jmherbenerI suggest you take a look at the first two chapters of Murray Rothbard’s account in his book, A History of Money and Banking in the United States:
http://mises.org/books/historyofmoney.pdf
From colonial days, Americans used both silver coins and gold coins as money. There were only a few banks in America until after the War for Independence. They were given the legal privilege of issuing bank notes only fractionally backed by a reserve of money and they were partially cartelized under the First Bank of the United States (1791-1811) and the Second Bank of the United States (1816-1836). During the War Between the States, the Federal government established the National Banking System which chartered national banks and brought state charted banks into a nation-wide banking system. This system was subject to booms and busts as banks would overextend their lending and issue of un-backed bank notes and deposits and then face bank runs and collapse when customers lost confidence in the redemption of their notes and deposits. This was the money and banking system on the eve of the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1913.