e, a trained financier and
strong-willed aristocrat, who put little faith in popular elections and
plebiscites, was the head of the Bank, and all the presidents and
directorates of the subordinate banks were his appointees; he controlled
absolutely all the departments and all the directors of the parent bank
in Philadelphia, going so far in 1833 as to deny the government
directors their lawful right to attend the board meetings. There has
never been another financial leader in the United States who was so
powerful or so much feared as was Nicholas Biddle in 1833.

Both sides prepared for a renewal of the struggle for or against a new
charter. Jackson sent Secretary of State Livingston as Minister to
France early in 1833, and transferred Secretary McLane from the Treasury
to the State Department. It was known that both Livingston and McLane
opposed the President in his plan of overthrowing the Bank, and this
shift was made to avoid another break-up of the Cabinet and to enable
Jackson to get a Secretary of the Treasury who would support him.
William J. Duane, of Pennsylvania, accepted the vacant portfolio in
January, 1833, knowing well the President's purpose, which was to
withhold from the Bank the federal deposits. Agents were sent out to
ascertain what state banks were in a condition to receive the proposed
government funds, and of course a strong banking support was thus
secured for the contemplated policy.

Biddle laughed at Jackson's message of 1832 which denounced the Bank. He
expected to receive from Congress in due time the charter which the
President had denied. More than fifty members of that body, including
Clay, Webster, George McDuffie,--Calhoun's ally and the chairman of the
House Committee on Ways and Means,--and the famous Davy Crockett, were
borrowers from the Bank on the easiest of terms. The greater newspaper
editors of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond
were either opposed to the President or on Biddle's list of
beneficiaries; while scores of hack writers all over the country
received their stipends from the "Monster," as Jackson designated the
Bank. It might have been an easy matter for Biddle and Clay to secure
their charter from the Congress which sat in its closing session in the
winter of 1833. But the great thing before them at that time was the
nullification-tariff problem, which threatened civil war, and the
friends of the Bank joined the protectionists and, under Cl