300 ANDREW JACKSON 



when they inferred from Jackson's attitude toward 

 Georgia that they could count upon his aid or conni- 

 vance in the case of South Carolina. The insubordi- 

 nation of Georgia was shown in refusing to obey a 

 decree of the Supreme Court, and Jackson had no 

 fondness for the Supreme Court. He is said to have 

 exclaimed, somewhat maliciously, "John Marshall has 

 made his decision ; now let him enforce it ! " But the 

 nullification act of South Carolina was a direct chal- 

 lenge to the executive head of the United States gov- 

 ernment. He could see its bearings in an instant, 

 and it aroused all the combativeness that was in his 

 nature. 



During this nullification controversy Jackson kept 

 up the attacks upon the United States Bank which he 

 had begun in his first annual message to Congress in 

 1829. His antipathy to such a bank, in which the 

 federal government was a shareholder and virtually to 

 some extent a director, had been shown as long ago 

 as Washington's administration, when the bank was 

 first established. For two reasons it was especially 

 obnoxious to the people of the South and the South- 

 west, and to the Democratic party generally. In the 

 first place, the question as to the constitutional author- 

 ity of Congress to establish such an institution was 

 preeminently the test question between strict con- 

 structionists and loose constructionists. In the great 

 fight between them it played the same part that Little 

 Round Top played in the battle of Gettysburg. Once 

 let the enemy carry that point and the whole field was 

 lost. The contest over the assumption of state debts 

 had faded out of sight before Jackson's presidency ; it 

 had become what the Germans call an " uberwundene 



