Talk:Bank War/Archives/2019

Jackson and Reform: Implications for the BUS

I have published a scholarly monograph on this topic and I find that this section has some significant weaknesses. Jackson's victory in 1828 was attributable to many factors, not just the Panic of 1819 and Missouri Crisis. Donald Ratcliffe is one of many scholarly authorities on this topic. Yes, the Panic of 1819 made public support for the Bank drop, but it recovered in the mid-1820s under Biddle's stewardship as a later section in this entry points out. Baptist's quote about ATMs seems out of place and I'm not sure that this quote is all that important (this is illustrative of a larger problem/observation I see in this entry in that there are a large number of quotes, leading to a rather long entry. I'd highly recommend paring down the whole entry to see which quotes are truly essential). Here is a problematic quote: "Overall, the people demanded more limited Jeffersonian government, especially after revelations of fraud within the Bank and its attempts to influence elections." This statement seems really vague. How are we defining "the people"? And how would we even go about proving this? If a candidate runs on a certain set of policies, and that candidate wins, we can assume that the people most likely supported most of that candidate's policies, but the way the statement is currently written comes across as too absolute and strong. I see there's a citation to Remini, but I don't think this is something you can prove. In addition to moving around quite a bit chronologically, the section cites Baptist at the end. I have read that chapter in Baptist's book and while there is much to praise in the book overall, it is worth underscoring that Baptist's chief focus was not the Bank of the United States, but slavery from the early republic to the Civil War. Besides, the allegation that the Bank's branches had been partisan by lending only to members of the Adams administration was denied by many of the branch officers, including those that supported Jackson. You can find this information in Campbell's recent book, as well as the recently published Andrew Jackson papers, published by the University of Tennessee Press. I do recommend that this section be rewritten. Steviebill83 (talk) 18:38, 19 March 2019 (UTC)Steviebill83