"King Cotton and His Mexican Dollars: The Political Economy of Mexican Silver Dollars in New Orleans, 1838-1862"

This quantitative-evidence-based paper explores the inflows, the provenance, and the monetary and financial uses and users of Mexican silver dollars coming in New Orleans in the free banking era, from the late Jacksonian years through the Union occupation of the port during the US Civil War (1838-1862). The paper sheds light on the market(s) and actors involved in the intermediation of Mexican silver dollars. It explores the implications of firms and merchants controlling such high-powered currency for the provision of liquidity and the political economy and monetary policymaking of commodity money in antebellum US trade and financial circuits.
Drawing on a database assembled from the New Orleans Price Current, a semi-weekly economic newspaper, the paper explores the nominal amounts and the provenance of Mexican silver dollars flowing into the port. After identifying the most significant Mexican silver dollars consignees (individuals and business partnerships), the paper sheds light on how their control of metallic liquidity greatly advanced their business interests as plantation owners, commission merchants, and merchant bankers of the Cotton Kingdom.