Abraham Lincoln went to war with the banks before he ever went to war with the Confederacy. When European lenders offered to fund the Civil War at interest rates designed to trap the country in permanent debt, he refused and printed government-issued Greenbacks instead. For a brief window, America had a currency that served the people rather than the banks.
The response from financial elites was immediate. Lobbying, legislation, and coordinated pressure from banking houses on both sides of the Atlantic worked to strangle the Greenback system while Lincoln was still alive.