Second Bank of The United States

Second Bank Of The United States

The Second Bank of the United States (BUS) served as the nation's federally authorized central bank during its 20-year charter from February 1817 to January 1836.

A private corporation with public duties, the central bank handled all fiscal transactions for the US Government, and was accountable to Congress and the US Treasury. Twenty percent of its capital was owned by the federal government, the Bank's single largest stockholder Four thousand private investors held 80% of the Bank's capital, including one thousand Europeans. The bulk of the stocks were held by a few hundred wealthy Americans. In its time, the institution was the largest monied corporation in the world.

The essential function of the Bank was to regulate the public credit issued by private banking institutions through the fiscal duties it performed for the US Treasury, and to establish a sound and stable national currency. The federal deposits endowed the BUS with its regulatory capacity.

Modeled on Alexander Hamilton's First Bank of the United States the Second Bank began operations at its main branch in Philadelphia on January 7, 1817, managing twenty-five branch offices nationwide by 1832.

The efforts to renew the Bank's charter put the institution at the center of the general election of 1832, in which BUS president Nicholas Biddle and pro-Bank National Republicans clashed with the "hard-money" Andrew Jackson administration and eastern banking interests in the Bank War. Failing to secure recharter, the Second Bank of the United States became a private corporation in 1836, and underwent liquidation in 1841.