and, when he returned to Washington at the opening of the twenty-third Congress, his bucolic pleasures and his yearning for repose were readily forgotten. The session beginning in December, 1833, was to bring the two leaders face to face in a struggle fiercer than any before.
Great things had happened during the summer. As soon as the issue between him and the Bank of the United States was declared, Jackson resolved that the bank must be utterly destroyed. The method was suggested by Kendall and Blair, of the Kitchen Cabinet. It was to cripple the available means of the bank by withdrawing from it and its branches the deposits of public funds. In the message of December, 1832, Jackson had expressed his doubt as to the safety of the government deposits in the bank, and recommended an investigation. The House, after inquiry, resolved on March 2, by 109 to 46 votes, that the deposits were safe. The bank was at that period undoubtedly solvent, and there seemed to be no reason to fear for the safety of the public money in its custody. But Jackson had made up his mind that the bank was financially rotten; that it had been employing its means to defeat his reëlection; that it was using the public funds in buying up members of Congress for the purposes of securing a renewal of its charter, and of breaking down the administration; and that thus it had become a dangerous agency of corruption and a public enemy. Therefore the public funds must be withdrawn, without regard to consequences.
