Arts and ChartsMain MenuIntroductionAn Age of PanicsNineteenth Century TrackAn Age of EconomicsTwentieth Century TrackGalleryCreditsDaniel Platt and Rachel Knecht3ebb098c099a4564606054ddd3beb814ce8f359d
An Age of Panics
12017-02-10T10:15:14-08:00Daniel Platt and Rachel Knecht3ebb098c099a4564606054ddd3beb814ce8f359d118625plain2017-03-03T10:53:38-08:00Daniel Platt and Rachel Knecht3ebb098c099a4564606054ddd3beb814ce8f359d“In one word, excitement, anxiety, terror, panic, pervades all classes and ranks.” Thus did one observer describe conditions in New Orleans, the financial capital of the South, at the onset of the Panic of 1837. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some kind of national economic catastrophe struck at least once a generation. Smaller crises, affecting cities or regions, were common too. Said Congressman William Frye in 1873, "There is a gale blowing always in commercial life, and beneath that gale there are wrecks every day and every hour unnoticed by the world."
