Bank War
For more information on Bank War, visit Britannica.com.
|
Results for Bank War
|
On this page:
|
For more information on Bank War, visit Britannica.com.
The Bank War was the name given to the campaign begun by President Andrew Jackson in 1833 to destroy the Second Bank of the United States, after his reelection convinced him that his opposition to the bank had won national support. (The Second Bank had been established in 1816, as a successor to the First Bank of the United States, whose charter had been permitted to expire in 1811.) In 1832, Jackson had vetoed a bill calling for an early renewal of the Second Bank's charter, but renewal was still possible when the charter expired in 1836; to prevent that from happening, he set out to reduce the bank's economic power. Acting against the advice of congressional committees and over the opposition of several cabinet members, and after replacing two resistant secretaries of the treasury with a more amenable appointee (Roger Taney), Jackson announced that, effective October 1, 1833, federal funds would no longer be deposited in the Bank of the United States. Instead, he began placing them in various state banks; by the end of 1833, twenty-three "pet banks" (as they were popularly known) had been selected.
The president of the Bank, Nicholas Biddle, anticipating Jackson's actions, began a countermove in August 1833; he started presenting state bank notes for redemption, calling in loans, and generally contracting credit. A financial crisis, he thought, would dramatize the need for a central bank, ensuring support for charter renewal in 1836. In fact, Biddle's campaign appears to have had less effect than either his supporters or his detractors believed at the time, but the Bank War became a matter of intense debate in Congress, in the press, and among the public. Deputations of businessmen descended on Washington, complaining about business conditions and seeking an end to the Bank War, while administration spokesmen argued that Biddle's capacity to disrupt the economy only highlighted the dangers of a central bank. The federal deposits were not returned to the Second Bank, and its charter expired in 1836. President Jackson had won the Bank War.
See also Banking; Bank of the United States; Jackson, Andrew.
The Bank War is the name given to Andrew Jackson's attack on the
Second Bank of the United States during the early years of his
presidency. Andrew Jackson viewed the Bank of the United States as a monopoly. The Bank of the United States was a private institution managed by a board of directors. Its
president,
The Bank War started in 1830, when Henry Clay presented Congress with a bill to renew the Bank of the United States in order to make it an election issue. Knowing that Jackson would veto the bill, Clay believed that it would anger many influential and wealthy people in the East. But when Jackson vetoed the bill, it appealed to the masses, who felt that the bank was to blame for the Panic of 1819, and Jackson easily won in the United States presidential election, 1832.
With the election of 1832 secured, Jackson proceeded to destroy the Bank of the United States. He promptly withdrew all the national deposit from the Bank of the United States and stored them in "pet banks", small state owned banks. Jackson's Secretary of Treasury opposed the removal of the national deposits. Two of them were forced to resign before Jackson appointed a "yes-man", Roger Taney. The death of the Bank of the United States left a financial vacuum in the nation. The country lapsed into periods of booms and busts. The pet banks also printed huge amounts of paper money. In an effort to rein in the unstable economy, Jackson issued the Specie Circular in 1836, which required all purchases of federal lands (a focus of financial speculation in this period) be paid for in metal coin rather than paper money. This disastrous decree contributed to the Panic of 1837. But by then, Jackson had completed his term and left all the financial problems he had created to his successor, Martin Van Buren. Martin Van Buren was the vice president, following Andrew Jackson.
David M. Kennedy and Lizabeth Cohen (2002). Houghton Mifflin Company. The American Pageant Twelfth Edition, ch 13, pp 271-272.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "Bank War" at WikiAnswers.
Copyrights:
![]() | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | US History Companion. The Reader's Companion to American History, Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors, published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Bank War". Read more |
Mentioned In: