1. On 28 Sept. 1814 James Fisk of Vermont introduced a resolution instructing the House Committee on Public Lands to consider this proposal, and after debate, it was adopted by a vote of eighty to fifty-five (Annals of Congress, description begins Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States … (42 vols.; Washington, 1834–56). description ends 13th Cong., 3d sess., 326–34).

2. For the suspension of specie payments by U.S. banks following the British attack on Washington, see PJM-PS, description begins Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series (8 vols. to date; Charlottesville, Va., 1984–). description ends 7:310 n. 4. Amid widespread speculation that the U.S. government would respond to the crisis by establishing a paper currency, a group of New York residents petitioned Congress to incorporate a national bank. Jonathan Fisk of New York presented the petition in the House of Representatives on 23 Sept. 1814, where it was referred to the Committee of Ways and Means. Three days later, Congress received Treasury Secretary George W. Campbell’s annual report, which laid out the abysmal state of the federal government’s finances and called on the lawmakers to put “the currency of the country on a more uniform, certain, and stable footing.” Campbell’s only suggestion as to how this should be done, however, consisted of the observation that Treasury notes might function better as a medium of exchange if they bore higher interest, and if the payment of interest and principle on such notes was guaranteed by “an adequate revenue pledged for that purpose.”

Alexander J. Dallas, Campbell’s successor in the Treasury Department, provided much more extensive recommendations in a 17 Oct. 1814 letter to Committee of Ways and Means chairman John Wayles Eppes. Establishing a national bank, Dallas asserted, would address the nation’s currency woes more effectively than issuing Treasury notes, the most obvious alternative. But he disavowed any intention of making paper money legal tender, declaring that “whether the issues of a paper currency proceed from the National Treasury or from a National Bank, the acceptance of the paper in a course of payments and receipts must be forever optional with the citizens.” The national bank should have a capital of $50 million, he wrote, with the government subscribing $20 million of that sum in stock. Of the $30 million to be subscribed by “corporations, companies, or individuals,” a minimum of $6 million only should be in specie, with the bulk of the remainder in stock and a small proportion in Treasury notes. Three-fifths of the bank’s total capital, or $30 million, should then be loaned to the government. In addition, Dallas proposed that Congress raise taxes. Eppes submitted the letter to the House of Representatives the following day, and after lengthy debate, primarily on the tax question, on 28 Oct. that body authorized the committee to draft legislation in accord with Dallas’s recommendations. A “bill to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of the United States of America” accordingly came before the House for consideration on 14 Nov. 1814 (Boston Columbian Centinel, 3 Sept. 1814; New-York Evening Post, 30 Sept. 1814; New Haven Connecticut Journal, 3 Oct. 1814; Annals of Congress, description begins Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States … (42 vols.; Washington, 1834–56). description ends 13th Cong., 3d sess., 308, 311, 399–410, 419–81, 491–99, 557–61; Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, Transmitting His Annual Report … [Washington, 1814; Shaw and Shoemaker description begins R. R. Shaw and R. H. Shoemaker, comps., American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801–1819 (22 vols.; New York, 1958–66). description ends 33279], 14–15).