everything in bank paper on Paris, London, and Amsterdam.

When the panic came the Bank was very much shaken. At the beginning of
April, 1837, the New York banks suspended payments because demands for
hard money for export played the chief role; the other banks suspended
in their turn, promising to resume with them.

The Bank of the United States, suspended also, Mr. Biddle, the
President, asserting that it would have continued to pay were it not for
the injury done by New York. This was false, for the New York banks
shortly after resumed payment, hoping they would be imitated, but the
other banks refused to do so. Mr. Biddle wished, in the first place, to
await the result of the harvest. To uphold the Bank, he tried to bring
about exchanges, both with banks and general business, not only in
America but in Europe, in order to establish a unity of interests which
would sustain him and conceal his real condition. In this he was
successful to a certain degree, for in 1840 in his balance sheet
$53,000,000 of paper of the different States was shown up. He wished
above all to secure the monopoly of the sale of cotton: a senseless
speculation hitherto unexampled, [Footnote: A similar episode has
occurred in our time in the speculation in metals by the "Comptoir
d'Escompte."] the like of which may never be seen again.

Whilst the Bank came to the relief of New York business through its
exchange and its deferred notes, Biddle posed as the great cotton agent,
on condition that the Bank's agents should be consigned to at Havre and
Liverpool. In their embarrassment this proposition was accepted by the
planters. Cotton was thus accumulated in those two places. This monopoly
advanced the price, and vast sums were realized, which enabled him to
enlarge the scope of his business. In 1837 he was enabled by this means