States sought to cripple it by taxing out of existence the several
branches which the board of directors voted to establish. In two
notable decisions--M'Culloch _vs._ Maryland in 1819 and Osborn _vs._
United States Bank in 1824--the Supreme Court saved the institution by
denying the power of a State to impose taxation of the sort and by
asserting unequivocally the right of Congress to enact the legislation
upon which the Bank rested. And after Nicholas Biddle, a Philadelphia
lawyer-diplomat, succeeded Langdon Cheves as president of the Bank in
1823 an era of great prosperity set in.

The forces of opposition were never reconciled; indeed, every evidence
of the increasing strength of the Bank roused them to fresh hostility.
The verdict of the Supreme Court in support of the constitutionality
of the Act of 1816 carried conviction to few people who were not
already convinced. The restraints which the Bank imposed upon the
dubious operations of the southern and western banks were vigorously
resented. The Bank was regarded as a great financial monopoly, an
"octopus," and Biddle as an autocrat bent only on dominating the
entire banking and currency system of the country.

On Jackson's attitude toward the Bank before he became President we
have little direct information. But it is sufficiently clear that
eventually he came to share the hostile views of his Tennessee friends
and neighbors. In 1817 he refused to sign a memorial "got up by the
aristocracy of Nashville" for the establishment of a branch in that
town. When, ten years later, such a branch was installed, General
Thomas Cadwalader of Philadelphia, agent of the Bank, visited the town
to supervise the arrangements and became very friendly with the "lord
of the Hermitage." But correspondence of succeeding years, though
filled with insinuating cordiality, failed to bring out any expression