Chapter 5. Wall Street’s National Banks

Patrick Newman traces the National Banking System from Salmon P. Chase’s wartime bond sales and initially hostile relations with New York financiers through the pyramid of bankers’ balances that concentrated reserves on Wall Street. He follows J. P. Morgan and George Baker’s First National Bank, the defense of monopolistic restraints after the Panic of 1873, and the silver fight that fractured the Democrats and culminated in the election of 1896.