“RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION,” exclaimed the motto of the Colored American below the date of its first issue, March 4, 1837. Of all the abolitionists who supported this mouthpiece of New York City’s free black community, Arthur Tappan contributed the most money. He was, after all, the president of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and he knew a great deal about experimenting with newspapers after his own efforts to turn the New York Journal of Commerce into an organ of Christian business journalism. More importantly, he had the money to devote to such causes. The profitable silk importing business he ran with his brother Lewis provided him with plenty of funds for his evangelical philanthropy. The Tappan brothers supported the American Tract Society, the American Bible Society, and the American Temperance Union. All of these organizations used print to convince individual Americans to take responsibility for their own lives and for the nation’s soul. Northerners who believed in the mission of reforming the morals of their neighbors could hardly imagine more righteous businessmen.

Yet less than two months after the launch of the Colored American, the Tappan brothers failed. Their assets had become so illiquid, so tied to the collapsing credit system, that they could not pay their debts. Like the Joseph and Hermann failures, the Tappan failure signaled a change in the course of the panic in 1837.