McLane sent for Kendall to know why it was desired to execute such a project. He had told Adams a year before that the Treasury could not go on without the Bank.[1] Kendall endeavored to persuade McLane to execute the removal. Cass finally said that he did not understand the question, and withdrew from any share in it. Woodbury was neutlral. Barry assented to the proceeding but had no active share in it. Taney warmly favored it and became Jackson's most trusted adviser at this time. Van Buren was at first strongly opposed, but yielded to Kendall's persuasion. He wavered afterward but Kendall succeeded in keeping him to it. Benton approved of the proceeding but was not active in bringing it about. Blair's chief point was that the Bank would corrupt Congress.[2] Lewis gives a report of a conversation with Jackson in which he tried to persuade Jackson to desist from the project. The latter's points were "I have no confidence in Congress." "If the Bank is permitted to have the public money, there is no power that can prevent it from obtaining a charter. It will have it if it has to buy up all Congress; and the public funds would enable it to do so." "If we leave the means of corruption in its hands, the presidential veto will avail nothing." The statements in Kendall's Autobiography are in perfect accord with these. They seem to indicate that the anti-Bank men saw one chance yet remaining to the Bank, namely, to get a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress within the next three years, using corrupt means for this purpose, and so to pass a charter over the veto. One must have Jackson's relentless determination to pursue an enemy to the point of extermination before one could spend great energy to render such a chance impossible.
It appears therefore that the removal of the deposits was due first of all to Jackson himself. He "took the responsibility," and history must leave it with him. It is not at all impossible that he originated the purpose to make the removal. The moving spirits, who had first animated him with a hatred to the Bank, and who now were his ministers, although it is very possible that his zeal outstripped their impulses, were Blair and Kendall, with Whitney as their tool.[3]
As McLane persisted in his refusal to be the agent of removal, he was transferred to the State Department, and William J. Duane, of Pennsylvania, was appointed to the Treasury. Jackson assumed that Duane was a man like his father, the editor of the "Aurora," and he expected to find in him one who would sympathize with all the motives of the removal. Duane was a lawyer. He had never been a politician or office-holder, and his temper and opinions were quite different from those of his father. On the first day of his official life, June 1, Whitney called on him and made known to him the project to remove the deposits from the Bank and to use local banks as depositories and fiscal agents. Instead of accepting the role for which he had been selected, Duane objected and refused. Jackson sent to him from Boston, where he then was, a long argument to try to persuade him to con-
