Free Banking Era (United States currency policy)

The Free Banking Era (1837-1863) refers to a period in the history of the United States of America when the federal government policy was opposed to national banks and abrogated any such powers to state-level chartered banks, often referred to as wildcat banks, known today for the issuance of private paper currency, which was, in theory, expected to be directly redeemable, typically for gold or silver, the principal currencies of the period, though more often was not, the value of the currency being largely backed by mortgage notes on land or government bonds.

Reading

• Dwyer, Gerald P., Jr. (Dec. 1996), "Wildcat Banking, Banking Panics, and Free Banking in the United States", Economic Review: 1-20, https://maysweb.tamu.edu/sage/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2018/09/Wildcat-Banks-Atlanta-Fed-vol81nos3-6_dwyer.pdf 

Pro-Free Banking

• Rockoff, Hugh (1975), The Free Banking Era: A Re-Examination, New York: Arno Press 
• Hayek, Friedrich A. (1976), Choice in Currency, Institute of Economic Affairs, https://mises.org/library/choice-currency-0  — also republished as Denationalisation of Money (1978)