First National Bank (Pre-Painted)

North America’s original ‘first’ national bank was chartered in 1791, lasting for just over 20 years. After the war of 1812 (in 1816) a second (first) national bank was chartered but by the 1830’s this was considered a corrupt institution and in 1836 it did not have it’s charter renewed. With all federal payments having to be made with either gold or silver the economy went into a four year recession. From 1837, without a National Bank for North America, individual States started to charter their own National (State) banking corporations.

With these new chartered National (State) Banks, States had enabled the printing of paper certification (bank promissory notes), rather than other forms of barter/payment. All this enabled better transfer of funds and so enabled renewed commercial growth. Within only a few years there were many hundreds of State chartered banks (the first one chartered in each State would style itself ‘First National Bank’ for that state). This period until 1863 would be remembered as the age of ‘Wildcat Banking’. These State chartered bodies were primarily in business to make wealthy individuals lots and lots of income from handling others’ money and on average ‘wildcat’ banks lasted less than 60 months before closing. In 1863 the federal government again issued federal charters to all good banks (by this time 1,500 banks) within the Federal States of America, though many old ‘First National’ State Banks still retained ‘First National’ as prefix to their name.

28mm Scale models supplied unassembled.