The Second Bank of the United States, also known as the United States Bank, National Bank, or BUS, was a central bank headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that existed from 1816 to 1836. Under the leadership of its president, Nicholas Biddle, the Bank became involved in a dramatic political showdown with President Andrew Jackson — a conflict known as the “Bank War” — that shaped many of the political, economic, and ideological contours of American life in the pre-Civil War era.
A COMMON refrain among astute observers holds that the United States has in recent decades descended into a “New Gilded Age” that explicitly recalls the income inequality, class conflict, monopolization, and corporate malfeasance of the late-19th century epoch dominated by unscrupulous robber barons. Yet, as this article shows, fears of corporate money corrupting democratic elections predate the Civil War and may even go back to the country’s founding.