Financial History Issue 132 (Winter 2020) | Page 40

BOOK REVIEW  BY MICHAEL A. MARTORELLI The Bank War and the Partisan Press: Newspapers, Financial Institutions and the Post Office in Jacksonian America Stephen W. Campbell University Press of Kansas, 2019 222 pages Readers who appreciate a new inter- pretation of a familiar event in America’s financial history will welcome The Bank War and the Partisan Press. As noted in the subtitle, Stephen W. Campbell’s deeply researched work illuminates the role of newspapers, financial institutions and the US Post Office in the argument over the continued existence of the Second Bank of the United States (BUS). No author can dispute the outcome of the struggle between President Andrew Jackson and BUS President Nicholas Biddle. But this one views their dueling statements and actions through a different lens than those who have focused only on the differences between those two stubborn men. He sup- plements the traditional version of the story by delving into each man’s use of emerging national institutions to communicate his points of view. Using some unusual aspects of newspapers and the post office, each was able to spread his arguments in favor of— or in opposition to—the re-charter of the BUS to readers and voters across the coun- try. Campbell believes that gaining a better understanding of this “Second Bank War” will enhance our knowledge about both this classic struggle and the widespread contemporaneous conflicts between people with differing views of the government’s role in the financial system. The author devotes a good percentage of his narrative to examinations of both news- papers and the post office in the 1830s. Pri- vately financed newspapers relied on sub- scriptions and advertising for much of their revenue. Campbell describes how most of them also depended on federal subsidies to make ends meet. Much of that funding consisted of printing contracts from Con- gress and a variety of executive department agencies. He also tells how the post office provided newspapers with additional fund- ing. This help took the form of advertise- ments describing the creation of new postal routes, the extension of the franking privi- lege to members of Congress, subsidized costs for delivering newspapers and the free exchange of published articles among edi- tors in various locations. That government agency also granted lucrative mail deliv- ery contracts to favored editors and even appointed some of them as postmasters. Reading that history enables the reader to appreciate more fully Campbell’s story of two newspapers that spent much of 1831–1833 endorsing and communicating the arguments against (the Globe) and in support of (the National Intelligencer) the continued existence of the BUS. He pres- ents those papers’ interactions with Jack- son and Biddle as examples of the inter- mingling of public and private interests in fostering arrangements that benefitted all parties. Many editors were currying favor with politicians whose ideas they favored; and many politicians responded by enhancing the business opportunities available to those supportive editors. President Jackson first articulated his belief that the BUS was both unconstitu- tional and ineffective in December 1829; he repeated those assertions more forcefully in December 1830. Almost from its inception 38    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Winter 2020  | www.MoAF.org around that time, the Globe’s founding edi- tors—Amos Kendall and Francis Preston Blair—devoted their Washington-based paper to spreading President Jackson’s arguments against the continued existence of the “monster” that was the BUS. Jackson appreciated Kendall’s and Blair’s endorse- ment of his opinions and welcomed them as members of his so-called Kitchen Cabi- net of unofficial advisors. Campbell sprin- kles several chapters with the details of the favors the president awarded the Globe and its editors from 1831 until 1835. Meanwhile, BUS President Nicholas Biddle was using the Philadelphia-based National Intelligencer to transmit his own arguments in favor of the bank’s continued existence. In one of the earliest examples of an intensive business lobbying campaign, he used the ability to send reprints of favorable articles about the BUS to news- paper editors across the country. Biddle also made great use of the bank’s network of 25 branch offices, which served not only as banks, but as public places for sharing news and shaping public opinion. After detailing many techniques the Globe and the National Intelligencer used to transmit and publicize the arguments over the BUS, Campbell faithfully reports these familiar outcomes of the bank war: • In 1832, Congress approved Biddle’s request to extend the bank’s charter long before it would expire in 1836. • President Jackson vetoed that bill. • During the next 14 months, Jackson and Biddle continued to battle over the nature of the bank’s functions. • In September 1833, the President began transferring the government’s depos- its from BUS branches to state banks whose owners supported his policies. • The emasculated BUS existed for several more years, but it never again acted like a de facto national bank. Even while relating these outcomes, the author reiterates his main thesis; histo- rians have not given sufficient attention to the way both Jackson and Biddle used their levers of authority and power to dis- seminate their messages of support and opposition to the existence of the BUS.