d States were encouraged by the American government to
settle in Texas. To the Southern States the acquisition of that province
was desirable, to open a new area for slavery. In open defiance,
therefore, of a formal decree about this time issued by the rulers of
Mexico prohibiting slavery in Texas, the emigrants to that province took
their slaves with them; for they knew that the object of the American
government was not so much territory as a slave state, and that upon
their effecting this result their admission into the Union would depend.
Such was the policy commenced and pursued during the first term of
Jackson's administration. It was the conviction of this which led Mr.
Adams publicly to declare that, though "profoundly a secret as it
respected the public, it was then in successful progress;" and to make
it a topic of severe animadversion and warning, combined with language
of prophecy, which events soon expanded into history. Every movement of
Jackson was in unison with the policy and imbued with the spirit of the
slaveholders. He manifested animosity to the protection of manufactures,
and to internal improvement by his veto of the bill for the Maysville
Turnpike, and to the Bank of the United States by his veto of the bill
for extending its charter; and, after violently denouncing the spirit of
nullification, he publicly succumbed to it by proposing a modification
of the tariff, in obedience to its demands. But the most flagrant, act,
and beyond all others characteristic of his indomitable tenacity of
will, overleaping all the limitations of precedent and the constitution,
was his removal, on his own responsibility, of the deposits from the
Bank of the United States. After ascertaining that Duane, the Secretary
of the Treasury, would not be his tool in that service, he, in the
language of that officer, "concentrating in himself the power to judge
and execute, to absorb the discretion given to the Secretary of the
Treasury, and to nullify the law itself," proceeded at once to remove
him, and to raise Roger B. Taney from the office of Attorney-General to
that of Secretary of the Treasury, for the sole object of availing
himself of an instrument subservient to his purposes.

In his annual message, at the opening of the session, Jackson announced
to Congress that the Secretary of the Treasury had, by his orders,
removed the public moneys from the Bank of the United States, and
deposited them in certain state banks.