Checks And Balances Quotes

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He did indeed kill the Bank of the United States by exercising the Presidential Veto on the legislation renewing the Bank’s government charter. The Bank was privately owned but handled all the fiscal functions for the Government and holding the United States deposits. The Bank owners and executives were not supports of Jackson and opposed him on many issues. Jackson thought it outrageous that a private bank, not under the control of the people or the representatives of the people, should have a monopoly on the banking functions of the United States. Vetoes were very unusual then. All the presidents before Jackson together vetoed only 12 laws. Jackson himself vetoed 13 including the Bank of America.


In a 1949 dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago Jackson claimed the majority view would “convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”


The words are those of President Andrew Jackson. See {604550}. After occupying New Orleans, General Butler infuriated the Confederate Sympathizers with this act. Jackson was the hero of the Battle of New Orleans and an unapologetic slave owner. The Southerners had erected a magnificent statue of their hero Jackson on horseback in a major section of the city. Butler, then ordered that the Jackson quotation be chiseled in the stone base. The townspeople were furious that this Union General would make up words and attribute them to Jackson; however, when they finally realized that Jackson had actually said those words they felt even more humiliated. There are still a few Southernors who consider this terrible insult to the Confederacy, and of course that is just what Butler intended.


Actually Adams had used the phrase in 1774 writing in the Massachusetts Gazette under the pseudonym Novanglus. See James Harrington related quotes for an earlier similar expression for which Adams is sometimes credited.