Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/355

ANDREW JACKSON 297 bill over the veto failed of the requisite two-thirds majority. Circumstances had already given a flavor of per sonal contest to Jackson s assaults upon the bank. There was no man whom he hated so fiercely as Clay, who was at the same time his chief political rival. Clay made the mistake of forcing the bank question into the foreground, in the belief that it was an issue upon which he was likely to win in the coming presidential campaign. Clay s move ment was an invitation to the people to defeat Jackson in order to save the bank; and this naturally aroused all the combativeness in Jack son s nature. His determined stand impressed upon the popular imagination the picture of a dauntless "tribune of the people" fighting against the "monster monopoly." Clay unwisely attacked the veto power of the president, and thus gave Benton an opportunity to defend it by analogies drawn from the veto power of the ancient Roman tribune; which in point of fact it does not at all resemble. The discussion helped Jackson more than Clay. It was also a mistake on the part of the Whig leader to risk the permanence of such an institution as the U. S. bank upon the fortunes of a presidential canvass. It dragged the bank into politics in spite of itself, and, by thus affording justification for the fears to which Jackson had appealed, played directly into his hands. In this