Bank of the United States

Bank of the United States, central bank chartered in 1791 by the U.S. Congress at the urging of Alexander Hamilton and over the objections of Thomas Jefferson. The extended debate over its constitutionality contributed significantly to the evolution of pro- and antibank factions into the first American political parties—the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, respectively. Antagonism over the bank issue grew so heated that its charter could not be renewed in 1811. Reconstituted in 1816, the Bank of the United States continued to stir controversy and partisanship, with Henry Clay and the Whigs ardently supporting it and Andrew Jackson and the Democrats fervently opposing it. The bank ceased operation in 1841.

The First Bank of the United States was a cornerstone of Hamilton’s fiscal policy. It helped fund the public debt left from the American Revolution, facilitated the issuance of a stable national currency, and provided a convenient means of exchange for all the people of the United States. It was capitalized at $10 million and fully subscribed almost instantly, with the federal government holding the largest block of ownership, 20 percent. A substantial interest in the bank was also purchased by European investors.

The bank accomplished all that Hamilton had hoped for and also succeeded in an unforeseen role: the regulation of private banks chartered by several states. At this time the issuance of notes was a more conspicuous feature of banking than were deposits. Bank notes entered circulation as the money banks lent to their borrowers, and these notes constituted most of the total currency in circulation.

The rapid growth of the young country generated powerful demand for loans and tended to stimulate the overextension of credit. It was in the general interest to restrain such overexpansion, and the bank imposed that restraint automatically. As the depository of the government, with offices in the chief seaports and commercial centres, it constantly received from collectors of revenue the notes of private banks by which moneys due the government were paid. As fast as it received such notes, it called for their redemption in gold and silver by the banks of issue, thus automatically restricting the overextension of credit and protecting the economy from inflation. Conversely, in periods of panic or deflation, the bank could ease the pressure. It was engaged precisely in what came later to be called central banking.

Despite its successes, the bank met political opposition that gathered force with partisan changes taking place in the country. In large part this opposition was based on the very restraints the bank imposed on private, state-chartered banks; this was also seen as an affront to states’ rights, and the bank’s federal charter was called unconstitutional. In 1811, when the 20-year charter expired, renewal was politically impossible. Its officers acknowledged reality and successfully sought a state charter in New York.

Within a few years, however, economic developments, chaotic conditions among the state banks, and changes in the composition of Congress combined to enable the chartering of a new Bank of the United States with wider powers than before and with closer links to the government. There was some early mismanagement, but in 1823 Nicholas Biddle of Philadelphia became the bank’s president, and it began to flourish.

Under Biddle, the central banking responsibilities were recognized and developed as consciously as those of the Bank of England at the same time—perhaps more so. But since these responsibilities usually had to be exercised as restraints, private banks resented them and complained of oppression.

The rapid development of American industry and transportation was enhancing the richness of the country’s resources, and the idea of democracy was beginning to connote to entrepreneurs the idea of free enterprise and laissez-faire politics. Hence, the very conditions that made credit restraint advisable also made it objectionable. Meanwhile, a developing agrarian populism, especially in the South and the West and among the poor everywhere, saw in democracy opposition to privilege and aristocracy and wealth. The bank became known as “the monster” and the enemy of the common people. These incongruous strains against the bank united under the leadership of Jackson, who became president in 1829. His attacks on it were sustained and colourful, and they rallied wide support. Attacks on the bank’s constitutionality continued, although a decade earlier the Supreme Court, in McCulloch v. Maryland, had found the charter constitutional under the doctrine of implied powers.

Clay, leader of the Whigs in the Senate from 1831, championed the bank against the Jacksonian Democrats and in 1832 deliberately injected the bank question into the presidential campaign by bringing about the renewal, four years early, of the bank’s charter, adopted by Congress on July 3. Jackson promptly vetoed the bank renewal act as unconstitutional, disdaining the Supreme Court decision and asserting that officeholders were bound by their oaths to uphold the constitution as they, not others, understood it. In a demagogic veto message, he depicted the bank as the “prostration of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many.”

The bank issue dominated the campaign of 1832, in which Jackson decisively defeated Clay. The veto stood, but the bank’s charter still had four years to run, so Jackson determined to scuttle it ahead of time by withdrawing government funds from it. He shuffled his cabinet twice before finding in Roger B. Taney—who as attorney general had declared the move legal—a treasury secretary willing to withdraw U.S. deposits from the Bank of the United States and place them in various state-chartered private institutions, which quickly became known as “pet banks.”

The bank carried on as best it could until the expiration of its charter in 1836, when it sought and won a state charter as the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania. The long and rancorous affair became known as the Bank War, and Jackson’s victory in it precluded for almost 80 years—until the creation in 1913 of the Federal Reserve System—any effective regulation of private banks in the United States.