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Bank of North America

The Bank of North America was the first chartered bank in the United States, and served as the country's first de facto central bank.[1] Chartered by the Congress of the Confederation on May 26, 1781, and opened in Philadelphia on January 7, 1782.[2][3][4]

Not to be confused with the Bank of British North America, the National Bank of North America, or the Bank of America.

Company type

  • Public (1781–1785)
  • Private (1785–1929)

Financial services

December 31, 1781 (1781-12-31), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, William Bingham, and others

Merger

  • Pennsylvania Company for Insurances on Lives and Granting Annuities (1929)
  • Wells Fargo (2008)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
,
United States

United States

The bank's founding was based on a plan presented by Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris on May 17, 1781,[5] including recommendations by Revolutionary-era Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, who was appointed the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury by George Washington. Although Hamilton later noted the bank's "essential" contribution to the American Revolutionary War, the Pennsylvania government objected to its privileges and reincorporated it under state law, making it unsuitable as a national bank under the U.S. Constitution. Congress instead chartered the First Bank of the United States, a new bank, in 1791, while the Bank of North America continued as a private concern.

Congressional charter

(1799)

Turner v. Bank of North America

(2010). Robert Morris: Financier of the American Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 229–528. ISBN 978-1416570912.

Rappleye, Charles

by Robert Grier Cooke Incorporated (1906).

The Bank of North America, Philadelphia, a National Bank, Founded 1781: The Story of Its Progress through the Last Quarter of a Century, 1881–1906

(ed. Mathew Carey, 1786).

Debates and Proceedings of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, on the Memorials Praying a Repeal of Suspension of the Law Annulling the Charter of the Bank

by Lawrence Lewis, Jr. (J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1882).

A History of the Bank of North America, the First Bank Chartered in the United States

by Matthew St. Clair Clarke and David A. Hall. This collection of documents was aimed to include the entire proceedings, debates, and resolutions of Congress relating to the Bank of North America, the First (1791–1811) Bank of the United States, and the Second (1816–1836) Bank of the United States. These documents were compiled four years before the closing of the Second Bank.

Legislative and Documentary History of the Bank of the United States: Including the Original Bank of North America

by R. K. Moulton. An attempt to compile all the public documents considered to be essential in attaining a thorough knowledge of the national banking operations of the United States, from 1781 to 1834.

Legislative and Documentary History of the Banks of the United States, from the Time of Establishing the Bank of North America, 1781, to October 1834; with Notes and Comments