Bank of Alexandria - Alexandria, VA

Bank Information

Episode Type: Suspension → Closure
Bank Type: state
Start Date: September 25, 1837
Location: Alexandria, Virginia (38.818, -77.082)

Metadata

Model: gpt-5-mini
Short Digest: 494e7932

Response Measures

None

Description

Article (speech dated Sept 25, 1837, published Sept 30, 1837) states that the Bank of Alexandria had lately stopped. No run is described and no reopening or receivership is mentioned in the excerpt. Because the piece indicates it stopped (suspended) and provides no evidence of continued operation or reopening, I classify this as a suspension with closure (permanent outcome implied but not explicitly documented). If later sources show it reopened, the classification should be updated.

Events (1)

1. September 25, 1837 Suspension

Cause Details: Article only states the bank had lately stopped; no specific cause (rumor, correspondent failure, or government action) is given.
Newspaper Excerpt: The Bank of Alexandria, which he said had lately stopped, with a small amount of public money in it, and the payment of which is secured, was also in the list of Mr. Gallatin's deposite banks
Source: newspapers

Newspaper Articles (1)

1. September 30, 1837 The Madisonian Washington, DC

Article from The Madisonian, September 30, 1837

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Article Text

# SPEECH OF MR. GARLAND, OF VIRGINIA, In the House of Representatives of the U. S. Sept. 25, 1837-in opposition to the bill reported by the Committee of Ways and Means, entitled, "A bill imposing additional duties as depositories in certain cases on public officers, and for other purposes: (Continued.) Mr. Benton, a Senator from Missouri, and distinguished friend of the late and present administration, in a speech delivered by him in the Senate of the United States on the 2d of June, 1834, on the subject of the restora- tion of the deposites to the Bank of the United States, ably vindicated the State bank system, and defended the State banks against the various attacks of the opposition. I here quote his remarks upon that occasion. "Mr. BENTON proceeded to state several reasons, and to urge many considerations in favor of adopting it. He deprecated the spirit which seemed to have broken out against State banks, and said that it augured badly for the rights of the States. The strongest current of consolida- tion which was now observable in the Union, was that which sat in favor of the Federal bank and against the State banks, and threatened to consolidate all moneyed power, and with it all political power, in favor of a great central institution, independent of the States, and able, by its own avowal, to crush the State institutions at its pleasure. He said this spirit against the State banks was an impulsion of modern origin-unknown to the fathers of the republic, and to the early history of the country- and strongest now where the spirit of consolidation was strongest, and where the defence of State rights was weakest. At the commencement of this Federal Gov- ernment, said Mr. B., there was no Federal bank, and all the public moneys were kept in State banks, or drawn direct, and as fast as they were received, out of the hands of receivers and collectors. General Hamilton, when Secretary of the Treasury, kept the public moneys, for the first year of his administration, in these banks, and kept them safely there. When the Federal bank was proposed in 1791, and the keeping of the public moneys was one of the services attributed to it, Mr. Jefferson, then a member of President Washington's cabinet, de- nied the necessity of a Federal bank for any such purpose, and openly declared himself in favor of the State banks. He said that these banks had already done this business for the Government, and done it well, and would no doubt enter into arrangements with the Treasury for doing it permanently, and on better terms than it could be done by the Federal bank. Mr. B. read an extract from Mr. Jefferson's cabinet opinion, delivered to General Wash- ington at the creation of the first Federal bank, to sus- tain what he said of his opinions. The extract was in these words: "The existing banks will, without a doubt, enter into arrangements for lending their agency; and the more fa- vorably, as there will be a competition among them for it; whereas, the bill delivers us up bound to the national bank, who are free to refuse all arrangement, but on their own terms, and the public not free, on such refusal, to employ any other bank. That of Philadelphia, I believe, now does this business by their post notes, which, by an arrangement with the Treasury, are paid by any other State collector to whom they are presented. This expe- dient alone suffices to prevent the existence of that ne- cessity which may justify the assumption of a non-enu- merated power as a means for carrying into effect an enumerated one. The thing may be done, and has been done, and well done, without this assumption; there- fore, it does not stand in that degree of necessity, which can honestly justify it." "Mr. B. said, that what Mr. Jefferson affirmed in 1791, was afterwards proved under his own administration, and that of Mr. Madison. During the whole of their admin- istrations, a large portion of the public moneys was kept in the State banks, and safely kept there. Mr. Gallatin, in answer to a call made by the House of Representatives, sometime before the expiration of the charter of the first bank, showed that the public moneys were then kept in twenty different banks, of which nine were the United States Bank and its branches, and eleven were State banks! Mr. B. thought this point so material, that he would read an extract from Mr. Gallatin's report, to show that he neither overstated nor mistook the facts. He then read the names of the State banks employed by Mr Gallatin, and the amount of public money in each. The were the Bank of Columbia, $115,192; the Bank of Alexandria, $61,917; the Bank of Newport, Rhod Island, $35,788; the Bank of Pittsburg, $137,462 Roger Williams's Bank, $53,882; the Bank of Penn- sylvania, $92,628; the Bank of Saco, $28,528; th Manhattan Bank, $188,670; the Bank of Maine, $50, 747; the Marietta Bank, $19,601; and the Bank o Kentucky, $91,061. Such, said Mr. B., was the distribution of the depo- sites of the public moneys in the time of Mr. Gallatin more State banks employed than the whole number of branches and the mother Bank of the United States pu together! In several instances, a State bank was em- ployed in the same place in which a branch of the Fede- ral bank was situated, and some of those employed then are employed now. Of this class, Mr. B. instanced the Manhattan Bank of New York, and stated that the stock of this bank was, at this day, about twenty dol- lars in the hundred higher than the stock of the United States Bank! And this after all the efforts which had been made to shake public confidence in the State banks, and especially those of New York. The Bank of Alex- andria, which he said had lately stopped, with a small amount of public money in it, and the payment of which is secured, was also in the list of Mr. Gallatin's deposite banks, and had double as much money in it in his time, as when it lately stopped. That bank had been a depo- site bank for forty-five years, and the Government had lost nothing by it, notwithstanding the attempt lately made to delude the public with a belief that it had just been selected by Mr. Taney, and had immediately failed, with an immense loss to the United States. Mr. B. said, it was thus proved, by an experience of twenty years-an experience running through the whole of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, and a part of their predecessors-that the public moneys may be safely kept in the State banks; and that Mr. Jeffer- son was, right, in his cabinet opinion of 1791, when he gave it as his solemn opinion to President Washington, that there was no necessity for chartering a Federal bank to act as the fiscal agent of the Federal Treasury, and that the State banks would enter into arrangements for that purpose, and do the business well! Mr. B. said it was true that the Federal Government had since lost about a million and a half of dollars by State banks; but that loss took place in a season of universal embarrassment, growing out of a state of war and general stagnation of trade and commerce; a season which cannot be made the rule for judging State banks, without extending it to the Federal bank also; and then it would be fatal to that bank, for the United States lost about eleven millions of dollars in sustaining the present Federal bank in the same season of embarrass- ment, and saving that bank from sharing the general fate of the State institutions. This statement, Mr. B. said, was one of those facts which it was good to prove, and as the proof was in the documents of the Senate, he would use it, and extinguish at once this delusive and deceptive comparison between State banks and the Federal banks. Mr. Benton was sustained in his preference for the State banks by Mr. Wright, of New York. The present Speaker of the House, in a speech delivered by him on this subject, on the 20th of June, 1834, ably vindicated the State bank system, in the course of which The made the following remarks:-