In a way, however, it was only the beginning.  Six days after the effective date for removal (of Public Monies from the Second Bank of the U.S.), on Monday, October 7, 1833, Biddle (Bank President of the Second Bank of the U.S.) held a board meeting in Philadelphia.   He would, he said, call in the loans and restrict credit in order to create a popular back lash against Jackson.   It was a bald, bold maneuver – and one that played into Jackson’s caricature of the Bank as an aristocratic institution more interested in self – perpetuation than in the good of the country.  “The ties of party allegiance can only be broken by actual conviction of existing distress to the community,” Biddle said.  “Nothing but evidence of suffering abroad will produce any effect on Congress… Our only safety is in pursuing a steady course of firm restriction (of credit) – And I have no doubt that such a course will ultimately lead to restoration of the currency and the recharter of the Bank.”  Biddle’s tactics worked, to a point.  By late December, James A. Hamilton noted that N.Y.business was “really in very great distress, nay even to the point of general bankruptcy.”

The crisis had come but what would be the end of it all?   Who would prevail – Jackson who launched a preemptive strike in late in late September, or Biddle, who counterattacked in October?  The two agreed on this, at least:  the future of the bank was now a political question, and would be decided by public opinion as expressed in the Congress.

(In the end)… The argument against Biddle – that he had abused the Bank’s power – stuck.  On Friday, April 4, 1834, the house voted that the Bank “ought not to be rechartered,” and that the state banks should keep their federal deposits.

From:  American Lion, Andrew Jackson in the White House

By Jon Meacham