The First Chartered Bank West of the Mississippi: Banco Nacional de Texas

Abstract

While Jacksonian democrats moved resolutely to abolish the National Bank of the United States and denounced the very idea of such an institution as being incompatible with liberty, Governor José Felix Trespalacios, colonel of the imperial armies of Mexico and political chief of the Province of Texas, promulgated a decree in the historical city of the Alamo establishing the first “national” bank in the Americas west of the Mississippi. “Consonant with my duties,” he declared, “and mindful of the interests of this beautiful country and the deep regard in which I hold its inhabitants, I hereby order and command that a National Bank be established temporarily in this Province, subject to its ultimate approval by the Government.”