This Bank was to run for twenty years, and its capital was thirty-five millions of dollars, seven of which were taken by the United States; many of its stockholders were widows, charitable institutions, and people of small means.  Its directors were chosen by the stockholders with the exception of five appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.  The public money was deposited in this Bank; it could be removed by the Secretary of the Treasury, but by him only on giving his reasons to Congress.  The Bank was located in Philadelphia, then the money-centre of the country, but it had twenty-five branches in different cities, from Portsmouth, N.H., to New Orleans.  The main institution could issue notes, not under five dollars, but the branches could not.  Langdon Cleves, of South Carolina, was the first president, succeeded in 1823 by Nicholas Biddle, of Philadelphia,—­a man of society, of culture, and of leisure,—­a young man of thirty-seven, who could talk and write, perhaps, better than he could manage a great business.

The affairs of the Bank went on smoothly for ten or twelve years, and the financial condition of the country was never better than when controlled by this great central institution.  Nicholas Biddle of course was magnified into a great financier of uncommon genius,—­the first business man in the whole country, a great financial autocrat, the idol of Philadelphia.  But he was hated by Democratic politicians as a man who was intrusted with too much power, which might be perverted to political purposes, and which they asserted was used to help his aristocratic friends in difficulty.  Moreover, they looked with envy on the many positions its offices afforded, which, as it was a “government institution,” they thought should be controlled by the governing party.

Among Biddle’s especial enemies were the members of the “Kitchen Cabinet,” who with sycophantic adroitness used Jackson as a tool.

Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, was one of the most envenomed of these politicians, who hated not only Biddle but those who adhered to the old Federalist party, and rich men generally.  He had sufficient plausibility and influence to enlist Levi Woodbury, Senator from New Hampshire, to forward his schemes.

In consequence, Woodbury, on June 27, 1829, wrote to Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury, making complaints against the president of the branch bank in Portsmouth for roughness of manner, partiality in loans, and severity in collections.  The accused official was no less a man than Jeremiah Mason, probably the greatest lawyer in New England, if not of the whole country, the peer as well as the friend of Webster.  Ingham sent Woodbury’s letter to Biddle, intimating that it was political partiality that was complained of.  Then ensued a correspondence between Biddle and Ingham,—­the former defending Mason and claiming complete independence for the Bank as to its management, so long as it could not be shown to be involved in political movements; and the latter accusing, threatening to remove deposits, attempting to take away the pension agency from the Portsmouth branch, et cetera.  It was a stormy summer for the Bank.