The bank men received the veto with equanimity.  They professed to believe that the balderdash in which the message abounded would make converts for their side; they even printed thirty thousand copies of the document for circulation.  Events, however, did not sustain their optimism.  In the ensuing campaign the Bank became, by its own choice, the leading issue.  The National Republicans, whose nominee was Clay, defended the institution and attacked the veto; the Jacksonians reiterated on the stump every charge and argument that their leader had taught them.  The verdict was decisive.  Jackson received 219 and Clay 49 electoral votes.

The President was unquestionably right in interpreting his triumph as an endorsement of the veto, and he naturally felt that the question was settled.  The officers and friends of the Bank still hoped, however, to snatch victory from defeat.  They had no expectation of converting Jackson or of carrying a charter measure at an early date.  But they foresaw that to wind up the business of the Bank in 1836 it would be necessary to call in loans and to withdraw a vast amount of currency from circulation, with the result of a general disturbance, if not a severe crippling, of business.  This, they thought, would bring about an eleventh-hour measure giving the Bank a new lease of life.

Jackson, too, realized that a sudden termination of the activities of the Bank would derange business and produce distress, and that under these circumstances a charter might be wrung from Congress in spite of a veto.  But he had no intention of allowing matters to come to such a pass.

His plan was rather to cut off by degrees the activities of the Bank, until at last they could be suspended altogether without a shock.  The most obvious means of doing this was to withdraw the heavy deposits made by the Government; and to this course the President fully committed himself as soon as the results of the election were known.  He was impelled, further, by the conviction—­notwithstanding unimpeachable evidence to the contrary—­that the Bank was insolvent, and by his indignation at the refusal of Biddle and his associates to accept the electoral verdict as final.  “Biddle shan’t have the public money to break down the public administration with.  It’s settled.  My mind’s made up.”  So the President declared to Blair early in 1833.  And no one could have any reasonable doubt that decisive action would follow threat.

It was not, however, all plain sailing.  Under the terms of the charter of 1816 public funds were to be deposited in the Bank and its branches unless the Secretary of the Treasury should direct that they be placed elsewhere; and such deposits elsewhere, together with actual withdrawals, were to be reported to Congress, with reasons for such action.  McLane, the Secretary of the Treasury, was friendly toward the Bank and could not be expected to give the necessary orders for removal.  This meant that the first step was to get a new head for the Treasury.  But McLane was too influential a man to be summarily dismissed.  Hence it was arranged that Livingston should become Minister to France and that McLane should succeed him as Secretary of State.