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11 lugl 1836 anni - Specie Circular

Descrizione:

A United States presidential executive order issued by President Andrew Jackson in 1836 pursuant to the Coinage Act requiring payment for government land to be in gold and silver.

The Specie Circular was a reaction to the growing concerns about excessive speculations of land after the Indian removal, which was mostly done with soft currency. The sale of public lands increased five times between 1834 and 1836. Speculators paid for these purchases with depreciating paper money. While government law already demanded that land purchases be completed with specie or paper notes from specie-backed banks, a large portion of buyers used paper money from state banks not backed by hard money. On July 11, 1836, Jackson ordered Secretary of the Treasury Levi Woodbury to issue the Specie Circular under federal law whereby the government refused to take anything but gold and silver specie for sales of public lands of over 320 acres after August 15, 1836.

Because the order was one of Jackson's last acts in office, most of its consequences occurred during and were attributed to the Presidency of Martin van Buren. The devaluation of paper currency only increased with Jackson's proclamation. This sent inflation and prices upwards. Many at the time (and historians subsequently) blamed the Specie Circular for the rise in prices and the following Panic of 1837. Cries of "Rescind the circular!" went up and former President Jackson sent word to Van Buren asking him not to rescind the order. Jackson believed that it had to be given enough time to work. Lobbying efforts, especially by bankers, increased in Washington in an attempt to revoke the Specie Circular.

The restrictions on credit caused by the order resulted in numerous bankruptcies and the failure of smaller banks. In the South the resulting recession drove down cotton prices well into the 1840s. Small farmers who had bought land on credit were unable to meet their loan repayments with their income from staple crops cut by a half. When they defaulted, "[t]heir land and slaves were repossessed and sold at auction, usually to already well-established slaveholders. ... Some farmers were able to keep a few acres and eke out a living as lesser yeomen. But many lost everything and fell into tenancy and sharecropping. When the cotton market finally recovered, affluent slaveholders held nearly all the South’s best land."

Aggiunto al nastro di tempo:

19 gen 2020
0
0
1237
History of Leadership In The States

Data:

11 lugl 1836 anni
Adesso
~ 187 years ago
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