In March of 1829, Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as the seventh president of the United States. Born in 1767, he was a child of the backwoods, and was an orphan at the age of fourteen. His long military career began in 1781, and he quickly became a war hero and champion for the common man. "Old Hickory" as he was known, was a seasoned veteran, and had a reputation as a rough and uncivil individual. Most importantly, however, he was a southern democrat, which meant he distrusted banks. Nicolas Biddle, on the other hand, was the polar opposite of Jackson. Biddle was born in 1786 to an old Philadelphia family. He entered the University of Pennsylvania in 1796 at the age of ten, later enrolled at Princeton, and was valedictorian of his graduating class at the age of fifteen. Biddle was indeed a " true American Aristocrat He married an heiress, read the classics in the original, collected art, and was as dramatic an antithesis as could be imagined to Jackson, the self educated frontier soldier who had become the people's idol" (Weisberger 2). These two men would wage war on one another, albeit a bloodless one, which would forever alter America's history and political landscape.
In 1822, at the age of 37, Nicholas Biddle became the president of the Second Bank of the United States. This name, however, was very misleading. "The Bank", as it was referred to, was actually under private control; stock was held by both domestic and foreign investors. Congress chartered the bank for twenty years in 1816, which "enabled the two separate entities to share in financial ventures which would have proven to be mutually prosperous" (D"Urso 4). The Bank had served regular commercial banking purposes but also acted as the collection and disbursement agent for the federal government, which held one-fifth of its thirty-five-million-dollar capital stock (Weisberger 1).The Bank was a storehouse for public funds, and could use these funds for its own purposes without paying interest.