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Writing a Bill of Exchange: The Perils of Pearl Street, The Adventures of Harry Franco, and the Antebellum Credit System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2019

ANDREW LAWSON
ANDREW LAWSON*
Affiliation:
School of Cultural Studies, Leeds Beckett University. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article examines representations of credit instruments in two popular antebellum fictions: Asa Greene's The Perils of Pearl Street and Charles Frederick Briggs's The Adventures of Harry Franco. Drawing on a range of business histories it describes the operation of promissory notes and bills of exchange in the cotton-for-credit system, focussing on the “principle of deferral” and the ways in which these instruments attempted to solve the problem of time in long-distance exchange. By establishing concrete connections between characters, times, and places, these fictions demystify the antebellum financial system, revealing an economy based on new forms of social interdependence.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 645 - 670
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2019

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