The manuscript journal of the session of 1833-1834 was brought into the Senate, and the secretary, in obedience to the resolution, drew black lines around the resolution of censure, and wrote across the face thereof, "in strong letters," the words: "Expunged by order of the Senate, this sixteenth day of January, in the year of our Lord 1837." Many members withdrew rather than witness the proceeding; but a crowded gallery looked on, while Benton strengthened his supporters by providing "an ample supply of cold hams, turkeys, rounds of beef, pickles, wines, and cups of hot coffee" in a near-by committee-room. Jackson gave a dinner to the "expungers" and their wives, and placed Benton at the head of the table. That the action of the Senate was unconstitutional interested no one save the lawyers, for the Bank was dead. Jackson was vindicated, and the people were enthroned. π π MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, p. 239. The struggle thus brought to a triumphant close was one of the severest in American political history. In 1836 the Bank obtained a charter from Pennsylvania, under the name of the Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania, and all connection between it and the Federal Government ceased. The institution and the controversies centering about it left, however, a deep impress upon the financial and political history of our fifth and sixth decades. It was the bank issue, more than anything else, that consolidated the new political parties of the period. It was that issue that proved most conclusively the hold of Jackson upon public opinion. And it was the destruction of the Bank that capped the mid-century reaction against the rampant nationalism of the decade succeeding the War of 1812. The Bank itself had been well managed, sound, and of great service to the country. But it had also showed strong monopolistic tendencies, and as a powerful capitalistic organization it ran counter to the principles and prejudices which formed the very warp and woof of Jacksonian democracy.