Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Contemporaries called it 'hard times,' reflecting the perspective of the little people. Hard times lasted three to four years, longer in some places. The great Migration itself ground to a halt. . . . The Panic of 1819 has been called 'a traumatic awakening to the capitalist reality of boom-and-bust.' . . . Probably because this was the first depression in national history, the citizenry did not assume the administration in Washington could have prevented it. The blame that attached to the Bank of the United States did not rub off on the Monroe administration." [Howe: What Hath God Wrought, p. 143-6]