declared the President, “are well questioned by a large portion of our fellow-citizens; and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency.”  The first part of the statement was true, but the second was distinctly unfair.  The Bank, to be sure, had not established “a uniform and sound” currency.  But it had accomplished much toward that end and was practically the only agency that was wielding any influence in that direction.  The truth is that the more efficient the Bank proved in this task the less popular it became among those elements of the people from which Jackson mainly drew his strength.

Nothing came of the President’s admonition except committee reports in the two Houses, both favorable to the Bank; in fact, the Senate report was copied almost verbatim from a statement supplied by Biddle.  A year later Jackson returned to the subject, this time with an alternative plan for a national bank to be organized as a branch of the Treasury and hence to have “no means to operate on the hopes, fears, or interests of large masses of the community.”  In a set of autograph notes from which the second message was prepared the existing Bank was declared not only unconstitutional but dangerous to liberty, “because through its officers, loans, and participation in politics it could build up or pull down parties or men, because it created a monopoly of the money power, because much of the stock was owned by foreigners, because it would always support him who supported it, and because it weakened the state and strengthened the general government.”  Congress paid no attention to either criticisms or recommendations, and the supporters of the Bank took fresh heart.

When Congress again met, in December, 1831, a presidential election was impending and everybody was wondering what part the bank question would play.  Most Democrats were of the opinion that the subject should be kept in the background.  After all, the present bank charter had more than four years to run, and there seemed to be no reason for injecting so thorny an issue into the campaign.  With a view to keeping the bank authorities quiet, two members of the reconstructed Cabinet, Livingston and McLane, entered into a modus vivendi with Biddle under which the Administration agreed not to push the issue until after the election.  In his annual report as Secretary of the Treasury, McLane actually made an argument for rechartering the Bank; and in his message of the 6th of December the President said that, while he still held “the opinions heretofore expressed in relation to the Bank as at present organized,” he would “leave it for the present to the investigation of an enlightened people and their representatives.”  He had been persuaded that his own plan for a Bank, suggested a year earlier, was not feasible.