1 and $5, so long as the suspension should last. At the session of 1841-2, apparently in spite of a veto, since no date is given, the Bank of the State was ordered to pay $200,000 to East and West Tennessee, half to each, for improvements, and $200,000 in bonds then printed and lying in the bank for that purpose were to be burned.

All the papers and books of the Circuit Court of McMinn County, Tennessee, were burned in May, 1842, apparently upon a burglarious entry.

An extra session of the Legislature was called in October. In the Governor's message it was stated that the Southwestern Railroad was likely to be abandoned. He wanted an investigation of the Bank of the State on general principles, and was anxious by means of its profits to avoid the "oppression of direct taxation." There was great pecuniary embarrassment, he said, throughout the State, and relief was needed. He charged everything to the federal government and the overthrow of the United States Bank. Money was scarce; the currency of the State had been reduced, since 1836-7, from $5 millions to $1.2 millions. At the extra session a number of measures were adopted for relief. October 29th, all banks were allowed to issue notes down to $1 until January 1, 1845. The redemption law of 1820 was changed so that any one who bought land of one who bought it in execution should hold it subject to redemption for two years, with six per cent. interest, as the first buyer did. The Bank of