appears that the response to the suspicions aimed at the Bank by the President had been so faint that the administration was ready to give up the Bank war. Perhaps this encouraged the opposition to think that it would be good policy for them to take up the Bank issue. It was in this same month of December, 1831, that Clay was nominated candidate for the presidency in the campaign of the following year. At a conference of his supporters at Washington, he assumed control of the campaign, and claimed a right to make the platform, in a very dictatorial manner.[1] The chief point of interest then was the tariff, but, for the fight out of doors, he thought that the recharter of the Bank was the strongest issue that could be made. The Clay convention, in its address to the public, said: the President "is fully and three times over pledged to the people to negative any bill that may be passed for rechartering the Bank, and there is little doubt that the additional influence which he would gain by a re-election would be employed to carry through Congress the extraordinary substitute which he has repeatedly proposed."
If we believe that the administration had receded from its attack on the Bank, then there would be a color of truth in Benton's assertion that the Bank attacked Jackson. The friends of the Bank were later accustomed to say that its disinterested friends in both parties had strongly dissuaded Biddle from allowing the question of recharter to be brought into the campaign.[2] Clay's advisers tried in vain to dissuade him. The Bank could not oppose the public man on whom it depended most, and the party leaders deferred at last to their chief. Adams, however, who had as little passion as any politician of the time, told the Secretary of the Treasury, early in January, that he had "prepared a resolution for bringing to issue, in the House of Representatives, the question of rechartering the Bank."
The position then was that Jackson had made a challenge, had receded from it, and his opponents had taken it up and turned it as a challenge against him. What would he do? It seems that no one who knew the facts of his career could doubt what he would do. He would return to the issue and would fight it out, regardless of all considerations whatsoever, to a definite and conclusive victory or defeat. That is what he did do.
On the 9th of January, 1832, in prosecution of the Clay program, the memorial of the Bank for a renewal of its charter was presented in the Senate by Dallas and in the House by McDuffie, both of whom were democrats but in favor of the Bank. The Bank wanted Webster or some such unequivocal friend to present the memorial, but Dallas claimed the duty as belonging to a Senator from Pennsylvania.[3] There was great dissatisfaction with him for the way in which he managed the business. He intimated a doubt whether the application was not premature, and a doubt about the policy of the memorial, lest "it might be drawn into a real or imaginary conflict with some higher, some more favorite, some more immediate wish or purpose of
