<Table> <Tr> <Td> Andrew Jackson Amos Kendall Roger B. Taney Francis Blair Thomas Hart Benton James K. Polk </Td> <Td> Henry Clay Daniel Webster Nicholas Biddle </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> Andrew Jackson Amos Kendall Roger B. Taney Francis Blair Thomas Hart Benton James K. Polk </Td> <Td> Henry Clay Daniel Webster Nicholas Biddle </Td> </Tr> <P> The Bank War refers to the political struggle that developed over the issue of rechartering the Second Bank of the United States (BUS) during the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829--1837). The affair resulted in the destruction of the bank and its replacement by various state banks . </P> <P> Anti-Bank Jacksonian Democrats were mobilized in opposition to the national bank's re-authorization on the grounds that the institution conferred economic privileges on a small group of financial elites, violating Constitutional principles of social equality . The Jacksonians considered the Second Bank of the United States to be an illegitimate corporation whose charter violated state sovereignty, posing an implicit threat to the agriculture - based economy dependent upon the Southern states' widely practiced institution of slavery . With the Bank charter due to expire in 1836, the President of the Bank of the United States, Nicholas Biddle, in alliance with the National Republicans under Senator Henry Clay (KY) and Senator Daniel Webster (MA), decided to make rechartering a referendum on the legitimacy of the institution in the elections of 1832 . </P>

When the bank's charter expired in 1836 it was a key factor in the resulting