Second Bank of the United States

A federally chartered national bank that operated from 1816 to 1836, serving as the U.S. government’s fiscal agent and helping regulate the national currency.

Bank charter: A legal grant defining a bank’s powers, structure, and duration. Congress’s 1816 charter authorized the institution and fixed its lifespan.
War of 1812: A conflict between the United States and Britain fought from 1812 to 1815. The war exposed the federal government’s difficulty borrowing and moving funds without a national bank.
McCulloch v. Maryland: An 1819 U.S. Supreme Court case upholding Congress’s power to establish a national bank and barring Maryland’s tax on it. The decision protected the Bank from state taxation and affirmed broad implied federal powers.
Independent Treasury: A U.S. system, established in 1840 and restored in 1846, that kept federal funds in government-controlled vaults rather than private banks. It offered an alternative to placing federal deposits in a chartered national bank.
Central banking: The provision of public monetary and financial services by a central banking institution. The Bank performed some central-bank functions without modern monetary-policy institutions.
Bank branches: Local offices of a bank that conduct business beyond its central office. Branches collected federal revenue and presented state-bank notes for redemption.
First Bank of the United States: A federally chartered national bank that operated from 1791 to 1811. Its charter expired before the Second Bank was created to restore national banking.
Bank War: The political struggle in the 1830s between Andrew Jackson and supporters of the national bank. Jackson’s opposition turned the Bank’s recharter into a defining national political conflict.
State bank: A bank chartered by an individual U.S. state rather than the federal government. State banks competed with the Second Bank and resented its pressure to redeem their notes.
Lender of last resort: A financial institution’s role in lending to solvent institutions that cannot obtain short-term funding elsewhere. Historians debate how effectively the Bank stabilized credit during financial stress.

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