... bimetallism was by no means beingruled out—albeit Gresham’s Law could not then maintain the American silver dollar in circulation.96 In 1857, an important part of the Jacksonian coinage pro-gram ... government and bank inflation were inti-mately linked. 100Rockoff goes so far as to call free banking the “antithesis of laissez-faire banking laws.” Hugh Rockoff, “Varieties of Banking and RegionalEconomic ... Michigan, and Florida) had repudiated all or part of their debts. Six other states (Maryland, Illinois, Indiana,Louisiana, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania) had defaulted fromthree to six years before...