ubject until after the election, and that now was the strategic time
to strike for a new charter. In this belief he was further encouraged
by Clay, Webster, and other leading anti-Administration men, as well
as by McDuffie, a Calhoun supporter and chairman of the Ways and Means
Committee of the House. There was small doubt that a bill for a new
charter could be carried in both branches of Congress. Jackson must
either sign it, argued Biddle's advisers, or run grave risk of losing
Pennsylvania and other commercial States whose support was necessary
to his election. On the other hand, Biddle was repeatedly warned that
an act for a new charter would be vetoed. He chose to press the issue
and on January 9, 1832, the formal application of the Bank for a
renewal of its charter was presented to Congress, and within a few
weeks bills to recharter were reported in both Houses.

Realizing that defeat or even a slender victory in Congress would be
fatal, the Bank flooded Washington with lobbyists, and Biddle himself
appeared upon the scene to lead the fight. The measure was carried by
safe majorities--in the Senate, on the 11th of June, by a vote of 28
to 20, and in the House on the 3d of July, by a vote of 107 to 86. To
the dismay of the bank forces, although it ought not to have been to
their surprise.

Jackson was as good as his word. On the 10th of July the bill was
vetoed. The veto message as transmitted to the Senate was probably
written by Taney, but the ideas were Jackson's--ideas which, so far as
they relate to finance and banking operations, have been properly
characterized as "in the main beneath contempt." The message, however,
was intended as a campaign document, and as such it showed great
ingenuity. It attacked the Bank as a monopoly, a "hydra of
corruption," and an instrumentality of federal encroachment on the
rights of the States, and in a score of ways appealed to the popular
distrust of capitalistic institutions. The message acquired
importance, too, from the President's extraordinary claim to the right
of judging both the constitutionality and the expediency of proposed
legislation, independently of Congress and the Courts.

The veto plunged the Senate into days of acrid debate. Clay pronounced
Jackson's construction of the veto power "irreconcilable with the
genius of representative government." Webster declared that
responsibility for the ruin of the Bank and for the disasters that
might follow would have