When Hamilton called upon him at his hotel in New York, he found him obsessed with the subject. When the son of the father of the first National Bank joined him in the presidential suite to accompany him to the banquet, Jackson placed in his hands papers by several people urging the removal of the deposits, with the request that he examine them carefully and give him an opinion. Promising a careful perusal, Hamilton ventured the suggestion that the proposed step was “a very questionable one” that would “lead to great disturbances in commercial affairs.”[620] Meanwhile, when alone with Van Buren, the President was discussing the project with him to his keen distress.[621] Throughout the tour, sick or well, Jackson found time to work on the Vice-President and favorite, and when, at Concord, he finally won him over to the plan, the frail old man abandoned the tour and hastened back to Washington to begin a new battle.[622] And Adams, learning of the curtailment of the trip, wrote that “President Jackson has been obliged by the feeble state of his health to give up the remainder of his tour.”[623] Just how feeble Jackson was we shall soon see. II It is impossible definitely to determine the time Jackson decided on the removal of the deposits. The activity of the Bank in the presidential campaign had not been lost upon him, and he probably had it under consideration at that time. The historian of the Bank is convinced that such was the case.[624] Immediately after the election these rumors multiplied, and Biddle was deluged with warnings, but without disturbing the sublime serenity of his conceit. The autocrat of the Bank was satisfied that the Calhoun following would thereafter be arrayed in favor of the recharter. About this time Dr. Thomas Cooper, then president of the College of South Carolina and one of the intellectual leaders of Nullification, wrote him of his allegiance to the cause.[625] Blair had already charged, in the “Globe,” that there was a coalition between the forces of Clay, Calhoun, and Biddle, and made much of the fact that more Bank stock was owned in South Carolina than in all the other States of the Union south of the Potomac and west of the Alleghany Mountains.[626] The Democratic disaffection, together with the temporary alliance between Jackson and Webster, was quite enough to restore confidence to the ever sanguine Biddle,[627] who took no pains to conceal his satisfaction. This was water on the wheel of Blair, who, Iago-like, and always at Jackson’s elbow, kept impressing him with the idea that the Bank planned and expected an ultimate triumph. In this work he was ably seconded by Amos Kendall and James A. Hamilton, who wrote from New York that “a gentleman whose knowledge of the views of the U.S. Bank is only second to that of its President” had informed him that it expected to get a new charter.[628] It was firmly believed by Amos Kendall that the Bank’s purpose in adding $28,000,000 to its