The South Carolina controversy had indeed brought Jacksonians and anti-Jacksonians together.  But once the tension was relaxed, there began the conflict of interests which the New Hampshire editor had predicted.  Men fell again into their customary political relationships; issues that for the moment had been pushed into the background—­internal improvements, public land policy, distribution of surplus revenue, and above all the Bank—­were revived in full vigor.  Now, indeed, the President entered upon the greatest task to which he had yet put his hand.  To curb nullification was a worthy achievement.  But, after all, Congress and an essentially united nation had stood firmly behind the Executive at every stage of that performance.  To destroy the United States Bank was a different matter, for this institution had the full support of one of the two great parties in which the people of the country were now grouped; Jackson’s own party was by no means a unit in opposing it; and the prestige and influence of the Bank were such as to enable it to make a powerful fight against any attempts to annihilate it.

The second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816 for twenty years, with a capital of thirty-five million dollars, one-fifth of which had been subscribed by the Government.  For some time it was not notably successful, partly because of bad management but mainly because of the disturbance of business which the panic of 1819 had produced.  Furthermore, its power over local banks and over the currency system made it unpopular in the West and South, and certain 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.