Ezra Hopkins.
Ezra Hopkins was a banker based in New York City during the Era of Harmonious Relations. Sobel cites him as one of the financial leaders of the time who erected large and powerful banks on Broad Street, and who controlled the finances of the Northern Confederation. Hopkins founded the Manhattan Bank, which financed railroads and shipping lines established by the rivals to Cornelius Vanderbilt's Northern Confederation Central Railroad. During the Panic of 1836, the Manhattan Bank, then the fourth largest in New York, declared insolvency on 15 April 1836.
Sobel's sources for Ezra Hopkins' career in finance are Albert Todd's Industry and Finance in the Northern Confederation: 1810-1840 (New York, 1943); Esther Kronovet's New York in the Crisis Years: 1836-1837 (New York, 1960); and Martin Denny's The Northern Confederation in the Era of Harmonious Relations (New York, 1967).