This manuscript represents the first book-length treatment of early American banking in over 40 years. During that time economic historians have offered new interpretations of several important developments in antebellum American banking practice and policy. Such features of early American financial markets as free banking, branch banking, deposit insurance, and micro-banking have been radically reinterpreted since Redlich and Hammond wrote. Moreover, economic theory has made significant advances, and this manuscript incorporates those theoretical insights into every chapter. The so-called "information-theoretic" approach links the chapters into a unified whole. Early sections of each chapter synthesize the extant research; later sections present extensions, new finding and new interpretations.