The disasters which followed the commercial crisis of 1837 crushed almost every interest in Mississippi:  especially was this true of the planting, the great interest of the State.  On the healthy condition of him who tills the soil depends that of every other interest.  The rapid rise in cotton, commencing in 1832, from the increased demand all over the world for cotton fabrics, caused a heavy immigration to the fertile cotton-lands of the West, and particularly to the extensive and newly acquired lands of Mississippi.  The world was at peace, and great prosperity was universal; money was cheap, or rather its representative, bank paper.  The system of finance, so wisely conceived and put in practical operation subsequently to the war of 1812, had been disturbed by being made an element in the political struggles of party.  It had paid the war debt, and all the expenses of the Government—­furnished a uniform currency, equal to, and at the holder’s will convertible into coin.  Its face was the nation’s faith, and its credit equal in New York, London, and Calcutta.  A surplus fund was accumulating in the United States Treasury, and the unexampled instance of a nation out of debt, and with an accumulating surplus of money in her treasury, was presented to the world by the United States.

The political economist, from this fact, would naturally infer that the people were heavily taxed:  not so; there was not on earth a people who contributed, in proportion to their means, so little to the support of their Government.  The tax-gatherer of the nation was never seen or known in the house of any citizen; he knew not that he contributed one dollar to the public treasury.  So admirably was the source of revenue contrived, that no man knew or felt he paid a national tax.  The Bank of the United States received and disbursed the moneys arising from customs, or tariffs upon imports, without one cent of expense to the Government; affording at the same time every healthy facility to the commerce of the country—­holding in check and confining the local State banks to a legitimate business—­and was the most complete and perfect fiscal agent ever organized.  In the struggle for party ascendency, the idea was conceived of using the bank in aid of one of the factions which divided the country.  The machinators of this scheme failed to accomplish it, and, being in power at the time, determined to destroy it, upon the plea of its unconstitutionality, and of having been used to overturn the Government—­that is, the party in power.  It was declared dangerous to the liberties of the country.

At the expiration of its charter, then approaching, it was refused a renewal.  So intimately was it connected with every interest in the country, that its passing out of existence threatened universal bankruptcy.  Its branches located at every important commercial point, its credit was universally employed.  It furnished exchange at almost a nominal rate upon every commercial city of the world, and permeated every transaction, giving health and vigor as the circulating fluid does the animal system.