US/VA History The Age of the Common Man: 1. Bank of the United States

• 1791 Congress chartered the Bank of the United States

  • Collect taxes
  • Safe place to deposit government funds
  • Lend the government money when needed
  • Issue bank notes
• 1811 the bank charter expires
• 1816 the bank receives a 2nd 20 year charter 
• 1819 financial crisis causes a loss of confidence & trust in the big national Bank of the United States
• 1823 Nicholas Biddle takes charge of the Bank of the United States
• 1824 & 1828 Jackson did not campaign against the bank
• 1829 Jackson calls for an end to the Bank of the United States in his 1st Annual Message to Congress
  • Jackson had a personal distrust of the bank
  • Jackson's political enemy, Henry Clay championed the bank
  • Jackson said the bank received special privilege because it's charter granted the bank a monopoly of the federal government's business
  • Jackson argued the bank hurts the "common man"
  • Jackson argued the bank is evil and unconstitutional

Bank War

"Andrew Jackson." Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale, 1998. World History in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1631003305/UHIC?u=spri48590_e&xid=e6d78b19. Accessed 13 Nov. 2017.

President Andrew Jackson exercised his right to veto a bill in favor of renewing the Bank of the United States Charter.  The bill was put forward by Henry Clay who was the Whig party's nominee to run for President in 1932 against Andrew Jackson.  

President Jackson's veto message, July 10, 1832: 

"Distinctions in society will always exist under every just Government.  Equality of talents, of education or of wealth, can  not be provided by human institutions.  In the full enjoyment of the gifts of heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law.  But when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages, artificial distinctions ... to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society, the farmers, mechanics, and laborers, who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their government.  Its evils exist only in its abuses.  If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.  In the act before me, there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles."

Jackson, Andrew. “President Jackson’s Veto Message regarding the Bank of the United States.” 10 July 1832. The Avalon Project, Yale University: Lillian Goldman Law Library, avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ajveto01.asp. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017. Memo.

Presidential veto stats from Washington to Obama

Gerhard Peters. "Presidential Vetoes." The American Presidency Project. Ed. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters. Santa Barbara, CA: University of California. 1999-2017. Available from the World Wide Web: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/vetoes.php.
 

Robinson, H. R. General Jackson Slaying the Many Headed Monster. New York: Printed & published by H.R. Robinson. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2008661279/>.

This 1836  lithograph by H.R. Robinson depicts "General Jackson Slaying the Many-Headed Monster" - the Second Bank of the United States - symbolized by the human heads with the names of the states on them.  The bank's president Nicholas Biddle, is the large top-hatted head in the center; Jackson, armed with his veto stick, is on the left; and Major Jack Downing, a popular character invented by the humorist Seba Smith to poke fun at the president's backwoods supporters, is on the right.

Andrew Jackson Warns against the Potential Abuses of Corporate Interests Farewell Address to Congress, 1837