Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/232

 could not do; 4.—the States were allowed to tax the stock of the Bank owned by their citizens, which would cause the stock to go out of the country; 5.—the few stockholders here would then control it; 6.—the charter was unconstitutional; 7.—the business of the Bank would be exempt from taxation; 8.—there were strong suspicions of mismanagement in the Bank; 9.—the President could have given a better plan; 10.—the bank would increase the distinction between rich and poor. Especial stress was laid upon the second, fourth, and tenth, with an appeal to popular prejudice against foreigners and the drain of specie. The operation of the Bank was also represented as a constant oppression of the people of the West by the people of the East and of Europe. This is all an echo of the arguments and notions of the Kentucky relief contest.

The bill was put to vote in the Senate July 13th, but failed of two-thirds (22 to 19). If the Bank was to continue to exist it was necessary to defeat Jackson's re-election. The local bank interest, however, had now awakened to the great gain it would make if the Bank of the United States should be overthrown. The safety fund banks in New York were bound into a solid phalanx by their system, and they constituted a great political power. The chief crime alleged against the Bank of the United States was meddling with politics. It denied it, and defended itself with such success as to leave the matter at most very doubtful. There was no doubt whatever that the safety fund banks of New York were an active political power under Van Buren's control. They went into this election animated by the hope of a share in the deposits. The great Bank also distributed pamphlets and subsidized newspapers in the campaign, fighting for its existence. The Jackson men always denounced this action of the Bank as corrupt and as a proof of the truth of the charges that it had done so before. They unquestionably measured by two standards, one for themselves and their allies and the other for the Bank.

Jackson's success in the election meant that the fate of the Bank was sealed. Its charter would expire one year before the term for which he had been elected, but he and those followers who had been the chief agents in the Bank war were by no means disposed to allow it to run peacefully to the allotted term of its existence. They wanted to crush it; to win a brilliant and noisy victory over it; to punish it for its audacity in resisting the will of the popular hero; and to vindicate the positions which they had adopted in respect to it. The message of 1832 was temperate in tone but very severe against the Bank. As above stated, the eagerness of the Bank to get possession of the three per cents, had established a conviction in Jackson's own mind that it was weak and unsound, and with his characteristic disposition to exaggerate any conviction which he had once adopted, he declared that it was bankrupt. "An inquiry into the transactions of the institution, embracing the branches as well as the principal Bank, seems