almost immediately withdrawn. Accordingly, on the 12th of the same month the Bank had in its vaults but $71,522, and owed to the city banks a balance of $196,418, exceeding the specie in its vaults $124,895. It must be again remarked that it had yet the sum before mentioned in the mint as well as the sum in transitu from Ohio and Kentucky. This last sum, $250,000, arrived very seasonably on the next day or a day or two after. The Bank in this situation, the office at New York was little better and the office at Boston a great deal worse. At the same time the Bank owed to Baring Brothers & Co. and to Thomas Wilson & Co. nearly $900,000 which it was bound to pay immediately, and which was equivalent to a charge upon its vaults to that amount. It had, including the notes of the offices, a circulation of $6 millions to meet." "In the office at Baltimore, of which James A. Buchanan was president and J. W. McCulloch was cashier, there were nearly three millions of dollars discounted or appropriated without any authority, and without the knowledge of the Board of the office, or that of the parent Bank. S. Smith and Buchanan, of which firm J. A. Buchanan was a member, James W. McCulloch, and George Williams (the latter a member of the parent Board by the appointment of the government) had obtained of the parent Bank discounts in the regular and accustomed manner to the amount of $1,957,700 on a pledge of 18,290 shares of stock of the Bank. These men, without the knowledge of either Board, and contrary to the resolve and orders of the parent Bank, took out of the office at Baltimore under the pretense of securing it by pledging the surplus value of the stock already pledged at the parent Bank for its par value and more, and other like surpluses over which the Bank had no control, the sum of $1,540,000. * * * When this stupendous fraud was discovered, attempts were immediately made to obtain security, and it was nominally obtained to the amount of $900,000. It was probably really worth $500,000. * * * The losses sustained at the office in Baltimore alone, the great mass of which grew out of this fraud, and others connected with it, have been estimated at the immense sum of $1,671,221. The aggregate of the losses of the institution growing out of the operations which preceded the 6th of March, 1819, exceed considerably $3.5 millions. The dividends during the same time amount to $4,410,000. Of this sum, $1,348,558 were received as the interest on the public debt held by the Bank, which leaves as the entire profits on all the operations of banking the sum of $3,061,441, which is less by at least half a million of dollars than the losses sustained on the same business."
Of the measures taken by himself he says: "The southern and western offices were immediately directed not to issue their notes and the Bank ceased to purchase and collect exchange on the South and West. * * * A correspondence with the Secretary of the Treasury was commenced entreating his forbearance and his aid." This correspondence was personal, and does not seem to have been published except in the appendix to Cheves's report of 1822. He made known to the Secretary the position of the Bank, and asked that notice should be given in advance of Treasury drafts, and also infor-
