Age of Jackson

Henry Clay… On Jackson’s Bank Veto

henry clay headshot“Mr. President, we are about to close one of the longest and most arduous sessions of Congress under the present Constitution; and when we return among our constituents, what account of the operations of their government shall we be bound to communicate? We shall be compelled to say, that the Supreme Court is paralyzed, and the missionaries retained in prison in contempt of its authority, and in defiance of numerous treaties and laws of the United States; that the executive, through the Secretary of Treasury, sent to Congress a tariff bill which would have destroyed numerous branches of our domestic industry, and to the final destruction of all; that the veto has been applied to the bank of the United States, our only reliance for a sound and uniform currency; that the Senate has been violently attacked for the exercise of a clear constitutional power; that the House of Representatives have been unnecessarily assailed; and that the president has promulgated a rule of action for those who have taken the oath to support the Constitution of the United States, that must, if there be practical conformity to it, introduce general nullification, and end in the absolute subversion of the government.”

~ Henry Clay speech to the Senate (July 10, 1832)