f the Treasury, but by
him only on giving his reasons to Congress. The Bank was located in
Philadelphia, then the money-centre of the country, but it had
twenty-five branches in different cities, from Portsmouth, N.H., to New
Orleans. The main institution could issue notes, not under five dollars,
but the branches could not. Langdon Cleves, of South Carolina, was the
first president, succeeded in 1823 by Nicholas Biddle, of
Philadelphia,--a man of society, of culture, and of leisure,--a young
man of thirty-seven, who could talk and write, perhaps, better than he
could manage a great business.

The affairs of the Bank went on smoothly for ten or twelve years, and
the financial condition of the country was never better than when
controlled by this great central institution. Nicholas Biddle of course
was magnified into a great financier of uncommon genius,--the first
business man in the whole country, a great financial autocrat, the idol
of Philadelphia. But he was hated by Democratic politicians as a man
who was intrusted with too much power, which might be perverted to
political purposes, and which they asserted was used to help his
aristocratic friends in difficulty. Moreover, they looked with envy on
the many positions its offices afforded, which, as it was a "government
institution," they thought should be controlled by the governing party.

Among Biddle's especial enemies were the members of the "Kitchen
Cabinet," who with sycophantic adroitness used Jackson as a tool.

Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, was one of the most envenomed of these
politicians, who hated not only Biddle but those who adhered to the old
Federalist party, and rich men generally. He had sufficient plausibility
and influence to enlist Levi Woodbury, Senator from New Hampshire, to
forward his schemes.

In consequence, Woodbury, on June 27, 1829, wrote to Ingham, Secretary
of the Treasury, making complaints against the president of the branch
bank in Portsmouth for roughness of manner, partiality in loans, and
severity in collections. The accused official was no less a man than
Jeremiah Mason, probably the greatest lawyer in New England, if not of
the whole country, the peer as well as the friend of Webster. Ingham
sent Woodbury's letter to Biddle, intimating that it was political
partiality that was complained of. Then ensued a correspondence between
Biddle and Ingham,--the former defending Mason and claiming complete
independence for the Bank a