The choice of the new Secretary of the Treasury would have been a clever stroke if things had worked out as Jackson expected.  The appointee was William J. Duane, son of the editor of the Aurora, which had long been the most popular and influential newspaper in Pennsylvania.  This State was the seat of the “mother bank” and, although a Jackson stronghold, a cordial supporter of the proscribed institution; so that it was well worth while to forestall criticism in that quarter, so far as might be, by having the order for removal issued by a Pennsylvanian.  Duane, however, accepted the post rather because he coveted office than because he supported the policy of removal, and when the test came Jackson found to his chagrin that he still had a Secretary who would not take the desired action.  There was nothing to do but procure another; and this time he made no mistake.  Duane, weakly protesting, was dismissed, and Roger B. Taney, the Attorney-General, was appointed in his stead.  “I am fully prepared to go with you firmly through this business,” Jackson was assured by the new Secretary, “and to meet all its consequences.”

The way was now clear, and an order was issued requiring all treasury receipts after October 1, 1833, to be deposited in the Girard Bank of Philadelphia and twenty-two other designated state banks.  Deposits in the United States Bank and its branches were not immediately “removed”; they were left, rather, to be withdrawn as the money was actually needed.  Nevertheless there considerable disturbance of business, and deputation after deputation came to the White House to ask that Taney’s order be rescinded.  Jackson, however, was sure that most of the trouble was caused by Biddle and his associates, and to all these appeals he remained absolutely deaf.  After a time he refused so much as to see the petitioners.  In his message of the 3d of December he assumed full responsibility for the removals, defending his course mainly on the ground that the Bank had been “actively engaged in attempting to influence the elections of the public officers by means of its money.”

From this point the question became entirely one of politics.  The Bank itself was doomed.  On the one side, the National Republicans united in the position that the Administration had been entirely in the wrong, and that the welfare of the country demanded a great fiscal institution of the character of the Bank.  On the other side, the Democrats, deriving, indeed, a new degree of unity from the controversy on this issue, upheld the President’s every word and act.  “You may continue,” said Benton to his fellow partizans in the Senate, “to be for a bank and for Jackson, but you cannot be for this Bank and Jackson.”  Firmly allied with the Bank interests, the National Republicans resolved to bring all possible discomfiture upon the Administration.