History, Natural History & the Arts
In March 1791 Treasury Secretary and Federalist Party leader Alexander Hamilton shocked the western frontier when he proposed a domestic excise tax on whiskey to balance America’s national debt.
The law, known colloquially as the “Whiskey Act,” disproportionately penalized farmers in the backcountry, while offering favorable tax incentives designed to protect larger distillers. [Read more…] about The Whiskey Rebellion: A Distilled History
During the first quarter-century after its founding, the United States was swept by a wave of land speculation so unprecedented in intensity and scale that contemporaries and historians alike have dubbed it a “mania.”
In Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) Michael A. Blaakman uncovers the revolutionary origins of this real-estate bonanza ― a story of ambition, corruption, capitalism, and statecraft that stretched across millions of acres from Maine to the Mississippi and Georgia to the Great Lakes. [Read more…] about Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic
Daniel Manning was born in Albany, NY, on August 16, 1831, the second son of John and Eleanor Manning. The Mannings were of Irish, English, and Dutch descent.
Daniel was six at the time of the Panic of 1837 when his father died, causing financial strain on the politically connected family. When Daniel was ten he was appointed a page in the New York State Assembly where he served for two years. During the second year, he also got a job distributing the Albany Atlas newspaper. [Read more…] about Albany’s Daniel Manning: Newspaperman & Secretary of the Treasury
As the 1920s advanced, the economy soared. But with that dramatic expansion came irrational exuberance and unchecked speculation: stock prices reached levels that had no basis in reality; margin purchases were rampant; banks handed out loans lavishly and imprudently; and giddy product production resulted in a vast oversupply of goods.
On Tuesday, October 29, 1929, it all came crashing down. This is the story of the Great Depression in New York City. [Read more…] about The Great Depression in New York City: A Primer
New York Gov. Roswell Flower used his keynote speech to a national audience on “New York Day” at the Chicago World’s Fair to downplay the threat of the Panic of 1893, which started the nation’s worst depression up to that time.
“This business men of this country deserve the greatest praise for the manner in which they have held their heads above water during these frightful days,” he said, speaking on September 5, 1893. [Read more…] about The Panic of 1893: Among The Most Severe Financial Crises U.S. History
Citigroup now acknowledges that its predecessor banks may have indirectly profited from slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Connections with slavery include a 19th century bank president who promoted the Cuban sugar trade, the relationship between the Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, one of Citigroup’s predecessor banks, and Alabama cotton planters, and Lehman Brothers, which merged with Citibank in 1998 and in the 1850s traded in cotton. [Read more…] about Citigroup Acknowledges it ‘Indirectly’ Profited from Slavery – Maybe
The Gold Coast along Long Island’s North Shore is most often celebrated as a showcase for the rich and famous in the early 20th Century. A decidedly different aspect of that reputation comes into view when you consider the years leading up to America’s entry into the First World War. [Read more…] about Long Island’s Gold Coast Elite & World War I
The latest History Twins podcast is about Madam C. J. Walker (1867 – 1919), who made a fortune by developing and marketing a line of cosmetics and hair care products for Black women, especially through the business she founded, the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company.
The first child of her large family born free. Sarah Breedlove was a child near Delta, Louisiana where her parents die and she was orphaned by the age of seven. She moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the age of 10, working as a domestic servant. [Read more…] about Madam C. J. Walker: Black Hair Care Entrepreneur
Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870 – 2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo.
Brad DeLong’s Slouching Towards Utopia (Basic Books, 2022) tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. [Read more…] about Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the 20th Century
Around 1800, Philip and Catharine Brotherson arrived in Blue Corners on the western edge of Charlton in Saratoga County. Over the next 40 years, their five children grew to maturity, the last being Benjamin Kissam Brotherson, born in 1819.
At the age of sixteen, Benjamin was hired as a clerk for the dry goods merchant James Winne in Albany, New York. During his time in Albany, he was known as an upstanding young man of good moral character. Three years later, in 1838, he moved to the city of New York and took a job at Union Bank, where he would work for the next twenty years. [Read more…] about Ben Brotherson’s Bank Scheme