The so-called ‘Bank War’ between Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle, a contest in which both protagonists would have cast themselves as ‘David’ to the other's ‘Goliath’, is a central event in antebellum America's political historiography. Political and economic historians have scratched over the remains and rendered rather precisely the implications of that contest for the nation's political and economic fortunes in the nineteenth century. A picture has emerged of a powerful chief executive who for reasons that are less than clear made the bank's re-charter and his subsequent veto of the bill extending the life of the ‘Monster bank’ the pivotal issue in his reelection campaign in 1832. Depictions of the bank as a giant engine of political devilment were not, however, altogether absurd or unjustified.

The bank met its fate at the hands of a strong-willed chief executive whose veto was sustained as much by party loyalty and discipline as any negative assessment of the bank's value to the country. Jackson's political opponents, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, both had a hand in making the bank and its re-charter in 1832 a critical election issue, and both were no doubt delighted when the President handed them a veto message. In every way Nicholas Biddle was naïve for allowing the fate of the bank to become hopelessly linked to the fortunes of his mentors, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. They as well as the incumbent President made the bank a campaign issue.

The bank's friends and enemies did tend to divide along sectional lines, but this had as much to do with the geographical location of Democratic constituencies as any regional predisposition to favor or oppose the bank.