Editing Nicholas Biddle (section)

===Demise of the bank===
[[File:Second Bank of the United States 1838.jpg|thumb|Share of the Second Bank of the United States, issued 18. June 1838, signed by Nicholas Biddle]]
The Second Bank's twenty-year charter expired in April 1836, but Biddle worked with the Pennsylvania state legislature to prolong the institution as a state-chartered bank, the United States Bank of Pennsylvania (BUSP). The BUSP remained open for several more years.{{sfn|Sklansky|2017|pp=164-165}} It was in the later years of his career that Biddle began to invest significant financial resources not only in internal improvement projects,{{sfn|Smith|1953|p=28}} but also in the booming expansion of land, cotton, and slavery in the Old Southwest.{{sfn|Govan|1959|p=320-323}}{{sfn|Kilbourne|2006|pp=89-92}}

In 1837 and 1838, Biddle secretively dispatched agents into the South to buy up several million dollars worth of cotton with the notes of state-chartered banks, all in an effort to restore the nation's credit and pay off foreign debts owed to British merchant bankers.{{sfn|Smith|1953|pp=195-201}} Critics called this an example of illegal cotton speculation and noted that the Bank's charter forbid the institution from purchasing commodities. Biddle also invested in and bailed out several state-chartered banks in the South whose capital was derived partially from slave mortgages. Some of these banks, including the Union Bank of Mississippi, financed the dispossession of Native Americans.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/106/2/315/5545757 |title=Financing Dispossession: Stocks, Bonds, and the Deportation of Native Peoples in the United States |last=Saunt |first=Claudio |date=September 1, 2019 |journal=Journal of American History |volume=106 |issue=2 |pages=315–337 |doi=10.1093/jahist/jaz344 |access-date=May 15, 2021}}</ref>{{sfn|Kilbourne|2006|pp=89-94}} Indeed, post-notes issued by the BUSP helped conclude one of the treaties that removed the [[Cherokee]] from their ancestral lands.<ref>{{cite journal |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/793520 |title='A Very Large Extent of Virgin Land': Nicholas Biddle, Cotton, and the Expansion of Slavery, 1823-1841 |last=Campbell |first=Stephen W. |date=May 22, 2021 |journal=The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography |volume=145 |pages=33–65 |doi=10.1353/pmh.2021.0001 |s2cid=236690261 |access-date=May 29, 2021|url-access=subscription }}</ref> In addition, Biddle purchased bonds in the [[Republic of Texas]], opposed territorial expansion into Oregon, and denounced [[abolitionism|abolitionists]].{{sfn|Govan|1959|p=409}}

Meanwhile, in the absence of any regulatory oversight provided by a central bank, state-chartered banks in the West and South relaxed their lending standards, took on greater risks, maintained unsafe reserve ratios, and contributed to a credit bubble that eventually burst with the [[Panic of 1837]]. In 1839, after seeing his investment in cotton speculation backfire, Biddle resigned from his post as bank president, and in 1841, with the nation still reeling from depression, the Bank finally collapsed.<ref>[https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2008/the-rise-and-fall-of-nicholas-biddle The Rise and Fall of Nicholas Biddle.] www.minneapolisfed.org</ref> Because the BUSP had issued loans to financial institutions and individual actors who pledged slave mortgages as collateral, the BUSP tragically became one of the largest owners of plantations, slaves, and slave-grown products in Mississippi as debtors rushed to repay creditors during the economic downturn of the early 1840s.{{sfn|Kilbourne|2006|p=2}}

Biddle and a few of his colleagues had borrowed tens of thousands of dollars of cash from the BUSP on their own account without going through the normal lending process and without informing the Bank's board, and as a result, a grand jury indicted Biddle on charges of fraud in December 1841.{{sfn|Govan|1959|pp=405}} Biddle was arrested and forced to pay compensation to creditors using the remainder of his personal fortune. The charges were later dismissed.{{sfn|Sklansky|2017|pp=164-165}} On February 27, 1844, at the age of fifty-eight, Biddle died at the [[Andalusia (estate)|Andalusia estate]] from complications related to bronchitis and edema.{{sfn|Govan|1959|p=411}} Funds from his wife's family supported the ongoing civil lawsuits that plagued Biddle toward the end of his life.{{sfn|Sklansky|2017|pp=164-165}}{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}