Biddle now made a supreme mistake.  Misled in some degree unquestionably by the optimistic McLane, he got the idea that Jackson was weakening, that the Democrats were afraid to take a stand on the subject until after the election, and that now was the strategic time to strike for a new charter.  In this belief he was further encouraged by Clay, Webster, and other leading anti-Administration men, as well as by McDuffie, a Calhoun supporter and chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House.  There was small doubt that a bill for a new charter could be carried in both branches of Congress.  Jackson must either sign it, argued Biddle’s advisers, or run grave risk of losing Pennsylvania and other commercial States whose support was necessary to his election.  On the other hand, Biddle was repeatedly warned that an act for a new charter would be vetoed.  He chose to press the issue and on January 9, 1832, the formal application of the Bank for a renewal of its charter was presented to Congress, and within a few weeks bills to recharter were reported in both Houses.

Realizing that defeat or even a slender victory in Congress would be fatal, the Bank flooded Washington with lobbyists, and Biddle himself appeared upon the scene to lead the fight.  The measure was carried by safe majorities—­in the Senate, on the 11th of June, by a vote of 28 to 20, and in the House on the 3d of July, by a vote of 107 to 86.  To the dismay of the bank forces, although it ought not to have been to their surprise.

Jackson was as good as his word.  On the 10th of July the bill was vetoed.  The veto message as transmitted to the Senate was probably written by Taney, but the ideas were Jackson’s—­ideas which, so far as they relate to finance and banking operations, have been properly characterized as “in the main beneath contempt.”  The message, however, was intended as a campaign document, and as such it showed great ingenuity.  It attacked the Bank as a monopoly, a “hydra of corruption,” and an instrumentality of federal encroachment on the rights of the States, and in a score of ways appealed to the popular distrust of capitalistic institutions.  The message acquired importance, too, from the President’s extraordinary claim to the right of judging both the constitutionality and the expediency of proposed legislation, independently of Congress and the Courts.

The veto plunged the Senate into days of acrid debate.  Clay pronounced Jackson’s construction of the veto power “irreconcilable with the genius of representative government.”  Webster declared that responsibility for the ruin of the Bank and for the disasters that might follow would have to be borne by the President alone.  Benton and other prominent members, however, painted Jackson as the savior of his country; and the second vote of 22 to 19 yielded a narrower majority for the bill than the first had done.  Thus the measure perished.