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J. B. Moussier and the Property Banks of Louisiana*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Abstract
The property bank, an ingenious new institution that provided badly needed capital for southern mercantile and agricultural operations, appears to have been the creation of one man's imagination. It is ironical that he died in financial embarrassment, leaving behind few clues for the curious historian.
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- Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961
References
1 The principal sources of information about the property banks are Grenier, Emile Philippe, “Property Banks in Louisiana” (Ph.D. Thesis, Louisiana State University, 1942)Google Scholar, and Redlich, Fritz, The Molding of American Banking: Men and Ideas (New York, 1951), Part I, pp. 205–208, 297–298Google Scholar; Part II, pp. 33–34. See also Hidy, Ralph W., The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work, 1763–1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), pp. 96, 110–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hidy, Ralph W., “The Union Bank of Louisiana Loan,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. XLVII (April, 1939), pp. 232–237CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Roeder, Robert E., “Merchants of Ante-Bellum New Orleans,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, vol. X (April, 1958), pp. 119–120, 122Google Scholar. The extant records of the Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana, incomplete but extensive, are in the Department of Archives, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Records of the Citizens Bank are to be found among the Canal Bank Papers, Archives Division, Howard-Tilton Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
2 25th Cong., 2d Sess., House Exec. Doc. No. 79, p. 670.
3 Lavergne to M. Andry [President, and the Directors of the Consolidated Association], Sept. 6, 1828. The original of this letter, in French, is among the Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana Papers (hereinafter cited as C. A. P. L. Papers). There is an English translation in Grenier, Emile Philippe, “The Early Financing of the Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana” (M.A. Thesis, Louisiana State University, 1938), pp. 136–137Google Scholar.
4 Directors' Minutes, Dec. 21, 1828, C. A. P. L. Papers. The minutes are in French.
5 Ibid., Oct. 31, 1829.
6 Paxton's New Orleans Directory for 1823 repeated the listing, changing the spelling of the given name to the French “Jean.”
7 Directors' Minutes, Feb. 19, 1829, C. A. P. L. Papers.
8 Roeder states that Moussier “married a Creole who inherited a plantation just outside of New Orleans.” (“Merchants of Ante-Bellum New Orleans,” p. 122.)
9 Ibid., p. 119. (Italics supplied.)
10 Louisiana Senate Journal, 1827 [French], p. 8. For the charter of the Consolidated Association, see Louisiana Acts, 1827, pp. 96–116.
11 Louisiana House Journal, 1827, p. 64.
12 Louisiana Acts, 1835, p. 123. An undated list of stockholders found among the C. A. P. L. Papers shows that 2,502 shares (of $500 each) were secured by city property, chiefly in New Orleans, and that 2,768 shares were secured by rural property.
13 Louisiana Acts, 1832, p. 46; 1833, pp. 174–175.
14 Louisiana House Journal, 1833, pp. 55–64.
15 See Tregle, Joseph G. Jr., “Early New Orleans Society: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Southern History, vol. XVIII (Feb., 1952), pp. 30–31Google Scholar.
16 Sparks, Earl S., History and Theory of Agricultural Credit in the United States (New York, 1932), p. 6Google Scholar. On this point see Redlich, Molding of American Banking, Part I, pp. 206–207, 297-298.
17 Louisiana House Journal, 1827, p. 65.
18 Directors' Minutes, Dec. 21, 1828, C. A. P. L. Papers.
19 Ibid., Feb. 16, 19, Oct. 31, 1829; July 17, 1830.
20 Subscription Book of the Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana, 1827–1840, C. A. P. L. Papers.
21 Directors' Minutes, Feb. 9, 1833, C. A. P. L. Papers.
22 Michel's New Orleans Annual and Commercial Register, 1834.
23 Citizens' Bank, Directors' Minutes, July 7, 1836, Canal Bank Papers. (The resolution is in French.) At least one of the Misses Moussier was not yet of age at this time. (Citizens' Bank, Directors' Minutes, July 7, 1836.) The committee that presented the resolution had been appointed to inquire into the situation of the Moussier family “and to report on the propriety of extending relief to the female members of it.” (Citizens' Bank, Directors' Minutes, June 16, 1836Google Scholar. Italics supplied.) A man named J. B. Gustave Moussier, who had some connection with New Orleans, died in Rio de Janeiro on July 29, 1885. (New Orleans Bee, Jan. 3, 1886.) He could have been a son or a grandson of the subject of this article.
24 Citizens' Bank, Directors' Minutes, July 7, 1836, Canal Bank Papers.
25 Roeder (Ante-Bellum Merchants of New Orleans, p. 122), suggests the possibility that Moussier, in promoting the idea of the Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana, may have been acting as “a stalking horse” for Edmond J. Forstall, a New Orleans merchant who was prominent in the early histories of all three of the city's property banks. Such could hardly have been the case. At the time that the directors of the Citizens' Bank approved the gift for the Misses Moussier, Forstall was president of the bank. He presided at the meeting at which the resolution was presented and voted in favor of it. More than a thousand of Forstall's letters have been preserved (principally among the Baring Papers at the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa). They reveal a man who was generous but who was also inordinately vain. It is inconceivable that had the writer of those letters had anything to do with the introduction of the system of property banks he would have permitted the above-cited resolution, which gives the entire honor to Moussier, to pass in the form quoted. Further, on more than one occasion, Forstall specifically claimed credit for arranging the Consolidated Association's European loan in 1828 and for helping to frame the charter of the Union Bank of Louisiana. Had he been responsible for the launching of the C A. P. L., as well, surely he would have boasted of that, too. He was not a man to hide his light under a bushel.
26 Redlich, Molding of American Banking, Part I, p. 208.