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6-071 Andrew Jackson and the Bank - II
Lead: When Andrew Jackson vetoed the charter renewal for the Bank of the United States in 1832, he did so in part to confound the power of the likes of Nicholas Biddle.
Intro: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.
Content: Born an aristocratic Philadelphian in 1786, Nicholas Biddle was graduated with honors at the age of 15 from the College of New Jersey in Princeton. He was a diplomat and literary editor before entering the complicated world of national finance. Probably as much as any man in his generation he understood the principles of banking and currency. Biddle was elected to the board of the Second Bank of the United States in 1819 and became its president four years later. A conservative banker under whose stewardship the Bank helped the United States weather the turbulent economy of the 1820s, he also represented everything Andy Jackson despised. He was eastern, rich, educated and aristocratic and many thought he and his bank had too much power.
President Andrew Jackson was a man of the west, a self-educated lawyer, whose political reputation was won in fighting the Indians and also the British at the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815. He came to the White House in 1828 an old-fashioned Jeffersonian who distrusted banks in general and eastern ones in particular. Like many Americans he believed that gold and silver were the only trustworthy form of money and came to see the Bank of the United States, with its paper money, was a great enemy of democracy and economic justice, a conspiracy of "aristocratic" wealth. Nevertheless, Biddle and his Bank had powerful friends, some of them newspaper editors and politicians such as Daniel Webster were paid regular fees by the Bank to write and work for its cause. Many others sincerely believed the Bank was a valuable national institution. Still others such as Henry Clay were political enemies of Jackson and as the election of 1832 approached, they were determined to use the Bank as an issue in the campaign against the President. Next time: Veto and the end of the Bank. At the University of Richmond this is Dan Roberts.
Resources
Crouthamel, James L. "Did the Second Bank of the United States. Bribe the Press?" Journalism-Quarterly 36(l) (1959): 35-44.
Gatell, Frank Otto. "Sober Second Thoughts on Van Buren, the Albany Regency, and the Wall Street Conspiracy." Journal of American History 53(l) (1966): 19-40.
Govan, Thomas Payne. Nicholas Biddle: Nationalist and Public Banker, 1786-1844-. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959
Macesich, George. "Sources of Monetary Disturbances in the United States, 1834-1845." Journal of Economic History 2 0 (3) (1960) : 407-434.
McGrane, Reginald C. The Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle; dealing with National Affairs - 1807-1&44. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1919
Meerman, Jacob P. "The Climax of-the Bank War: Biddle's Contraction, 1833-34." Journal of Political Economy 71(4) (1963): 378-388.
Perkins, Edwin J. "Lost Opportunities for Compromise in the Bank War: A Reassessment of Jackson's Veto Message." Business History Review 61(4) (1987): 531-550.
Ermine, Robert V. Andrew Jackson and the Bank War; A Study in the Growth of Presidential Power. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 19,67.
Sharp, James Roger. The Jacksonians versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the Panic of 1837. New York Columbia University Press, 1970.
Taylor, George Rogers. Jackson vs. Biddle's Bank: The Struggle Over the Second Bank of the United States. London: D.C. Heath and Company, 1972.
Copyright 2000 by Dan Roberts Enterprises LLC
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