who operated a bank contraction during the winter. It was more than a year before the new system began to operate in place of the old. Stocks fell from 20 per cent. to 50 per cent. In February, 1834, sterling exchange was down to 98, par being 108. There was a great fall in prices, and commercial paper rose to two per cent. or three per cent. per month.[1] A great number of banks failed on account of the shrinkage in securities. In New York, State stocks were loaned to the banks to ward off an apprehended suspension of specie payments. Hammond says that this frustrated the desire of the Bank of the United States to force a suspension.[2] Nathan Appleton ascribed the commercial crisis to Biddle. "No one can doubt that his contractions in 1834, so distressing to the community, were pushed beyond reasonable measure, for the purpose, by that means, of effecting the renewal of the charter, under the pretense of the necessity of preparing for winding up its concerns, whilst his subsequent expansion had a full share in producing the mad and wild speculations of 1835-6."[3] In another letter, in 1857, Appleton said that, in March, 1834, a committee of New York merchants and bankers told Biddle that, unless the Bank desisted for thirty days from any calls on the other banks, he would be denounced on the Merchants' Exchange for "flagitiously endeavoring to force Congress to grant him a charter." When the thirty days were up he renewed the pressure and kept it up until July, when Congress adjourned. The "pressure was wholly owing to the unprincipled action of Mr. Biddle."[4] If this story is correct, it seems that the merchants and bankers unwarrantably intimidated Biddle from collecting debts justly due to the Bank for a period of thirty days.
The anti-Bank men pointed to the statements of the Bank as obvious proof of panic-making and popularity-hunting. In eighteen months from January, 1831, to July, 1832, when it was working for the renewal, its loans increased $23.4 millions; in the next eighteen months they were reduced $21.9 millions; as was said, out of spite and revenge, to show its power; in the next six months they were increased again $19.6 millions.
Benton and others denied that there was any distress, and said that the petitions presented to Congress were gotten up for effect, to frighten Jackson into restoring the deposits. Delegations went to Washington to represent to Jackson the state of the country. He became violent; told the delegations to go to Biddle, that he had all the money; that the Bank was a monster, to which all the trouble was due. In answer to a delegation from Philadelphia, February 11, 1834, Jackson sketched out the bullionist program, which the administration pursued from this time on. Up to this time it had been supposed that Jackson rather leaned to that class of paper money notions represented by the big banks of the States of the Southwest. He now proposed, as an "experiment," to persuade the local banks, by the inducement of the deposits, to come up to a higher and higher standard, until there
