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8. The Monster Bank
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112 8 The Monster Bank The Bank . . . is trying to kill me. But I will kill it. Andrew Jackson This worthy President thinks that because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned judges, he is to have his way with this Bank. He is mistaken. Nicholas Biddle It will come to this, whoever is in favor of that Bank will be against Old Hickory. Amos Kendall Andrew Jackson rarely obscured his stand on the issues. He shared his views with his correspondents, on the campaign trail, in interviews with journalists, and in official speeches. But saying was not doing. The scandals scuttled any good chance of tackling his agenda during his first year in power. He was determined to change all that in his second year. For this, he wanted his congressional allies to know his intensions so that they could busy themselves with implementing them. He articulated The Monster Bank 113 his agenda in his first State of the Union address, which he submitted to Congress on December 8, 1829. Number one on his agenda was a tariff that promoted national and sectional interests: “Local feelings and prejudices should be merged in the patriotic determination to promote the great interest as a whole. . . . Discarding all calculations of political ascendancy, the North, the South, the East, and the West should unite in diminishing any burthen of which either may justly complain.”¹ Writing an acceptable tariff bill would be up to congressional leaders. The tariff’s most vital purpose was not to promote manufacturing through protection but to eliminate the national debt, which now stood at $49 million. Jackson vowed to eliminate this burden by the time he left office. But resolving this problem would lead to another—what should be done with Washington’s growing surpluses? Politicians would naturally demand that the money be distributed among the states for “internal improvements.” Jackson opposed this for two reasons. First, dispensing this cash would lead special interests to try to corrupt Congress in order to get a share of the funds and would make the states dependent on federal handouts. Second, as if this were not reason enough, because the Constitution did not specifically permit “internal improvements,” they were impermissible. Jackson then abruptly shifted to another priority. All Indians east of the Mississippi River, he said, should be expelled from their lands and transferred far west of that boundary. The move would save the Indians from destruction through assimilation with the American population or decimation from disease. He argued, “Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity.” Finally, Jackson pointed out that the charter for the Second Bank of the United States would expire in 1836. He noted that the bank was controversial on both economic and constitutional grounds. Yet he did not then openly call for the bank’s destruction; he only hinted at what lay ahead. House Speaker Henry Clay had his own agenda and, with a majority behind him, could trump Jackson’s. His immediate priority was to revive work on the National Road.² In doing so, he deliberately reignited a controversy that had begun in 1811, when Congress passed and a skeptical President Madison signed the National Road Act, which [3.238.114.5] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 08:55 GMT) The Monster Bank 114 authorized a federal road westward from Cumberland, Maryland, that would link the East with the Ohio River valley states. Like all other issues, the National Road had three dimensions— ideological, practical, and political. Did the Constitution empower the federal government to launch such a project? Hamiltonians argued most certainly yes by citing the Constitution’s “implied powers” and “necessary and proper” doctrines. The Jeffersonians and, more recently, the Jacksonians vehemently argued no, noting that the Constitution’s text did not explicitly grant road-building powers. Would the National Road boost America’s economic development by stimulating the creation and distribution of more wealth? Here again Hamiltonians replied of course and cited statistics of the economic boom along the stretch so far completed. The Jeffersonians and Jacksonians dismissed these facts and insisted that only free markets and private investors could create wealth. As for the political dimension, it just so happened that the spur of the National Road that Clay wanted built ran through his home state of Kentucky, from Maysville on the Ohio River to Lexington , and was the first segment of a road that would eventually extend to the Natchez Trace’s terminus...