by H. W. Brands
Tocqueville expressed puzzlement as to how democracy had ever taken hold. “It is yourselves, the members of the upper classes, who have made the existing laws,” he said. “You were the masters of society fifty years ago.” What had gone wrong? Finley answered succinctly: “Each party, to gain power, chose to flatter the people, and bid for its support by granting new privileges.”
At Philadelphia, Tocqueville met Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Bank of the United States. Tocqueville had been struck by the lack of defining ideologies between parties in America, at least by comparison with the situation in France, where avowed monarchists denounced republicans and vice versa. In America everyone paid at least lip service to the sovereignty of the people.
“I can believe that you find it difficult to understand the nature and activity of parties in America,” Biddle said, “for we get lost ourselves in just the same way. There has been a mix-up of all the old parties, and today it would be impossible to say what is the political belief of those who support the administration, or of those who attack it.” Tocqueville inquired whether things had always been so. “No, certainly not,” Biddle answered.
For a long time we were divided between Federalists and Republicans. Those two parties were very like what you have in Europe; they had political doctrines to which interests and emotions were attached. They fought bitterly until the Federalist party, always short in numbers, was completely crushed by its adversary. Tired of their vanquished position, the Federalists ended up by giving up their own cause. They either merged in the successful party or rallied, under other names, about questions of detail. But the party standard has really been knocked down for good and all. This revolution finally worked itself out when General Jackson came on the scene. He claimed to make no distinction between the old parties in his choice. Since then there have been people who support the administration and people who attack it; people who extol a measure and people who abuse it. But there are no parties properly so called, opposed one to the other and adopting a contrary political faith. The fact is that there are not two practicable ways of governing this people now, and political emotions have scope only over the details of this administration and not over its principles.
Biddle convinced Tocqueville. When the Frenchman returned home and committed his reflections on America to a book—Democracy in America—he followed the Biddle line closely. “The Federalists, feeling themselves defeated, without resources and isolated within the nation, divided up,” he wrote. “Some of them joined the victors; others lowered their flag and changed their name. For many years now they have ceased to exist as a party. . . . Thus today there is no sign of great political parties in the United States. . . . Lacking great parties, the United States is creeping with small ones, and public opinion is broken up ad infinitum about questions of detail.”
Yet perhaps because his own experience of aristocracy was deeper than Biddle’s, Tocqueville detected a continuing struggle between the few and the many in America, even if Americans couldn’t see or wouldn’t admit it. “I am certainly not saying that American parties always have as their open or even their concealed aim to make aristocracy or democracy prevail in the country,” he disclaimed, only to declare: “I am saying that aristocratic or democratic passions can easily be found at the bottom of all parties, and that though they may slip out of sight there, they are, as it were, the nerve and soul of the matter.” Tocqueville cited Biddle’s bank as an example.
The President attacks the Bank of the United States; the country gets excited and parties are formed; the educated classes in general line up behind the bank, while the people are for the President. Do you suppose that the people could understand the reason for their opinion amid the pitfalls of such a difficult question about which men of experience hesitate? Not at all? But the bank is a great establishment with an independent existence; the people, who destroy or elevate all authorities, could do nothing against it, and that was a surprise. With all the rest of society in motion, the sight of that stable point jars, and the people want to see if they can shake it, like everything else.
Nicholas Biddle agreed about the irrationality of the attack on the Bank of the United States. The Biddle family had been active in public life in Philadelphia since before he was born, and Biddles were expected to do their part in society. Yet the hurly-burly of the political arena put young Nicholas off. He decried “the violence of party” and said he felt “no disposition to become the follower of any sect, or to mingle political animosities with the intercourse of society.” Friends talked him into running for the Pennsylvania legislature, but after two diffident sessions he retreated to the literary world, editing a journal of letters and respectable opinion. In 1819 James Monroe, whom Biddle had known for some years, offered him a spot on the board of directors of the second Bank of the United States, which had fallen into disrepute during its three years of existence. Biddle hesitated. “The Bank is of vital importance to the finances of the government and an object of great interest to the community,” he conceded. “That it has been perverted to selfish purposes cannot be doubted. That it may—and must—be renovated is equally certain. But they who undertake to reform abuses, and particularly of that description, must encounter much hostility.” Yet his public spirit, and Monroe’s persuasiveness, eventually won out, and he took the job.
He impressed his fellow directors with his diligence and his devotion to the bank, and in 1822 they nominated him for their president. Again Biddle hesitated. To a fellow director he summarized the qualifications of an ideal president of the Bank of the United States: “talent for business, standing with the government, and residence in Philadelphia.” Elaborating, he explained that talent for business differed from simply being a businessman. “The fact is that the misfortunes of the Bank . . . were actually occasioned by the men of business, and their errors were precisely the faults into which the men of business were most likely to fall.” As for standing with the government: “He should be known to, and stand well with, the Government—not an active partizan—not even a party man—but a man in whom the government could confide.” As for the president’s residing in Philadelphia, the bank was headquartered there, and the city was rather clubby. “I fear that a stranger would not easily obtain the aid of such a board as ought to be collected.” Reading back over his description, Biddle concluded that he himself approximated the ideal better than anyone else, and he accepted the nomination. His fellow directors apparently agreed, for they elected him their chief. He was thirty-six years old.
Biddle devoted his first years as president to putting the affairs of the bank in order: writing off bad loans, tightening credit requirements, straightening sloppy accounts, dismissing inefficient or corrupt officers. He shunned the limelight for himself and the institution. “I have been so anxious to keep the Bank out of view in the political world and bring it down to its true business character as a counting house that I have been reluctant to apply to Congress for anything,” he wrote Daniel Webster in 1826.
Biddle strove to maintain this position as long as possible. He didn’t wholly ignore politics. He cultivated John Calhoun and Henry Clay while Calhoun was John Quincy Adams’s vice president and Clay his secretary of state. Clay was a special project, being a chronic debtor who received—and appreciated—Biddle’s help in fending off creditors. Yet though Biddle preferred Adams over Jackson in 1828, he refused to divulge his preference. Not even his friends knew which way he was leaning. Some inferred that he mistook Jackson’s public silence regarding the bank for support. More likely, he simply recognized that Jackson would win and saw no point in making a powerful enemy. For the record, Biddle asserted that the bank was above politics. “There is no one principle better understood by every officer in the Bank than that he must abstain from politics,” he declared. “The course of the Bank is very clear and straight on that point. We believe that the prosperity of the Bank and its usefulness to the country depend on its being entirely free from the control of
the officers of the Government, a control fatal to every bank which it ever influenced. In order to preserve that independence it must never connect itself with any administration—and never become a partizan of any set of politicians.” Biddle told a friend that the officers of the bank, to a man, adhered to this view. “We have no concern with politics. Dean Swift said, you know, that money is neither Whig nor Tory, and we say with equal truth that the Bank is neither Jackson man nor an Adams man. It is only a bank.”
But it was a very powerful bank, as Jackson acknowledged in his first annual message. Biddle read Jackson’s remarks with concern but not alarm. “They should be treated as the honest though erroneous notions of one who intends well,” he said.
Biddle’s patronizing attitude toward Jackson reflected the conventional wisdom of the East toward the warrior from the West, but it also followed from a rare personal meeting of the two men. Biddle had sent Jackson a plan to pay down the federal debt; in their meeting Jackson told Biddle he appreciated the advice. Biddle said it was the least he could do. Jackson explained his broader views on banking and the Bank of the United States. “I think it right to be perfectly frank with you,” he said (in Biddle’s rendering of the session). “I do not think that the power of Congress extends to charter a bank out of the ten mile square”—the federal district. The president added, “I do not dislike your bank any more than all banks. But ever since I read the history of the South Sea bubble I have been afraid of banks.” Biddle found this explanation quaintly reassuring, for it suggested that Jackson’s stance on the bank was his own idiosyncrasy and not the policy of the administration. “As such it is far less dangerous because if the people know that this is not an opinion which they must necessarily adopt as a portion of their party creed—but an opinion of the President alone, a very honest opinion though a very erroneous one—then the question will be decided on its own merits.”
Biddle took comfort in this thought, but it wasn’t even close to being true. Before long Biddle, not Jackson, proved to be the innocent on the bank question. In the autumn of 1830 Biddle received a letter from Henry Clay suggesting an early renewal of the bank’s charter. Clay had done some vote counting and believed that a renewal bill would pass both houses of Congress. The measure would then go to the president. “What would he do with it?” the Kentuckian asked rhetorically. “If, as I suppose, he would reject it, the question would be immediately, in consequence, referred to the people, and would inevitably mix itself with all our elections. It would probably become, after the next session, and up to the time of the next Presidential election, the controlling question in American politics.” This was precisely what Clay wanted, as he judged the bank a good issue on which to run against Jackson in 1832. Yet it was just the opposite of what Biddle wanted, as the bank president wished to keep his beloved institution out of the mud of a partisan campaign.
Clay was clever enough to realize that Biddle would require convincing. He acknowledged Biddle’s reluctance to make an issue of renewal. What if he waited till after the 1832 election to apply? “Then every thing will be fresh; the succeeding Presidential election will be too remote to be shaping measures in reference to it; and there will be a disposition to afford the new administration the facilities in our fiscal affairs which the Bank of the United States perhaps alone can render.” But there was a catch. “Suppose General Jackson should be again elected.” What would his reelect mean for the bank? Would he be more likely, or less, to veto renewal? Clay initially argued for less. “He will have probably less disposition than he now has to avail himself of any prejudices against the Bank. He will then have also less influence, for it may be truly asserted, at least as a general rule, that the President will have less popularity in his second than his first term. And that, I believe, would emphatically be the fate of the present President.” On this ground, Clay argued for caution. The worst thing Biddle could do would be to apply for renewal, for the renewal bill to be approved by Congress, for the bill to be vetoed by the president, and then for Jackson to be reelected. “Indeed, if there be an union of the President’s negative of the Bank bill with the next Presidential election, and he should be reelected, would it not be regarded as decisive against any Bank of the United States hereafter?”
Maybe Clay was considering the best interests of the bank, or perhaps he was just easing Biddle into his net. When Biddle answered this letter by declaring that it was “inexpedient to apply at present for the renewal of the charter,” Clay didn’t disagree. Yet Biddle soon began to reconsider. Jackson’s annual message of December 1830 reiterated his opposition to the bank as it existed, and called for modifications allowing the states larger participation in the banking system. Biddle had hoped the president would see the light and shed his prejudices against the bank. That Jackson apparently retained his full ignorance triggered a bellicosity in Biddle few observers had previously noticed. “In respect of General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren”—the latter alleged, as often, to be the malign mover of administration policies—“I have not the slightest fear of either of them, or both of them,” he told an associate two weeks after the president’s message. The American people would see through their machinations. “Our country-men are not naturally disposed to cut their own throats to please any body, and I have so perfect a reliance on the spirit and sense of the nation that I think we can defend the institution from much stronger enemies than they are.”
The campaign for renewal began with preemptive propaganda. “It is obvious that a great effort will be made to array the influence of the Executive and all his party against the Bank,” Biddle told one of his operatives. “It is not less evident that our most effectual resistance is the dissemination of useful knowledge among the people.” Biddle had written a variety of articles outlining the benevolence and usefulness of the bank, and he now wished to distribute them to newspapers not irretrievably opposed to the bank. “For the insertion of these I will pay either as they appear or in advance. Thus for instance, if you will cause the articles I have indicated and others which I may prepare to be inserted in the newspaper in question, I will at once pay to you one thousand dollars.” Biddle concluded his letter by saying that though he had nothing to conceal, he wished for the letter’s return after it had been acted upon, “as it might be misconstrued.”
While the campaign proceeded, Biddle tried to fathom Jackson’s intentions. “The President is now perfectly confident of his reelection,” he wrote in October 1831. “The only question is the greater or the less majority, but he is sure of success and wishes to succeed by a greater vote than at the first election. If, therefore, while he is so confident of reelection, this question is put to him as one affecting his reelection, he might on that account be disposed to put his veto on it, if he be, as it were, dared to do it.”
Under the circumstances, Biddle was disinclined to dare the president. But Henry Clay had other plans. Like Biddle—and the rest of the country—Clay could see that Jackson remained overwhelmingly popular. Clay’s only chance against him was to cause a political explosion. And for this he required Biddle’s assistance. “Have you come to any decision about an application to Congress at this session for the renewal of your charter?” he inquired as the legislature convened for its last session before the election. “The friends of the Bank here, with whom I have conversed, seem to expect the application to be made.” Congressional approval was all but guaranteed, Clay intimated. Only Jackson’s response remained in doubt. “My own belief,” he confided to Biddle, “is that if now called upon, he would not negative the bill; but that if he should be re-elected the event might and probably would be different.”
Clay offered no evidence to support this belief, yet his words couldn’t be dismissed. He had just been nominated for president by a convention of anti-Jacksonians whose platform characterized the bank as a “great and beneficent institution” worthy of the warm support of the American people.
Daniel Webster joined the chorus of support for the bank.
Webster had long been friendly with Biddle, meeting with him at bank headquarters and the gathering places of the upper class. Lately he had been conducting intelligence operations on behalf of the bank, speaking with everyone in Washington who might know something worth hearing. “The result of all these conversations,” he wrote Biddle, “has been a strong confirmation of the opinion which I expressed at Philadelphia that it is expedient for the Bank to apply for the renewal of its charter without delay. I do not meet a gentleman, hardly, of another opinion, and the little incidents and anecdotes that occur and circulate among us all tend to strengthen the impression. Indeed, I am now a good deal inclined to think that after General Jackson’s re-election there would be a poor chance for the bank.”
Persuaded, Biddle took the fateful step. “We have determined on applying to the present Congress for a renewal of the charter,” he wrote at the beginning of 1832. “To this course I have made up my mind after great reflection and with the clearest convictions of its propriety.” As earlier, Biddle professed to be above politics. “Neither I nor any of my associates have any thing whatever to do with the President or his election. I know nothing about it and care nothing about it. The Bank has never had any concern in elections. It will not have any now.” Biddle refused to believe that the president would veto a worthy bill simply for politics’ sake. “Even I, who do not feel the slightest interest in him, would be sorry to ascribe to a President of the United States a course much fitter for a humble demagogue than the Chief Magistrate of a great country.”
The initial reactions were positive. “I cannot but think you have done exactly right,” Webster said. “Whatever may be the result, it seems to me the path of duty is plain. In my opinion, a failure this session, if there should be one, will not at all diminish the chances of success next session.” Biddle learned that if he hadn’t put forward for renewal, the bank’s backers in Congress would have. An associate met with John Quincy Adams, now a congressman from Massachusetts, and reported back to Biddle: “Mr. Adams told me that if you had not petitioned, as you did, that it had been his intention to have offered a resolution.”
