There is some confusion among those who should have known as to the authorship of the Veto Message. In this instance Hamilton was not called in, albeit sympathizing heartily with Jackson’s purpose. According to one of his biographers[469] the ideas were contributed by Livingston, Benton, Taney, and Jackson, and the phrasing was by Amos Kendall, Blair, and Lewis. In view of Livingston’s negotiations with Biddle, we may safely accept his denial of having had any part in the Message. It was inevitable that Benton should have been consulted. And it is known that Taney was summoned back to Washington to assist in the framing. During the entire time it was being written, Van Buren, who remained at the capital, with the document open to his inspection, did not have any “direct agency in its construction.”[470] His enemies at the time, however, insisted that he was a party to the phrasing. “Mr. Van Buren arrived at the President’s on Sunday,” a correspondent in Washington wrote Biddle, “and to-day the President sent to the Senate his veto on the Bank Bill.”[471] That Major Lewis and Blair were called in to assist in the actual wording is quite probable, but it may be set down as positive that the greater part of the document as it reached the Senate was the product of the pen of the mysterious recluse, Amos Kendall. That such a Message from such a pen at such a time should be strikingly strong and couched in such language as to appeal to the electorate of the Nation was inevitable. It has been fashionable to describe it as demagogic because of its appeal to the masses and its protest against the conversion by the rich of governmental agencies to their personal ends, and because of its objections to the foreign stockholders in the Bank of the United States. It was, of course, a campaign document--intended as such. Jackson understood perfectly that the presentation of the memorial for a recharter four years before the expiration of the existing charter, and in the year of the presidential election, was a campaign move on the part of Clay. He knew that Clay was appealing to wealth and power--he appealed to the people. And his appeal was to the people of the United States.