To present an intelligible view of this matter, the gravity of which cannot fail to be appreciated as we proceed, it is necessary that we should in the first place ascertain and define the leading idea which its author intended to convey by the words he employed. The entire paragraph is replete with distinct avowals of his meaning, but in the midst of them are to be found a few words by which its true sense is exposed to cavil and perversion. This was a point upon which General Jackson was very liable to err, notwithstanding his natural and in other matters practiced wariness,--a qualification with which few men were more amply endowed than himself. The spirit by which alone free governments can be sustained was deeply planted in his breast by the hand of Nature; quickened into life by the blows of the enemy, whilst a prisoner and yet a stripling, it grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. But possessed of a mind that was ever dealing with the substance of things, he was not very careful in regard to the precise terms in which his principles were defined. He was, besides, at that moment placed in a peculiar as well as difficult situation. Whilst struggling with an institution which felt itself sufficiently powerful to measure strength with the Government, and which had been itself stung to madness by his refusal to submit to its arbitrary demands, he was deprived of the assistance of the leading members of his cabinet. The Secretary of the Treasury, to whose department the subject belonged, had, in his report to Congress, placed himself on record in favor of the bank, and the Secretaries of State and of War concurred in his opinion; all three openly disapproved of, and could not cordially coöperate in, the measure the President was about to adopt--the Secretaries of the Treasury and of War, as will be seen by the letters of General Jackson to myself, which on account of the interesting matters to which they relate will be given with these memoirs,[36] pressing their opposition so far as to make it sufficient ground for proposing to retire from his cabinet--a step they were with difficulty prevented from carrying into immediate effect. That a document of such length, prepared on the spur of the occasion and under such untoward and exciting circumstances, should not have been even more vulnerable to the assaults of his astute and implacable opponents, is not a little surprising. [36] The correspondence, including the letters of President Jackson, has received the same direction with the other MSS. of the Author. See introduction to this volume. Eds.