254 Chapter 9 Jacksonian Democracy
either to approve the recharter bill or to veto it
(which would give candidate Clay a lively issue in the
campaign). The banker yielded to this strategy and a
recharter bill passed Congress early in July 1832.
Jackson promptly vetoed it.
Jackson’s message explaining why he had rejected
the bill was immensely popular, but it adds nothing
to his reputation as a statesman. Being a good
Jeffersonian—and no friend of John Marshall—he
insisted that the Bank was unconstitutional. (McCulloch
v. Marylandhe brushed aside, saying that as president
he had sworn to uphold the Constitution asheunder-
stood it.) The Bank was inexpedient, he argued. A dan-
gerous private monopoly that allowed a handful of rich
men to accumulate “many millions” of dollars, the
Bank was making “the rich richer and the potent more
powerful.” Furthermore, many of its stockholders were
foreigners: “If we must have a bank... it should be
purely American.”^1
Biddle considered Jackson’s veto “a manifesto
of anarchy,” its tone like “the fury of a chained
panther biting the bars of his cage.” A large major-
ity of the voters, however, approved of Jackson’s
hard-hitting attack.
Buttressed by his election triumph, Jackson acted
swiftly. He ordered the withdrawal of government
funds from the Bank, but his own secretary of the
treasury thought it unwise and refused to do so!
Jackson replaced him with Attorney General Roger B.
Taney, who had been advising him closely on Bank
affairs. Taney carried out the order by depositing new
federal receipts in seven state banks in eastern cities
while continuing to meet government expenses with
drafts on the Bank of the United States.
Set on winning the Bank war, Jackson lost sight
of his fear of unsound paper money. Taney, however,
knew exactly what he was doing. One of the state
banks receiving federal funds was the Union Bank of
Baltimore. Taney owned stock in this institution, and
its president was his close friend. Little wonder that
Jackson’s enemies were soon calling the favored state
banks “pet” banks.
When Taney began to remove the deposits, the
government had $9,868,000 to its credit in the Bank of
the United States; within three months the figure fell to
about $4 million. Faced with the withdrawal of so
much cash, Biddle had to contract his operations. He
decided to exaggerate the contraction, pressing the
state banks hard by presenting all their notes and checks
that came across his counter for conversion into specie
and drastically limiting his own bank’s business loans.
He hoped that the resulting shortage of credit would
be blamed on Jackson and that it would force the presi-
dent to return the deposits. “Nothing but the evidence
of suffering... will produce any effect,” he reasoned.
For a time the strategy appeared to be working.
Paper money became scarce, specie almost unobtain-
able. A serious panic threatened. New York banks were
soon refusing to make any loans at all. “Nobody buys;
nobody can sell,” a French visitor to the city observed.
Memorials and petitions poured in on Congress.
Worried and indignant delegations of businessmen
began trooping to Washington seeking “relief.” Clay,
Webster, and John C. Calhoun thundered against
Jackson in the Senate.
The president would not budge. “I am fixed in
my course as firm as the Rockey Mountain,” he wrote
Vice President Van Buren. No “frail mortals” who
worshiped “the golden calf” could change his mind.
To others he swore he would sooner cut off his right
arm and “undergo the torture of ten Spanish inquisi-
tions” than restore the deposits. When delegations
came to him, he roared, “Go to Nicholas Biddle....
Biddle has all the money!” And in the end—because
he was right—business leaders began to take the old(^1) The country needed all the foreign capital it could attract.
Foreigners owned only $8 million of the $35 million stock, and in
any case they could not vote their shares.
A cartoon of “King Andrew the First” shows Jackson standing atop
the U.S. Constitution—a scepter in one hand and a veto in
another. Compare this drawing with the one of Queen Elizabeth I
on page 31.