AS DISRUPTIVE boom brought insurgency to a crest in the mid- 1830s, Old Hick-
ory executed the Jeffersonian legacy by pushing the American political system to
its democratic limits. Where Jefferson's patrician assurance had trusted farmers
and workers to follow high-minded gentlemen, Jackson's patriarchal afflatus
forced majority will on recalcitrant politicians. Where the philosopher/statesman
conducted a Fabian defense of the yeoman republic, the soldier/tribune brought to
politics the sanguinary maxims of the Roman sack of Carthage. Favoring "warr
to the knife, and the knife to the hilt," he was ever ready to "carry the warr into
affrica."

Consequently the President was aroused to discover, while his anti-Bank man-
date was still rolling in, that "the hydra of corruption is only scotched, not dead."
With the Bank chartered for three more years and its nemesis reelected for four,
Biddle was plunging into a desperate political struggle for a two-thirds congres-
sional majority to override a veto. The Bank's distinguished counsel, Horace Bin-
ney, was elected from Philadelphia's silk-stocking district to lead the effort in Con-
gress, and other lawmakers were courted with large loans and legal fees. When
Senator Webster, after flirting with Jackson in the nullification crisis, complained
that his princely retainer had not been "refreshed as usual," Biddle promised a
check as soon as it could be issued without knowledge of the government directors.
The Bank was already cultivating newspapers with loans and payments for favor-
able articles, and even the staid Washington National Intefligencer was paid for a
special edition designed to defeat the administration's House point man, James K.
Polk. ¹

Marking Biddle's every hostile move while embroiled with nullifiers during the
winter of 1832-1833, Jackson unlimbered his only available weapon for throt-
tling the Monster before it throttled the people. Its charter authorized the Treasury
Secretary, for cause reported to Congress, to remove the federal deposits. With the
national debt almost extinguished by soaring revenues, the federal surplus at Bid-

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