D2.His.14.9-12: Analyzing the Complex Causes and Effects of the Panic of 1837

Overview

Lesson Procedure

75-85 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction25 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice20 minutes
5. Closure10-15 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "A town's main store (an invented example) closes. The owner blames a new highway bypass that took traffic away; the town council blames the owner's large loans; a newspaper notes that a factory nearby had just laid off 200 workers. Who is right?"

   Take answers, then sort them on the board: the loans were a condition that made the store fragile; the layoffs and the bypass made things worse; something on the last day (perhaps a bank calling in a loan) was the trigger. Point out that each person's explanation also protects or blames someone. Tell students they will analyze a national crisis the same way, with the people who lived through it arguing about its causes.

2. Direct Instruction25 minutes

   Teach the vocabulary. Specie is gold and silver coin. In the 1830s most paper money was bank notes printed by private and state banks, which promised to pay specie on demand; when banks refused, that was a suspension of specie payments. Credit is borrowing; speculation is buying land, goods or shares in the hope of selling them at a higher price. Van Buren calls the crisis a revulsion, a sudden reversal. Then introduce the Causal Map.

   The Causal Map (an SVHS teaching tool): three ways to sort each cause, plus the links between them

   Sort by	Choices	Question to ask
   Level	Underlying condition; aggravating circumstance; trigger	Was it there for years, did it make things worse, or did it set off the collapse?
   Scope	Domestic; international	Did it start inside the United States or abroad?
   Kind	Economic; political; accidental	Was it about money and trade, government decisions, or chance events such as a fire?
   Links	Feeds another cause; is fed by another cause; works alone	Which arrows run between causes, and does any arrow loop back?
   Who says so	The source, its date and its maker's stake	Would this maker have a reason to stress or play down this cause?

   Read Source 1. Ask students to mark, in one color, every cause Van Buren names and, in another, every sentence about how people disagreed. Then read Source 2.

   1During the earlier stages of the revulsion through which we have just passed much acrimonious discussion arose and great diversity of opinion existed as to its real causes. This was not surprising. The operations of credit are so diversified and the influences which affect them so numerous, and often so subtle, that even impartial and well-informed persons are seldom found to agree in respect to them. To inherent difficulties were also added other tendencies which were by no means favorable to the discovery of truth. It was hardly to be expected that those who disapproved the policy of the Government in relation to the currency would, in the excited state of public feeling produced by the occasion, fail to attribute to that policy any extensive embarrassment in the monetary affairs of the country. The matter thus became connected with the passions and conflicts of party; opinions were more or less affected by political considerations, and differences were prolonged which might otherwise have been determined by an appeal to facts, by the exercise of reason, or by mutual concession. [...]

   2The history of trade in the United States for the last three or four years affords the most convincing evidence that our present condition is chiefly to be attributed to overaction in all the departments of business--an over-action deriving, perhaps, its first impulses from antecedent causes, but stimulated to its destructive consequences by excessive issues of bank paper and by other facilities for the acquisition and enlargement of credit. At the commencement of the year 1834 the banking capital of the United States, including that of the national bank, then existing, amounted to about $200,000,000, the bank notes then in circulation to about ninety-five millions, and the loans and discounts of the banks to three hundred and twenty-four millions. Between that time and the 1st of January, 1836, being the latest period to which accurate accounts have been received, our banking capital was increased to more than two hundred and fifty-one millions, our paper circulation to more than one hundred and forty millions, and the loans and discounts to more than four hundred and fifty-seven millions. To this vast increase are to be added the many millions of credit acquired by means of foreign loans, contracted by the States and State institutions, and, above all, by the lavish accommodations extended by foreign dealers to our merchants.

   1The consequences of this redundancy of credit and of the spirit of reckless speculation engendered by it were a foreign debt contracted by our citizens estimated in March last at more than $30,000,000; the extension to traders in the interior of our country of credits for supplies greatly beyond the wants of the people; the investment of $39,500,000 in unproductive public lands in the years 1835 and 1836, whilst in the preceding year the sales amounted to only four and a half millions; the creation of debts, to an almost countless amount, for real estate in existing or anticipated cities and villages, equally unproductive, and at prices now seen to have been greatly disproportionate to their real value; the expenditure of immense sums in improvements which in many cases have been found to be ruinously improvident; the diversion to other pursuits of much of the labor that should have been applied to agriculture, thereby contributing to the expenditure of large sums in the importation of grain from Europe--an expenditure which, amounting in 1834 to about $250,000, was in the first two quarters of the present year increased to more than $2,000,000; and finally, without enumerating other injurious results, the rapid growth among all classes, and especially in our great commercial towns, of luxurious habits founded too often on merely fancied wealth, and detrimental alike to the industry, the resources, and the morals of our people.

   2It was so impossible that such a state of things could long continue that the prospect of revulsion was present to the minds of considerate men before it actually came. None, however, had correctly anticipated its severity. A concurrence of circumstances inadequate of themselves to produce such widespread and calamitous embarrassments tended so greatly to aggravate them that they can not be overlooked in considering their history. Among these may be mentioned, as most prominent, the great loss of capital sustained by our commercial emporium in the fire of December, 1835--a loss the effects of which were underrated at the time because postponed for a season by the great facilities of credit then existing; the disturbing effects in our commercial cities of the transfers of the public moneys required by the deposit law of June, 1836, and the measures adopted by the foreign creditors of our merchants to reduce their debts and to withdraw from the United States a large portion of our specie.

   • Levels of cause in one source

     In Source 2, paragraph 2, Van Buren lists three circumstances: "the fire of December, 1835," "the transfers of the public moneys required by the deposit law of June, 1836," and the "measures adopted by the foreign creditors of our merchants." Where do they go on the Causal Map?

     Result: He calls them "inadequate of themselves to produce such widespread and calamitous embarrassments," so in his account they are aggravating circumstances, not the underlying cause, which he finds in "overaction in all the departments of business" fed by "excessive issues of bank paper" (Source 1, paragraph 2). They also differ in scope and kind: the fire is domestic and accidental, the deposit transfers are domestic and political, and the creditors' measures are international and economic.

   • Measuring a cause with the source's numbers

     Source 1, paragraph 2, gives banking capital of "about $200,000,000" and bank notes in circulation of "about ninety-five millions" at the start of 1834, and "more than two hundred and fifty-one millions" and "more than one hundred and forty millions" by January 1, 1836. Which grew faster?

     Result: Capital: (251 - 200) ÷ 200 ≈ 25.5% increase. Notes: (140 - 95) ÷ 95 ≈ 47.4% increase. Notes in circulation grew almost twice as fast as the capital behind them: about 47.5 cents of notes for each dollar of capital in 1834 (95 ÷ 200), about 55.8 cents in 1836 (140 ÷ 251). The numbers support Van Buren's claim of "excessive issues of bank paper," but they stop at January 1836, more than a year before the crisis.

   • A feedback loop

     Source 2, paragraph 1, says the credit boom diverted labor from farming, "thereby contributing to the expenditure of large sums in the importation of grain from Europe," from "about $250,000" in 1834 to "more than $2,000,000" in the first half of 1837. Trace the loop.

     Result: Easy credit pulled workers into speculation and building, so less grain was grown at home; buying grain abroad sent money out of the country; at the same time Van Buren says foreign creditors were trying "to withdraw from the United States a large portion of our specie" (paragraph 2). Each step made the next harder to bear. By the numbers, grain imports in half a year were at least 8 times the whole of 1834 (2,000,000 ÷ 250,000 = 8).

   • A rival explanation inside the source

     Van Buren admits that "those who disapproved the policy of the Government in relation to the currency" blamed that policy (Source 1, paragraph 1). How should a historian read his own explanation?

     Result: As one side of a public argument. Van Buren had been Jackson's Vice President and defended the same currency policy, so he had reason to locate the causes in private credit, speculation and events abroad. That does not make him wrong, and his figures can be checked, but his account should be compared with a critic's (Source 4) and with a later, outside view (Source 3). He himself says opinions were "affected by political considerations."

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Pairs read Source 3, from a history of financial panics by Clement Juglar, a French economist, as translated and enlarged by DeCourcy W. Thom, a former member of the Baltimore Stock Exchange and of the Consolidated Exchange of New York. Pairs place each cause it names on a Causal Map and draw at least two arrows between causes. Explain first: the Bank of England was Britain's central bank; its discount rate was the interest it charged; exchange was the price of buying money in another country. In paragraph 7, "L5,000,000" means 5,000,000 pounds sterling: this printing uses L for the pound sign.

   1From 1826 to 1836 the condition of business, despite the panic of 1831, grew easier. Industries, agriculture, and commerce were prosperous and every enterprise was successful. Both in New Orleans and in New York there was much building, and more than 1508 houses were erected between January 1 and September 1, 1836. This general prosperity carried with it the seeds of trouble.

   2The rapid increase of the National revenue gave birth to the belief that capital had increased in the same proportion. This superabundance of income produced temporarily by the inflation in business was recklessly thrown away. People speculated in land, projected a hundred railroads, canals, mines, and every sort of scheme, which would have absorbed $300,000,000 if carried out.

   3The national capital being insufficient, loans were made in England and Holland, where the rate of interest being more moderate stimulated the passion for enterprises. Finally, in order to stop the flow of English capital to America, the Bank of England raised the rate of interest; this brought people to their senses. They saw the impossibility of carrying out a third of their schemes. Cotton fell, and panic seized the public.

   4Since 1818 a period of flow and ebb in trade had been seen every five or six years, but this stoppage was much more serious. The lack of ready money and capital destroyed confidence. Money was not to be had upon any collateral; and the banks stopped discounting. The people lacked bread, the streets were deserted, the theatres empty; social observances were in abeyance, there were no more concerts, and the whole social round was stopped.

   [...]

   5Fearing that General Jackson would not establish a new bank, and by way of counterpoise, one hundred banks were created with a capital of more than $125,000,000; issues of bank stock were not to exceed three times the amount of the capital, but this provision was not observed; the issue was without regulation and without limits, and during an inflation in prices of the necessaries of life which had doubled in value, and which had turned the people's attention to agriculture. The price of land had for some time advanced tenfold, and the advance in cotton caused the Southern planters to abandon indigo and rice.

   6Imports in 1836 exceeded the exports by $50,000,000, which had to be paid in gold or silver. This outflow of metal created a great void.

   7The advance in the discount rate in the Bank of England under such circumstances came like a thunder-clap, and the distended bladder burst. Banks suspended payment, and bank notes lost from 10 to 20 per cent. Exchange on France and England rose to 22 per cent., all metal disappeared from circulation, and a thousand failures took place. The English export houses lost from L5,000,000 to L6,000,000 sterling; values fell from maximum to minimum. The losses in America were even greater; cotton fell to nothing. [...]

   Key for the teacher.

   • International causes: loans "made in England and Holland" (paragraph 3); the Bank of England "raised the rate of interest" to stop British money flowing to America (paragraph 3), described again as "a thunder-clap" (paragraph 7); the fall in cotton prices (paragraphs 3 and 7).
   • Domestic causes: speculation "in land," railroads and canals (paragraph 2); "one hundred banks" created after the national bank's end, issuing notes "without regulation and without limits" (paragraph 5); imports exceeding exports "by $50,000,000," paid "in gold or silver" (paragraph 6).
   • Trigger: in this account, the Bank of England's rate rise.
   • Arrows: for example, British loans fed American speculation in land and projects (paragraphs 2-3). Accept other arrows that students can support with the text.
4. Independent Practice20 minutes

   Students read Source 4, Daniel Webster's speech of August 1840, given during the presidential campaign in which his Whig party opposed Van Buren. They write a one-page analysis:

   1. What cause does Webster blame for the crisis, and what evidence does he give for it?
   2. What effects of the crisis does he describe, three years after the panic?
   3. Where does Webster agree or disagree with Van Buren (Sources 1-2)? What does each leave out?
   4. How should Webster's purpose in August 1840 affect the way a historian uses his explanation?

   1We are, my friends, in the midst of a great movement of the people. That a revolution in public sentiment on some important questions of public policy has begun, and is in progress, it is vain to attempt to conceal, and folly to deny. What will be the extent of this revolution, what its immediate effects upon political men and political measures, what ultimate influence it may have on the integrity of the Constitution, and the permanent prosperity of the country, remains to be seen. Meantime, no one can deny that an extraordinary excitement exists in the country, such as has not been witnessed for more than half a century; not local, nor confined to any two, or three, or ten States, but pervading the whole, from north to south, and from east to west, with equal force and intensity. For an effect so general, a cause of equal extent must exist. No cause, local or partial, can produce consequences so general and universal. In some parts of the country, indeed, local causes may in some degree add to the flame; but no local cause, nor any number of local causes, can account for the generally excited state of the public mind.

   2In portions of the country devoted to agriculture and manufactures, we hear complaints of want of market and low prices. Yet there are other portions of the country, which are consumers, and not producers, of food and manufactures; and, as purchasers, they should, it would seem, be satisfied with the low prices of which the sellers complain; but in these portions, too, of the country, there are dissatisfaction and discontent. Everywhere we find complaining and a desire for change.

   [...]

   3Two months only after General Jackson had retired, and when his vigorous hand was no longer there to uphold it, the league of State banks fell, and crumbled into atoms; and when Mr. Van Buren had been only three months President, he convoked a special session of Congress for the ensuing September. The country was in wide-spread confusion, paralyzed in its commerce, its currency utterly deranged. What was to be done? What would Mr. Van Buren recommend? He could not go back to the Bank of the United States, for he had committed himself against its constitutionality; nor could he, with any great prospect of success, undertake to reconstruct the league of deposit banks; for it had recently failed, and the country had lost confidence in it. What, then, was to be done? He could go neither backward nor forward. What did he do? I mean not to speak disrespectfully, but I say he--escaped! Afraid to touch the fragments of the broken banks, unable to touch the United States Bank, he folded up his arms, and said, The government has nothing to do with providing a currency for the people. That I may do him no wrong, I will read his own language. His predecessors had all said, We will not turn our backs upon this duty of government to provide a uniform currency; his language is, We will turn our backs on this duty. He proposes nothing for the country, nothing for the relief of commerce, or the regulation of exchanges, but simply the means of getting money into the treasury without loss. [...]

   What to look for. Strong analyses quote Webster with paragraph numbers, separate the cause he names from the evidence he gives for it, notice that his effects are described in 1840 rather than 1837, and treat both Webster and Van Buren as interested parties whose claims can be tested against each other and against Source 3. Students should not decide which party was right; they should judge how well each explanation is supported.

5. Closure10-15 minutes

   Read Sources 5 and 6, two more parts of Van Buren's message: his comparison of Britain and the United States, and the opening of the message, which explains why he called Congress back early. Students will use them in the quiz. Source 7 is for homework.

   1However unwilling any of our citizens may heretofore have been to assign to these causes the chief instrumentality in producing the present state of things, the developments subsequently made and the actual condition of other commercial countries must, as it seems to me, dispel all remaining doubts upon the subject. It has since appeared that evils similar to those suffered by ourselves have been experienced in Great Britain, on the Continent, and, indeed, throughout the commercial world, and that in other countries as well as in our own they have been uniformly preceded by an undue enlargement of the boundaries of trade, prompted, as with us, by unprecedented expansions of the systems of credit. [...] The reaction was proportioned in its violence to the extraordinary character of the events which preceded it. The commercial community of Great Britain were subjected to the greatest difficulties, and their debtors in this country were not only suddenly deprived of accustomed and expected credits, but called upon for payments which in the actual posture of things here could only be made through a general pressure and at the most ruinous sacrifices.

   2In view of these facts it would seem impossible for sincere inquirers after truth to resist the conviction that the causes of the revulsion in both countries have been substantially the same. Two nations, the most commercial in the world, enjoying but recently the highest degree of apparent prosperity and maintaining with each other the closest relations, are suddenly, in a time of profound peace and without any great national disaster, arrested in their career and plunged into a state of embarrassment and distress. In both countries we have witnessed the same redundancy of paper money and other facilities of credit; the same spirit of speculation; the same partial successes; the same difficulties and reverses, and at length nearly the same overwhelming catastrophe. The most material difference between the results in the two countries has only been that with us there has also occurred an extensive derangement in the fiscal affairs of the Federal and State Governments, occasioned by the suspension of specie payments by the banks.

   1The act of the 23d of June, 1836, regulating the deposits of the public money and directing the employment of State, District, and Territorial banks for that purpose, made it the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to discontinue the use of such of them as should at any time refuse to redeem their notes in specie, and to substitute other banks, provided a sufficient number could be obtained to receive the public deposits upon the terms and conditions therein prescribed. The general and almost simultaneous suspension of specie payments by the banks in May last rendered the performance of this duty imperative in respect to those which had been selected under the act, and made it at the same time impracticable to employ the requisite number of others upon the prescribed conditions. The specific regulations established by Congress for the deposit and safe-keeping of the public moneys having thus unexpectedly become inoperative, I felt it to be my duty to afford you an early opportunity for the exercise of your supervisory powers over the subject.

   2I was also led to apprehend that the suspension of specie payments, increasing the embarrassments before existing in the pecuniary affairs of the country, would so far diminish the public revenue that the accruing receipts into the Treasury would not, with the reserved five millions, be sufficient to defray the unavoidable expenses of the Government until the usual period for the meeting of Congress, whilst the authority to call upon the States for a portion of the sums deposited with them was too restricted to enable the Department to realize a sufficient amount from that source. These apprehensions have been justified by subsequent results, which render it certain that this deficiency will occur if additional means be not provided by Congress.

   [...]

   3A danger difficult, if not impossible, to be avoided in such an arrangement is made strikingly evident in the very event by which it has now been defeated. A sudden act of the banks intrusted with the funds of the people deprives the Treasury, without fault or agency of the Government, of the ability to pay its creditors in the currency they have by law a right to demand. This circumstance no fluctuation of commerce could have produced if the public revenue had been collected in the legal currency and kept in that form by the officers of the Treasury. The citizen whose money was in bank receives it back since the suspension at a sacrifice in its amount, whilst he who kept it in the legal currency of the country and in his own possession pursues without loss the current of his business. The Government, placed in the situation of the former, is involved in embarrassments it could not have suffered had it pursued the course of the latter. These embarrassments are, moreover, augmented by those salutary and just laws which forbid it to use a depreciated currency, and by so doing take from the Government the ability which individuals have of accommodating their transactions to such a catastrophe.

   1The protection of his bills of exchange made a great impression in England; the rebound was felt in America, where the panic, moderated in 1837 through the intervention of the Bank, burst forth with renewed fury in 1839, and brought about the complete liquidation of that establishment.

   [...]

   2Tables indicating the banks which suspended during the panic: In 1814, 90; in 1830, 165; in 1837, 618; in 1839, 959. The last panic, from 1837 to 1839, produced, according to some pretty accurate reports of 1841, 33,000 failures, involving a loss of $440,000,000.

   3PANIC OF 1848.--The entire discounts, which had risen to $525,000,000 in 1837, fell to $485,000,000 in 1838, only to rise again to $492,000,000 in 1839, and the real liquidation of the panic occurred only then. Discounts fell at once to $462,000,000, then $386,000,000; the abundance of capital, and the low price at which it was offered, cleared out bank paper until it was reduced from $525,000,000 to $254,000,000 in 1843. [...]

   Exit ticket: "Name one cause of the Panic of 1837 that came from abroad and one that came from inside the United States, and explain in one sentence how they worked together."

   Teacher notes. (1) The Democrats and Whigs of 1837-1840 were the parties of their time; the lesson presents each side's case in its own words and grades the analysis, not a conclusion about which side was right. Avoid drawing comparisons to present-day parties or policies. (2) The sources disagree on some details: Juglar's book, in a passage not printed here, dates the New York banks' suspension to "the beginning of April, 1837," while Van Buren, writing that September, speaks of the suspension "in May last" (Source 6). Standard histories date the New York banks' suspension to May 10, 1837, which agrees with Van Buren; this is a useful moment to discuss how dates are checked. (3) Juglar's and Thom's numbers are their own estimates and rounded figures; treat them as evidence to be tested, not as exact counts. (4) Each cut in the sources is marked [...]; the cuts leave out other topics in the same documents.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In an invented example, a dam weakened by years of poor repair breaks after one night of heavy rain. Which statement sorts the causes correctly?

   AThe night of rain is the condition; the poor repair is the trigger BPoor repair is the condition; the rain is the trigger CBoth causes are triggers, since the break followed each of them DNeither is a cause; only the break itself explains the flood

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Why did people in 1837-1840 explain the causes of the panic so differently?

   ANo one at the time had any figures about banks or trade at all BThe panic had a single cause that every writer simply missed CEach account also judged a party's policy DAll of the writers agreed, but historians later misread them

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 5, how does Van Buren argue that the main causes were not American government policy alone?

   AHe shows that American banks had stopped all lending in 1834 BHe blames the British government for the deposit law of 1836 CSimilar booms brought similar crises abroad DHe says the crisis began only after Congress met in September

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   According to Source 5, paragraph 2, what was the "most material difference" between the crisis in Britain and in the United States?

   AOnly Britain had a redundancy of paper money and credit BOnly the United States had a spirit of speculation COnly Britain suffered a sudden, overwhelming catastrophe DOnly here were government finances deranged

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 6, paragraph 1, explains why Van Buren called Congress back early. Which chain matches his explanation?

   ABanks suspended payments, so the deposit law could not be obeyed BCongress passed a new bank law, so the banks suspended payments CThe Treasury ran out of money, so the banks suspended payments DMerchants paid their duties early, so the banks suspended payments

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What further effect of the suspension does Van Buren predict in Source 6, paragraph 2?

   AThe States would return all the deposited sums at once BThe banks would resume specie payments within a month CMerchants would refuse to import goods from Europe DFalling revenue would leave a deficiency

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In Source 6, paragraph 3, what conclusion does Van Buren draw from the way the suspension hurt the Treasury?

   AA new national bank should hold all government money BTreasury officers should keep public money in coin CThe government should print more paper money at once DThe banks should be punished by closing all of them

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 2 says $39,500,000 went into public lands "in the years 1835 and 1836," while "in the preceding year the sales amounted to only four and a half millions." Per year, the land sales of 1835-1836 were about how many times the earlier year's?

   ANearly 8.8 times BAbout 35 times over CAbout 4.4 times DOnly about 0.2 times

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Source 1, paragraph 2, says bank loans and discounts grew from "three hundred and twenty-four millions" in 1834 to "more than four hundred and fifty-seven millions" by January 1836. About what percent increase is that?

   AAbout 133 percent BAbout 29 percent CAbout 141 percent DAbout 41 percent

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Webster says, "For an effect so general, a cause of equal extent must exist" (Source 4, paragraph 1). What is the main weakness of this reasoning?

    AWebster gives no effects at all, only causes BIt assumes the crisis happened only in New York CSeveral causes together can have a nationwide effect DIt blames international causes, which he never mentions

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Webster writes that "Two months only after General Jackson had retired," the state banks "fell, and crumbled into atoms" (Source 4, paragraph 3). What should a careful historian ask about this claim?

    ADid his leaving cause the fall, or just come first? BWas Jackson still President on the day the banks fell? CDid the state banks fall even before Jackson took office? DDid Webster attend the special session of Congress himself?

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Juglar and Thom write that the general prosperity before 1837 "carried with it the seeds of trouble" (Source 3, paragraph 1). What kind of causal claim is this?

    AA single trigger on one day caused the whole panic BThe boom itself set up the bust CThe crisis was caused only by events in Europe DProsperity and the panic had no connection at all

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Webster's 1840 speech opens by describing "a revolution in public sentiment" and "an extraordinary excitement" across the country (Source 4, paragraph 1). What effect of the panic does the speech itself show?

    AThe panic had ended and the economy recovered by early 1838 BHard times had become a central political issue CMost voters had stopped caring about money and banks DThe parties agreed on a single plan for the currency

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Van Buren himself says opinions about the causes "were more or less affected by political considerations" (Source 1, paragraph 1). How should a historian treat his own explanation?

    AAs one interested view to test against other sources and data BAs the final answer, since a President had the best information CAs worthless, since anyone with a stake must be wrong DAs a neutral account, since he admits others were biased

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Using Sources 1 and 3, explain how two causes of the Panic of 1837 fed each other, so that each made the other stronger. Quote both sources.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Compare Van Buren's explanation (Sources 1, 2 and 5) with Webster's (Source 4). For each, name the main cause and the kind of evidence it rests on (numbers, timing, or comparison with other countries), and explain how a historian could test that evidence.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Van Buren concludes that "the causes of the revulsion in both countries have been substantially the same" (Source 5, paragraph 2). Does Juglar and Thom's account (Source 3) support that claim? Explain.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Using Source 3, trace a chain of at least three links from the Bank of England's rate rise to effects inside the United States.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Webster says Van Buren "proposes nothing for the country, nothing for the relief of commerce" (Source 4, paragraph 3). How did Van Buren's response to the panic itself become a cause of further conflict? Use Sources 4 and 6.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Write a thesis sentence that explains the Panic of 1837 as the result of interacting domestic and international causes, then support it with two pieces of evidence from different sources, one of them a number.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to D2.His.14.9-12: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013). NCSS was not involved in the production of this lesson and does not endorse it.