But Tyler was no pushover. He too was a tall man, with a high retreating forehead,' withall the
features of the best Grecian model,' and such a pronounced Roman nose that two Americans in
Naples, present when a bust of Cicero was unearthed at an excavation, exclaimed with one
accord: President Tyler!' So when Clay called on the new President and unwisely insistedI
demand a bank now!' Tyler replied crushingly: Then, Sir, I wish you to understand this-that you and I were born in the same district; that we have fed upon the same food, and have breathed the same natal air. Go you now, then, Mr Clay, to your end of the avenue, where stands the Capitol, and there perform your duty to the country as you shall think proper. So help me God, I shall do mine at this end of it, as I shall think proper.' The two men never spoke again. Nor was this the end of the damage inflicted by the wretched SBUS dispute. In 1841 Biddle's Bank, mortally wounded by the long Depression, finally tottered to its doom and closed its doors. Among its bad debts was a massive $114,000 owed by Webster, the Secretary of State. Biddle was ruined, had to sell his splendid city mansion in Philadelphia, and was able to retain his perfect house' Andalucia thanks only to his rich wife's trustees. Even so, it soon wore a
neglected look. The spiteful John Quincy Adams dined there and recorded: 'Biddle broods with
smiling face and stifled groans over the wreck of splendid blasted expectations and ruined hopes.
A fair mind, a brilliant genius, a generous temper, an honest heart, waylaid and led astray by
prosperity, suffering the penalty of scarcely voluntary error.' Three years later the ruined banker
was dead, old Jackson surviving him by a triumphant year.
Did having a central bank, or not having one, make much difference to America as a whole? It is
hard to say. America had financial crises and recessions-all expanding countries do-but it always
quickly recovered and went on remorselessly, pushing west, building up industries, creating
farms. In 1800 there had been 450,000 American farms. By 1850 there were 1.5 million, a
number which would grow steadily until it reached 6.4 million and a peak of 6.95 million in
- The Americans, recruited from all the people of Europe, were magnificent rough-and-
ready farmers. The great epic of 19th-century America is the internal migration, the occupation
and exploitation of the Middle and West. The biggest single factor was that the country was
empty, land was cheap or free, credit was easy, the law left them virtually alone, and all was
governed by a virtually unrestrained market and by their own ingenuity and energy. Nearly all
these internal immigrants had already farmed in the East and they faced conditions they knew
they could handle-this was a key point. Soils, shrubs, trees, and grasses were known to them,
they were familiar with the weather, there was nearly always plenty of wood close at hand, and
the water was there, in lakes and streams or in the table below the surface. They knew that all the
old tricks of the farming trade they or their fathers had worked in the East, would work in the
West, often better. That was the grand psychological certainty which made them pioneer. They
had over two centuries of collective wisdom behind them, and science and machinery were
coming along fast. In 1842 Samuel Forry published the first scientific work on the American
climate. It was replaced by Lorin Blodget's hook on climatology in 1857, and by then the
Smithsonian was systematically collecting data on climate.
The Smithsonian, in Washington, was the first institution for scientific research in America,
made possible by an enormous gift of about $500,000-more than any university endowment in
the US then-by a British chemist, James Smithson. Despite the efforts of the strict
constructionists like Calhoun to stop the federal government thus getting involved in research,
John Quincy Adams and his friends managed to "get the gift accepted, the institute organized,
and America's first `pure' scientist, Joseph Henry (1797-1878), made its founding director in