still supreme, and were now united against
the President. The debates were long and furious. A panic throughout the
country added to the excitement. Clay led the attack, Calhoun and
Webster supported it; Benton bore the brunt of it. In the House, the
Jackson men had a majority; in the Senate, the opposition. The Senate
refused to confirm the nomination of Taney to be Secretary of the
Treasury, and voted that the President had taken upon himself powers not
given by the Constitution. The President sent in a fiery remonstrance,
and the Senate voted not to receive it. Benton at once moved that the
resolution of censure be expunged from the record, and declared he would
keep that motion before the Senate until the people, by choosing a
Jackson majority of Senators, should force it through.

The session closed with nothing done for the Bank, and nothing ever was
done for it. When its charter expired in 1836, it got another from
Pennsylvania, and kept going for some years. But Jackson had given it a
deathblow. It fell into dangerous financial practices, failed, started
again, failed a second time, staggered to its feet once more, and then
went down in utter ruin and disgrace.

Its ruin was not accomplished without great disturbance to financial
conditions. The country had been prosperous a long time. Money had been
plentiful. Speculation had been the order of the day. The "pet banks,"
chosen to be the depositories of the government money, were badly
managed. The surplus, distributed among the States, strengthened the
impulse to wild speculation. Paper money was too plentiful. A dangerous
financial condition prevailed, into whose causes and consequences we
cannot here inquire. That and many other aspects of Jackson's
administration can be satisfactorily treated only at considerable
length. Jackson himself attributed all the trouble to Biddle and Clay;
Biddle, he declared, was trying to ruin the country for revenge. The
President even suspected Clay of setting on an insane person who
attempted his life. He took no measures of a nature to restore health to
business until near the end of his term. Then, acting as usual on his
own responsibility, he issued a circular commonly called the "Specie
Circular," requiring payments for public lands, which had formerly been
made in bank paper, to be made in coin. That was like the thunderclap
which precedes the storm: but the storm broke on his successor, not on
him.

For a time it seeme