to shake off the system which he fastened upon the country. Patronage has been the curse of our politics from that day to this.
Then there was his determined and disastrous assault on the United States Bank. Upon this institution, which was founded by Alexander Hamilton, and whose position somewhat resembled the present position of the Bank of England, the financial system of the country depended. Jackson attacked it as a "wicked monopoly," as a concrete expression of the "money power." He succeeded in wrecking the bank, in bringing on the panic of 1837, which wrought untold ruin and disaster to the people, and in inaugurating in its place the system of wildcat State banks and currency chaos which lasted up to the Civil War.
But Jackson attacked more than the United States Bank and the principle that public office is a public trust. He attacked nullification.
