3 National Park Service, “First Bank of the United States” (October 18, 2016), https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/places-firstbank.htm; National Park Service, “Second Bank of the United States” (April 12, 2017), https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/placessecondbank.htm. 4 Library of Congress, “Bank of North America, 305-307 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA” (documentation compiled after 1933), https://www.loc.gov/item/pa1098/. 2  -2Its charter came from a new nation on the verge of bankruptcy.
5 Six years of war had drained an already-short supply of domestic specie, a necessity for international trade. So little specie remained in the treasury that the “continentals,” used to finance the war, had depreciated to about two cents on the dollar.