First, my Mises Institute presentation on this subject:
Quite a bit of work remains to be done from an Austrian perspective on nineteenth-century economic downturns. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the links that follow, but here is some useful material to get you started.
Can We Live Without the Fed? by Thomas E. Woods
“The Panic of 1837 and the Contraction of 1839–43: A Reassessment of Its Causes from an Austrian Perspective and a Critique of the Free Banking Interpretation” by H.A. Scott Trask
“The Independent Treasury: Origins, Rationale, and Record, 1846–1861” by H.A. Scott Trask
“Banking Crises and the Rules of the Game” by Charles Calomiris
“Has the Fed Been a Failure?” by George A. Selgin, William D. Lastrapes and Lawrence H. White
The Panic of 1819 by Murray N. Rothbard
A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II by Murray N. Rothbard (read online or purchase)
Rollback by Thomas E. Woods
A Short History of Money and Banking by William Gouge
Democratick Editorials by William Leggett (edited by Lawrence H. White)
Mises Wiki (an ongoing project)
Panic of 1792
Panic of 1796-97
Panic of 1819
Panic of 1825
Panic of 1837
Panic of 1847
Panic of 1857
Panic of 1866
Panic of 1873
Panic of 1884
Panic of 1890
Panic of 1893
Panic of 1896
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