A distinct American literature dates from this period. Most of the publications in the United States were still cheap reprints of foreign works; but native productions no longer followed foreign models with servility. Between 1830 and 1840 Whittier, Longfellow, Holmes, Poe, Hawthorne, Emerson, Ban croft and Prescott joined the advance-guard of American writers —Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, Irving and Cooper; and even those writers who had already made their place in literature showed the influence of new conditions by their growing tendency to look less to foreign models and methods. Popular education was improved. The new States had from the first endeavoured to secure the best possible system of common schools. The attempt came naturally from the political instincts of the class from which the migration came; but the system which resulted was to be of incalculable service during the years to come. Their absolute democracy and their universal use of the English language have made the common schools most successful machines for convert ing the raw material of immigration into American citizens. This supreme benefit is the basis of the system and the reason for its existence and development, but its incidental advantage of edu cating the people has been beyond calculation. It was an odd symptom of the general change that American newspapers took a new form during these ten years. The old "blanket-sheet" newspaper, cumbrous to handle and slow in all its ways, met its first rival in the type of newspaper which appeared first in New York city, in the Sun, the Herald and the Tribune (1833, 1835 and 1841). Swift and energetic in gathering news, and fearless, some times reckless, in stating it, they brought into American life, with very much that is evil, a great preponderance of good.
The chaos into which a part of American so ciety had been thrown had a marked effect on the financial institu tions of the country, which went to pieces before it for a time. It had not been meant to make the public lands of the United States a source of revenue so much as a source of development. The sales had touched their high-water mark during the specu lative year 1819, when receipts from them had amounted to $3,274,000; in other years they seldom went above $2,000,000. When the railway set the stream of migration moving faster than ever, and cities began to grow like mushrooms, it was natural that speculation in land should feel the effects. Sales rose to $3,200,000 in 1831, and to $25,000,000 in 1836. In 1835 the President an nounced to Congress that the public debt was extinguished, and that some way of dealing with the surplus should be found. Cal houn's proposal, that after the year 1836 any surplus in excess of $5,000,000 should be divided among the States as a loan, was adopted, as regards the surplus (almost $37,000,000) of that year ; and some $28,000,000 were actually distributed before the crisis of 1837 put an end to the surplus and to the policy. The States had already taken a hand in the general speculation by beginning works of public improvement. Foreign, particularly English, capi tal was abundant ; and States which had been accustomed to think a dozen times over a tax of $100,000 now began to negotiate loans of millions of dollars and to appropriate the proceeds to the dig ging of canals and the construction of railways. Their enterprises were badly conceived and badly managed. The imaginations of
individuals ran riot. Every one wanted to buy; prices rose, and every one was growing richer on paper. The assessed value of real estate in New York city in 1832 was $104,000,000; in 1836 it had grown to $253,000,000. In Mobile the assessed value rose from $1,000,000 to $27,000,000.
When Jackson in 1833 ordered the Government revenues to be deposited elsewhere than in the Bank of the United States, there was no Government agent to receive them. The secretary of the Treasury selected banks at various points in which the revenue should be deposited by the collecting officers; but these banks were organized under charters from their States. The Democratic feel ing was that the privilege of forming banking corporations should be open to all citizens, and it soon became so. Moreover, it was not until after the crash that New York began the system of com pelling such deposits as would really secure circulation. In most of the States banks could be freely organized with or without tangible capital, and their notes could be sent to the West for the purchase of Government lands, which needed to be held but a month or two to gain a handsome profit. "Wild-cat banks" sprang up all over the country; and the "pet banks," as those chosen for the deposit of Government revenues were called, went into speculation as eagerly as the banks which hardly pretended to have capital.
The Democratic theory denied the power of Congress to make anything but gold or silver coin legal tender. There have been "paper-money heresies" in the party; but there was none such among the new school of Democratic leaders which came in in 1829; they were "hard-money men." In July 18,36 Jackson's secretary of the Treasury ordered land agents to take nothing in payment for lands except gold or silver. In the f ollow ing spring the full effects of the order became evident ; they fell on the administration of Van Buren, Jackson's successor. Van Buren had been Jackson's secretary of State, the representative man of the new Democratic school, and it seemed to the Whigs poetic jus tice that he should bear the weight of his predecessor's errors. The "specie circular" turned the tide of paper back to the East, and when it was presented for payment most of the banks suspended specie payment. There was no longer a thought of buying ; every one wanted to sell; and prices ran down with a rapidity even more startling than that with which they had risen. Failures on a scale unprecedented in the United States made up the "panic of 1837." Many of the States had left their bonds in the hands of their agents, and, on the failure of the agents, found that the bonds had been hypothecated or disposed of, so that the States got no return from them except a debt which was to them enormous. Saddled suddenly with such a burden, and unable even to pay interest, some of the States "repudiated" their obligations; and repudia tion was made successful by the fact that a State could not be sued except by its own consent. Even the U.S. Government felt the strain, for its revenues were locked up in suspended banks. A little more than a year of ter Congress had authorized the distribu tion of its surplus revenues among the States, Van Buren was forced to call it into special session to provide some relief for the Government itself.