The Panic of 1819 tells the story of the first nationwide economic collapse to strike the United States. Much more than a banking crisis or real estate bubble, the Panic was the culmination of an ...economic wave that rolled through the United States, forming before the War of 1812, cresting with the land and cotton boom of 1818, and crashing just as the nation confronted the crisis over slavery in Missouri.The Panic introduced Americans to the new phenomenon of boom and bust, changed the country's attitudes towards wealth and poverty, spurred the political movement that became Jacksonian Democracy, and helped create the sectional divide that would lead to the Civil War. Although it stands as one of the turning points of American history, few Americans today have heard of the Panic of 1819, with the result that we continue to ignore its lessons—and repeat its mistakes.
The Panic of 1819, reinforced by the simultaneous spread of the Second Great Awakening, transformed American attitudes towards charity. As the "hard times" began, politicians, editors, and the clergy ...spoke of the need for all to help one another in a crisis that afflicted many who were both "prudent" and "industrious." However, under the pressures of unprecedented financial collapse and wide-spread unemployment, both political and religious leaders began blaming financial failures on the victims' own laziness or extravagance. Instead of financial assistance, the poor were given lectures on the importance of virtue and religion. Soon, a long-established tradition of community support for the poor gave way to a new but also long-lasting habit of blaming poverty on low moral standards and weak character, an attitude that persisted through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
