Financial History Issue 116 (Winter 2016) | Page 31
Because of the stark differences between
Jackson and Biddle and the righteous tone
of the debate about the Bank of the United
States, historians have frequently described
the Bank War in moral terms, as a clash
of “good guys” versus “bad,” a construction that reflects Jackson’s worldview. For
instance, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger
Jr.’s 1945 classic, The Age of Jackson, depicts
the Bank War as a conflict between Jacksonians fighting for the common man (i.e.,
the good guys) against the entrenched economic elite (the bad guys). According to
Schlesinger, the Bank War was nothing less
than “a battle between antagonistic philosophies of government: one declaring…that
property should control the state; the other
denying that property had a superior claim
to governmental privileges and benefits.”
For Schlesinger, a partisan Democrat,
the battles of Jackson’s era mirrored those
of Franklin Roosevelt’s time, with the
Bank War framed as a distant precursor
of the New Deal.
On the other end of the spectrum is
economic historian Bray Hammond, whose
1957 book, Banks and Politics in America
from the Revolution to the Civil War, depicts
the Jacksonians as greedy upstarts trying
to overthrow the bank in order to enrich
themselves. Hammond’s depiction of the
Bank War mirrors Schlesinger’s, except
with the roles reversed; in Hammond’s telling, the Jacksonians are the bad guys, while
Library of Congress
War, Thomas Hart Benton), Biddle was an
intellectual who came to future President
James Monroe’s notice because of his participation in a debate at Cambridge University on the differences between modern and
ancient Greek dialects.
Yet, for all of their differences, the men
shared one important trait that had profound implications for American history.
As historian Walter B. Smith sagely noted
in 1953, “Both parties [to the Bank War]
believed themselves motivated by high
moral principles and entirely in the right.”
Illustrating this point, Jackson himself
exclaimed, “The golden calf may be worshipped by others, but as for myself I will
serve the Lord.”
A satire on Andrew Jackson’s campaign to destroy the Bank of the United States, by H.R. Robinson, 1836.
www.MoAF.org | Winter 2016 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 29