Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States of America, is credited with the accomplishment of instituting various political and social changes during his era, which is now known as “The Age of Jackson (Schlesinger Jr. , 1988).

” Among the notable changes that were instituted during this period was the reformation of the Second Bank of the United States.It was during the Age of Jackson that something was finally done about the Second Bank of the United States which Jackson claimed was a corrupt institution. During the Age of Jackson, one of the key economic reforms that he instituted was the reformation of the National Bank which Jackson felt was “improving the fortunes of an elite circle of commercial and industrial entrepreneurs at the expense of farmers and laborers (Hammond, 1958).”Jackson argued that the National Bank was unconstitutional for the following reasons: it concentrated an excessive amount of the nation's financial strength into a single institution, it served mainly to make the rich richer, it exercised too much control over members of the Congress, and it favored Northeastern states over Southern and Western states (Hammond, 1958). Allegations of fraud and corruption connected to the Second Bank of the United States only served to make things worse and fueled President Jackson’s drive to have it abolished.

While the charter of the bank was set to expire by 1836, Jackson wanted to shut down the Bank sooner. In doing this, he vetoed the request for charter extension that was filed by the President of the Bank and also he instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to remove all federal funds from the bank and move them to state banks. This lack of confidence in the bank also prompted several other depositors to withdraw their funds and while there was a recall of all debts and loans, the Second Bank of the United States was unable to recover and soon had to announce that they were shutting down their operations.