Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/365

Rh eralist and a friend of Daniel Webster, had been made president of the branch of the United States Bank at Portsmouth, and that he was an unaccommodating person very objectionable to the people. A correspondence concerning this case sprang up between Secretary Ingham and Nicholas Biddle, the President of the Bank of the United States, a man of much literary ability, who was rather fond of an argument, and liked to say clever things. No impartial man can read the letters which passed to and fro without coming to the conclusion that influential men in the Jackson party desired to use the bank and its branches for political purposes; that Biddle wished to maintain the political independence of the institution, and that his refusal to do the bidding of politicians with regard to Jeremiah Mason was bitterly resented. It appears, also, from an abundance of testimony, of which Ingham's confession, published after he had ceased to be Secretary of the Treasury, forms part, that the members of the “Kitchen Cabinet” told Jackson all sorts of stories about efforts of the bank to use its power in controlling elections in a manner hostile to him; that he trustingly listened to all the allegations against it which reached his ears, and that he at last honestly believed the bank to be a power of evil, corrupt and corrupting, dangerous to the liberties of the people and to the existence of the Republic.

The first message did not produce on Congress the desired effect. The President's own party