actually needed. Nevertheless there considerable disturbance of
business, and deputation after deputation came to the White House to
ask that Taney's order be rescinded. Jackson, however, was sure that
most of the trouble was caused by Biddle and his associates, and to
all these appeals he remained absolutely deaf. After a time he refused
so much as to see the petitioners. In his message of the 3d of
December he assumed full responsibility for the removals, defending
his course mainly on the ground that the Bank had been "actively
engaged in attempting to influence the elections of the public
officers by means of its money."

From this point the question became entirely one of politics. The Bank
itself was doomed. On the one side, the National Republicans united in
the position that the Administration had been entirely in the wrong,
and that the welfare of the country demanded a great fiscal
institution of the character of the Bank. On the other side, the
Democrats, deriving, indeed, a new degree of unity from the
controversy on this issue, upheld the President's every word and act.
"You may continue," said Benton to his fellow partizans in the Senate,
"to be for a bank and for Jackson, but you cannot be for this Bank and
Jackson." Firmly allied with the Bank interests, the National
Republicans resolved to bring all possible discomfiture upon the
Administration.

The House of Representatives was controlled by the Democrats, and
little could be accomplished there. But the Senate contained not only
the three ablest anti-Jacksonians of the day--Clay, Webster,
Calhoun--but an absolute majority of anti-Administration men; and
there the attack was launched. On December 26, 1833, Clay introduced
two resolutions declaring that in the removal of the deposits the
President had "assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred
by the Constitution and laws but in derogation of both," and
pronouncing Taney's statement of reasons "unsatisfactory and
insufficient." After a stormy debate, both resolutions in slightly
amended form were carried by substantial majorities.

Jackson was not in the habit of meekly swallowing censure, and on the
15th of April he sent to the Senate a formal protest, characterizing
the action of the body as "unauthorized by the Constitution, contrary
to its spirit and to several of its express provisions," and
"subversive of that distribution of the powers of government which it
has ordained and est