Chapter 6 - The Millington Bank

Summary

William H. Williams was also intimately connected with a wildcat bank on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the Commercial Bank of Millington. Slave traders such as Williams and Thomas N. Davis helped underwrite the state–chartered banks that proliferated after the death of the Second Bank of the United States, supplying a portion of the start–up capital required for them to go into operation. In turn, many of these very same banks kept slave traders awash in the paper money necessary for slave dealers to pay for their human commodities in the cash that sellers wanted. Williams was sued by at least three different plaintiffs who alleged that he paid for slaves with paper money from the dying Millington bank, knowing that those notes would soon be worthless.