The other and more important new development was free banking. By action of the state legislatures of bank was held to be not a corporation, which then and for many years required a special charter from the state, but a voluntary association of individuals and thus, like blacksmithing or rope making, open to anyone. (Continued)

It was an arrangement which reputable bankers and merchants in the East viewed with extreme distaste. Yet for them it was not intolerable. They had good money in which to do business with each other and with foreigners. (Continued)