Page "Second Bank of the United States" Paragraph 14

An 1824 draft on the Bank written and signed by Daniel Webster, its attorney and the director of the Boston branch. By the time of Jackson's inauguration in 1829, the national bank appeared to be on solid footing.

The US Supreme Court had affirmed the constitutionality of the Bank under McCulloch v. Maryland, the 1819 case which Daniel Webster had argued successfully on its behalf a decade earlier, the US Treasury recognized the useful services it provided, and the American currency was healthy and stable.

Public perceptions of the central bank were generally positive.

The Bank first came under attack by the Jackson administration in December 1829, on the grounds that it had failed to produce a stable national currency, and that it lacked constitutional legitimacy.

Both houses of Congress responded with committee investigations and reports affirming the historical precedents for the Bank's constitutionality and its pivotal role in furnishing a uniform currency.

Jackson rejected these findings, and privately characterized the Bank as corrupt institution, dangerous to American liberties.