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James S. Kaplan

James S. Kaplan is the President of the Lower Manhattan Historical Association and a long-time supporter of Evacuation Day celebrations. He is a lawyer, writer and Manhattan walking tour guide, who has written a number of articles on historical subject for the New York Almanack.

The Marquis de Lafayette: A Short Biography

November 17, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 1 Comment

George Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon, 1784 by Rossiter and Mignot, 18592024 will mark the 200th anniversary of the return of the Marquis de Lafayette (Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette) to America. In 1824, almost 50 years after the start of the American Revolution, the 68-year-old Lafayette was invited by President James Monroe, an old Revolutionary War comrade and lifelong friend, to tour the United States.

Lafayette’s visit was one the major events of the early 19th century. It had the effect of unifying a country sometime fractured by electoral discord and reminding Americans of their hard won democracy. [Read more…] about The Marquis de Lafayette: A Short Biography

Filed Under: Capital-Saratoga, History, Mohawk Valley, New York City Tagged With: American Revolution, Battle of Brandywine, Foreign Policy, French History, French Revolution, Hermoine, James Monroe, Lafayette, Military History, Monroe Doctrine, New Jersey, Yorktown

Why Not? The Return of Lafayette’s Hermoine in 2024

November 3, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 1 Comment

hermoine leaving franceIn 1992, the shipyard at Rochefort France where the Hermione – the ship that brought Lafayette to America – had been constructed in 1780 was apparently in decline.

Several local entrepreneurs conceived of the idea that a replica of the Hermione should be built and sailed to the United States as a goodwill gesture. It was hoped that the project would perhaps improve the local economy and also remind Americans of the important historical ties between the United States and France. [Read more…] about Why Not? The Return of Lafayette’s Hermoine in 2024

Filed Under: Arts, History, New York City Tagged With: American Revolution, French History, Hermoine, Lafayette, Lower Manhattan Historical Association, Manhattan, Maritime History, Military History, New York City, New York Harbor, South Street Seaport Museum

Wall Street History: The Great Depression & A New Deal For Working People

March 14, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 1 Comment

out of work men during the Great Depression (retouched)In 1933, during Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s first year as President, the Democrats launched a number of New Deal social welfare and economic recovery efforts to combat the Great Depression.

Among the more popular and successful of these was the creation of the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), jobs programs which were modeled on similar programs in New York State. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: The Great Depression & A New Deal For Working People

Filed Under: Food, History, New York City Tagged With: Agricultural History, Charles Evans Hughes, Culinary History, Dairy, Economic History, FDR, Financial History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, Industrial History, Labor History, Legal History, New Deal, New York City, Political History, Supreme Court, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series, World War Two

The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission

March 9, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 4 Comments

Crowd at New York's American Union Bank during a bank run early in the Great Depression (ca 1931)Initially many thought the severe Wall Street crash of October 1929 was a temporary phenomenon and like many subsequent crashes (i.e. 1987, 2008) the stock market would recover in a few months or years.

Unfortunately, this did not prove to be the case. After some upward spurts, stocks on the New York Stock Exchange continued to fall for the next three years and economic conditions throughout the country continued to worsen, so that by 1932 the market closed at 41, a drop of 89% over its 1929 high of 381. Employment in Wall Street firms plummeted, as the once heady activity evaporated and the Great Depression took hold.

The response would require a great reset between Wall Street and working Americans. [Read more…] about The First Great Reset: Wall St, the Great Depression & the Pecora Commission

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Agricultural History, Al Smith, Disability History, Economic History, FDR, Financial History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, Labor History, Manhattan, New Deal, New York City, NYC, Political History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

Wall Street History: Individual Investors & The Crash of 1929

February 28, 2022 by James S. Kaplan Leave a Comment

Gasoline Marketing Territories of the Standard Oil companies in 1918The break-up of Standard Oil and other monopolies during the Trust-busting Era, created somewhat greater competition, but did not significantly impact Wall Street, or its major players. For example, after the success of the Justice Department in the 1911 Supreme Court Case United States v. Standard Oil (in which the Court ruled that Standard Oil of New Jersey violated the Sherman Antitrust Act), the company was ordered broken into 34 ostensibly independent companies. *

The stock in each of these companies was distributed to Standard Oil Company shareholders (principally the Rockefeller family) and each company had separate boards of directors and separate management, but by and large they continued to operate on separate floors of the same building — 26 Broadway in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: Individual Investors & The Crash of 1929

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Al Smith, Economic History, FDR, Financial History, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Great Depression, Industrial History, Manhattan, New York City, New York Stock Exchange, Oil Industry, Theodore Roosevelt, Transportation History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series, World War One

Trust Busting: William Jennings Bryan & Theodore Roosevelt

February 10, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 2 Comments

Corner of Wall Street and Broad Street in New York City, ca 1900 (Library of Congress)As control of the American economy became increasingly centralized in trusts located on Wall Street after the Civil War, and the wealth of men like J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller grew exponentially, there developed an increasing backlash against such concentrations of wealth. In the 1880s, through an investigation by a committee of the New York State Legislature, Americans became aware that Standard Oil secretly controlled a number of supposedly competing oil companies. By 1910 almost 90% of the world’s oil supply was controlled from the company’s headquarters at 26 Broadway in Manhattan. [Read more…] about Trust Busting: William Jennings Bryan & Theodore Roosevelt

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Economic History, Financial History, Immigration, Imperialism, Industrial History, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Justice Department, Labor History, Legal History, Manhattan, New York City, Ohio, Oil Industry, Political History, railroads, Roscoe Conkling, Theodore Roosevelt, TR, Urban History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series, William McKinley

Wall Street History: Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan

January 31, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 2 Comments

SA Mitchell Junior’s 1866 map of the city of New YorkThe period after the Civil War was one of significant economic and technological expansion in the nation and one in which corporations headquartered in Lower Manhattan and Wall Street would obtain a significant hegemony over the American economy.

This was a time in which individual entrepreneurs were running private businesses located on Wall Street. Men such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan were major figures in the country and attained economic power and wealth on a scale previously unknown in United States history.

Much of their wealth was derived exploiting natural resources and technological innovations (notably steam engines, railroads, and oil). It was also largely dependent on the economy’s western expansion and African-American and immigrant labor. These men, who some call “Titans of Industry” and others “Robber Barons,” generally consolidated independent businesses into national enterprises, large monopolies, and multinational corporations. Many of these were headquartered in Lower Manhattan. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Albany & Susquehanna Railroad, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Economic History, Financial History, Industrial History, Iron Industry, J.P. Morgan, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, Labor History, New York & Harlem Railroad, New York City, New York Stock Exchange, Oil Industry, Pennsylvania, railroads, Transportation History, Wall Street

Wall St History: 19th Century Growth of Investment Banking

January 24, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 3 Comments

Wall Street in 1846 (NYPL)With the demise of the Philadelphia based Bank of the United States, the financial center of the country shifted to the privately owned state chartered financial firms on Wall Street.

As the nation recovered from the severe depression in the Panic of 1837, President James K. Polk’s policy of Manifest Destiny took root and significant westward settlement of Indigenous land expanded in the 1840s. Fortified by the Erie Canal and its Canal Fund, Wall Street financial institutions became strongly influenced by four factors: the invention of the telegraph; the development of railroads; the discovery of gold and other precious minerals in the West (particularly the California Gold Rush of 1849); and the arrival of significant numbers of Jewish and Irish immigrants in the city of New York. [Read more…] about Wall St History: 19th Century Growth of Investment Banking

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: August Belmont, Civil War, Economic History, Financial History, Immigration, Jewish History, Manhattan, New York City, New York Stock Exchange, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

Wall Street History: The Bank War & The Shift of Financial Power to New York

January 19, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 3 Comments

Bank of North America original location at 307 Chestnut Street, PhiladelphiaAt the time construction of the Erie Canal was begun in 1817, Philadelphia (the second largest city in the United States) was the nation’s financial center. Although there were successful banks in New York, Philadelphia, one of America’s leading seaports, had been the capital during the American Revolution and of the nation (1790 to 1800), and so was considered the financial center of the country.

This is not to say there was not some rivalry between financial institutions located on Wall Street in New York and Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, but the latter was the site of the first bank established in the nation in 1781, the Bank of North America, and more importantly became the site of the First Bank of the United States, which Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton had promoted. [Read more…] about Wall Street History: The Bank War & The Shift of Financial Power to New York

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Andrew Jackson, Economic History, Financial History, James Madison, Martin Van Buren, New York City, Panic of 1837, Philadelphia, Political History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

Fulton’s Steamboat, The Black Ball Line & The Erie Canal

January 17, 2022 by James S. Kaplan 4 Comments

England, a packet ship of the Black Ball LineFor thousands of years prior to the early 1800s maritime transportation was dependent on sailing ships. In the first few decades of the 19th century however, entrepreneurs in New York helped revolutionize the industry so that one hundred years later sailing ships were an anachronism that hardly existed, except for show.

In the latter part of the 1700s the development of the Boulton & Watt steam engine in England made it theoretically possible to power a boat. Before 1800 a number of inventors, including New Yorkers such as Nicholas Roosevelt, John Fitch, Robert R. Livingston, John Stevens III and others, experimented with boats that used such steam engines. Before Robert Fulton made his first run in the North River steamboat (later renamed Clermont) in 1807 more than a dozen steamboats had been constructed in the United States with varying degrees of success.   There were difficulties in making such craft commercially viable. [Read more…] about Fulton’s Steamboat, The Black Ball Line & The Erie Canal

Filed Under: History, New York City Tagged With: Albany, Buffalo, DeWitt Clinton, Economic History, Erie Canal, Hudson River, Manhattan, Maritime History, New York City, New York Harbor, Political History, Robert Fulton, Robert Livingston, Steamboating, Transportation History, Wall Street, Wall Street History Series

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