Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America. By Edward J. Balleisen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xv, 322. $55.00, cloth; $18.75, paper

From the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century, every generation of Americans endured, at more or less regular 20-year intervals, a severe macroeconomic crisis or Panic. In the presidential election after the Panic of 1837–1839, voters chased out the Democrats and gave the Whigs unified control of the federal government. The Whig Congress, rather than following the then standard practice of beginning business a full year after the elections, convened in March 1841. By August, the Whigs had passed a national bankruptcy law. A rush to the courts engendered considerable controversy. The twenty-seventh Congress repealed the act almost as quickly as it had enacted it. The gates to discharge were open only from February 1842 to March 1843. In this brief period, many individuals received a “fresh start.” In fact, discharges per capita were on the order of one in every 100 adult white males.