Editing Nicholas Biddle (section)

===Early years===
After Biddle moved to the [[Pennsylvania State Senate]], he lobbied for the rechartering of the [[First Bank of the United States]].{{sfn|Govan|1959|pp=28-34}} It was on this subject that he made his first major speech, which attracted general attention at the time, and was warmly commended by Chief Justice [[John Marshall]] and other leaders of public opinion.{{sfn|Wilson|Fiske|1900}}

The First Bank had been established in 1791 under the administration of President [[George Washington]]. Congress opted not to renew its twenty-year charter in 1811, and as a result, the First Bank closed its doors. After economic hardships, monetary pressures, and problems financing the federal government during the [[War of 1812]], Congress and the president granted a new twenty-year charter to the [[Second Bank of the United States]] in 1816. The Second Bank was in many ways a revived and reorganized version of the First Bank. President [[James Monroe]] subsequently appointed Biddle as a government director. When Bank President [[Langdon Cheves]] resigned in 1822, Biddle became the institution's new president.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.federalreservehistory.org/people/nicholas_biddle|title= Nicholas Biddle|author= Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond|date= <!-- not stated-->|website= www.federalreservehistory.org|publisher= Federal Reserve History|access-date= November 17, 2018}}</ref> During his association with the Bank, President Monroe, under authority from Congress, directed him to prepare a "Commercial Digest" of the laws and trade regulations of the world and the various nations. For many years after, this Digest was regarded as an authority on the subject.{{sfn|Wilson|Fiske|1900}}

In late 1818, $4 million of interest payments on the bonds previously sold in 1803 to pay for the [[Louisiana Purchase]] were due, in either gold or silver, to European investors. The Treasury Department, therefore, had to acquire additional amounts of [[Bullion coin|specie]]. As the federal government's chief fiscal agent, the Bank was obligated to make these payments on behalf of the Treasury. The Bank demanded that private and state-chartered commercial banks, many of which had loaned excessively and previously served as fiscal agents during the War of 1812, now pay the Second Bank in specie, which was then sent to Europe to pay the federal government's creditors. This rather sudden contraction of the country's monetary base after three years of speculation helped contribute to the financial [[Panic of 1819]].{{sfn|Browning|2019|pp=4-14}}

Meanwhile, in [[Tennessee]], military hero and future presidential candidate [[Andrew Jackson]] was hard-pressed to pay his debts during this period. He developed a lifelong hostility to all banks that were not completely backed by gold or silver deposits. This meant, above all, hostility to the new [[Second Bank of the United States]].{{sfn|Campbell|2019|p=10}}

As a banker, Biddle promulgated a nationalistic vision with an emphasis on regulation and flexibility. He was also innovative.{{sfn|Govan|1959|p=88}} Biddle occasionally engaged in the relatively new techniques of [[central bank]]ing–-controlling the nation's money supply, regulating interest rates, lending to state banks, and acting as the Treasury Department's chief fiscal agent. When state banks became excessive in their lending practices, Biddle's Bank acted as a restraint. In a few instances, he even rescued state banks to prevent the risk of "contagion" spreading.{{sfn|Campbell|2019|pp=3-4}}

In 1823, Biddle started concentrating the Bank's facilities in the West, Southwest, and South to meet the demands for credit generated by the expansion of land, cotton, and slavery. He did this by directing his branch officers to circulate large quantities of branch drafts and by buying and selling millions of dollars of bills of exchange.{{sfn|Catterall|1902|pp=136-143}}{{sfn|Smith|1953|pp=39-44}} As cotton moved downriver in the winter and spring months, merchants drew up bills of exchange representing the value of cotton exports, presenting them to the Bank's southern branches. Using its interregional network of branch offices and the transportation improvements then under way, the Bank would ship these bills to the Northeast where merchants could use them to pay for imported manufactured goods arriving from Great Britain in the summer and fall.{{sfn|Knodell|2016|pp=69-73}} The result was that Biddle helped provide an economic infrastructure that facilitated long-distance trade, propagated a relatively stable and uniform currency, and played a major role in integrating and consolidating fiscal operations at the federal level.{{sfn|Knodell|2016|p=15}} Indeed, Biddle won praise for the Bank by making steady payments to reduce the country's public debt, by preventing a potentially harmful recession in the winter of 1825–1826, and more generally, by smoothing out variations in prices and trade.

He was also important in the 1833 establishment of [[Girard College]], an early free private school for poor orphaned boys in Philadelphia, under the provisions of the will of his friend and former legal client, [[Stephen Girard]] (1750–1831), one of the wealthiest men in America. Girard had been the original promoter of the revival and reorganization of the Second Bank and its largest investor.<ref>A. B. Hepburn, A History of Currency in the United States (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1903; reprinted, August M. Kelly Publishers, 1967) p. 95</ref>