The Panic of 1873 began after the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company.
Jay Cooke & Company suspended payments on September 18, 1873, after it could no longer sell enough bonds to finance the Northern Pacific Railway. The failure damaged confidence in banks and railroads and helped trigger a severe financial downturn in the United States.
The panic was part of a wider international crisis connected to speculative railway investment, declining silver prices, and financial instability in Europe. The New York Stock Exchange closed temporarily, and the resulting depression lasted for years in the United States.
The event is sometimes called the Long Depression, although historians differ over the boundaries and severity of that term. It should not be confused with the Great Depression of the 1930s. Jay Cooke had also been an important Union financier during the American Civil War.