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The year of John Pierpont Morgan's birthday, 1837, was a year of panic for the infant economy of the United States.  God, greed, and inexperience seemed to conspire against the new nation,  The crash has its withered roots in a crop failure two years before.  The heavens had blighted the grain on the prairies.  The farmers of the West had become dependent on the spreading web of canals and railroads to send their produce to the factory cities of England,  Without those shipments, the European money that had financed the new transport systems could not be serviced.  This was the ominous act of God.
-Andrew Sinclair,  Corsair:  The Life of J. Pierpont Morgan