The Origins of the National Banking System

The Chase-Cooke Connection and the New York City Banks

Founded in 1863, the National Banking System was the monetary framework of the United States prior to the founding of the Federal Reserve in 1913. While U.S. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase played the leading public role in its creation, two brothers, investment banker Jay Cooke and lobbyist Henry Cook, were indispensable drivers of the systems enacting legislation.