By the summer of 1857 the combination of speculative fever in some parts of the economy and ominous cutbacks in others created a climate of nervous apprehension. “What can be the end of all this but another general collapse like that of 1837?” asked the financial writer of the New York Herald. “The same premonitory symptoms that prevailed in 1835—36 prevail in 1857 in a tenfold degree . . . paper bubbles of all descriptions, a general scramble for western lands and town and city sites, millions of dollars, made or borrowed, expended in fine houses and gaudy furniture. . . . That a storm is
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