Benton's Attack

When the issue of the re-charter was being debated in Congress, Senator Benton accused the Bank of several violations of its charter and attacked the Bank for some real and imaginary wrong doings. The bank draft system was the major violation of his claims. These were branch drafts made of small denominations circulating like bank notes but had none of the marks of convertible bank notes. Payment on them could be voluntary at the branch banks. If payment was refused, however, the owner of the notes could only go to the mother bank to redeem them. Benton accused the Bank of only issuing these bank drafts in the most isolated areas of the country so that the owner had no choice to make the long journey to Philadelphia and being that they were of only small denominations these notes "lingered in the hands of the laboring people until the "ware and tare" became a large item of gain to the Bank, and the difficulty of presenting them at Philadelphia an effectual bar to their payment there." While this claim of Benton’s could be true, it should be said that all banks, state or national used the bank draft system since the beginning of the century. These notes were supposed to stay in circulation only to be redeemed when the paper could no longer survive in circulation. But in their issue the Bank laid itself open to the attack and an investigation into these practices was started.

The Senator’s attack caught the Bank off guard. To agree to the investigation the Bank would be fighting a defensive battle; to oppose the inquiry would be admitting guilt. There was nothing to do but to proceed with the investigation. For the next six weeks a congressional committee evaluated the Bank's past practices. While defending the draft issue, Biddle's self-satisfaction of his own power, led him into making unwise remarks about the great power the Bank had over local banks and the general prosperity of the country. Biddle may have said this as to assure that the Bank was a restraining power and not using this power to the disadvantage to the public played into Benton’s hands. "A power to injure or destroy," Benton later wrote in his autobiography, "might be used for evil as well as for good; and was a power too large to be trusted to one man." But the ill-prepared committee could not handle the massive amounts of abstract data the Bank threw upon them, in what it would seem to confuse the members. These men concluded that the Bank was cleared of any wrong doings.