Preface

Rothbard opens by establishing why the Panic of 1819 matters: it was the first American crisis that could not be pinned on a specific act of government, and thus the first that looked recognizably modern. Confronted with something new, Americans went searching for causes and cures in newspapers, pamphlets, and legislative halls. Rothbard explains that the editors of the day were among the nation’s leading economists, and that their debates form a rich and largely untapped record of a people learning to think about depression for the first time.