ABSTRACT
It was one thing to create the national banking system on paper. It was quite another to bring it to fruition in the midst of the Civil War. Offices and furnishings had to be secured, staff hired, and operating procedures developed. Reviewing hundreds of applications for national bank charters was a major administrative hurdle in the best of circumstances, but in this case it had to be done with a staff of four: Comptroller Hugh McCulloch, Deputy Comptroller Samuel T. Howard, and two clerks. That McCulloch was able to accomplish most of this in the roughly 10 weeks that elapsed from the date of the National Currency Act’s passage to May 9, 1863, when the office’s doors swung open for the first time, was a small organizational miracle.
