[AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED, FROM VICTOR TULANE TO ABRAHAM P. VANKIRK, BLAMING THE CRISIS UNLEASHED BY THE FINANCIAL PANIC OF 1837 ON FORMER PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON AND DESCRIBING HIS EFFORTS TO STOCKPILE GOLD AND SILVER AS A RESULT OF THE RECENT BANK RUN SPREADING FROM NEW ORLEANS TO NEW YORK].

Tulane, Victor:

Edité par New Orleans. May 2[1?], 1837.

A propos de cet article

A revealing autograph letter, signed, from Victor Tulane in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Abraham P. Vankirk, a relative in Princeton, New Jersey, written during the height of the panic of 1837, in which he blames the crisis on former President Andrew Jackson, declaring that "old Hickory has played the mischeef with the currency of the Country, as all the Banks here, and all over the Country has stoped payin out Specie," before going on to explain that he is "saving all the Gold and Silver that I get," and advising those back home in New Jersey to "be very saveing.prudent and industrious.as such hard times has not bin seen in the count[r]y since the Ware." Tulane was a member of a prominent family based in and around Princeton, New Jersey, with growing commercial interests in New Orleans. The most notable member of this family was perhaps Paul Tulane (1801 1887), a merchant and philanthropist who, having made his fortune in the manufacture and sale of men's clothing, became the founding benefactor of Tulane University. Paul's father, Louis Tulane (1767 1847), had been born in Tours, France. He immigrated to Saint-Domingue, where his brother-in-law was a wealthy planter, becoming himself a successful lumber merchant. With the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution in 1791, however, Louis was forced to flee Saint-Domingue. Arriving in America, he eventually settled on the outskirts of Princeton, New Jersey. Louis had five sons: Louis, Victor, Paul, Gatien, and Florentine. Paul would follow his brother Louis to New Orleans in 1822, before eventually taking over his brother's business. We have been unable to conclusively determine whether the author of the present letter was Paul's brother, Victor, or the nephew of the same name identified by Paul's biographer, John Smith Kendall, as having for a time managed his uncle's business in New Orleans. Victor, the brother, died in New Orleans on November 27, 1837, at the age of forty-two, some six months after the present letter was sent. Like his brother Paul, Victor, in partnership with one Hiram Coleman, was also a clothing merchant in New Orleans. Victor's wife, Arrita Dunn, referred to in the present letter (see text below), was the sister of Elizabeth Dunn, who in 1809 had married Jonathan Vankirk, likely a relative of the Abraham P. Vankirk named as the recipient of the present letter. Describing the events that led to the panic of 1837, one historian of Jacksonian America explains that by 1836, the "speculative boom that had dominated the last years of Jackson's Presidency was cresting rapidly. In particular, the Bank of England became alarmed in early 1837 by the rapid expansion of loans to America and by an outflow of gold. To check these developments, it abruptly restricted credit to firms doing business with the United States, and British cotton buyers had to reduce their purchases of America's leading export. Coincidentally, a poor harvest had driven up the price of food in Britain and hungry workers were buying less cotton clothing as they struggled to pay for bread. When British demand for American cotton fell, its price did also, and suddenly American merchants who had gambled on a steady or rising price felt the powerful threat of bankruptcy" (Watson). As historian Scott Reynolds Nelson points out, since "[t]he delivery of New Orleans cotton was the promise at the heart of cotton-based credit, the source of British lending, [and] the source of American borrowing," the city "stood at the epicenter" of the credit contraction that led to the panic of 1837. "Between March and May 1837," writes Nelson, "the New Orleans failures moved up to New York. New York banks suspended specie payment on May 10, the Boston banks shortly afterward. The panic of 1837 was the first fully national suspension of bank payments in the United States. From 1837 to 1838 it surged across Britian and then continental Europe." The system of financing and credit underwriting America's cotton boom, Nelson writ.

N° de réf. du vendeur 69057

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: [AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED, FROM VICTOR TULANE TO ABRAHAM P. VANKIRK, BLAMING THE CRISIS UNLEASHED BY THE FINANCIAL PANIC OF 1837 ON FORMER PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON AND DESCRIBING HIS EFFORTS TO STOCKPILE GOLD AND SILVER AS A RESULT OF THE RECENT BANK RUN SPREADING FROM NEW ORLEANS TO NEW YORK].
• Éditeur: New Orleans. May 2[1?], 1837.