Editing Nicholas Biddle (section)

== Philadelphia Patrician ==

Nicholas Biddle was born on January 8, 1786, in Philadelphia, into a family whose prominence predated the Revolution. His education at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated at age thirteen, and at Princeton demonstrated the intellectual abilities that his later career would display. His service as secretary to American ministers in Paris and London, and his literary work including the editing of the Lewis and Clark journals, established reputation before his banking career began.<ref name="remini">{{cite book |last=Remini |first=Robert V. |title=Andrew Jackson and the Bank War |year=1967 |publisher=W.W. Norton |location=New York}}</ref>

His election to the Pennsylvania legislature and his involvement in cultural institutions including the American Philosophical Society demonstrated the breadth of interests that Philadelphia's elite pursued. His appointment to the Second Bank of the United States board in 1819, and his elevation to president in 1823, placed him at the head of the nation's largest financial institution. The bank's Philadelphia headquarters, the temple-like building on Chestnut Street designed by William Strickland, embodied the classical values that Biddle's own architecture at Andalusia expressed.<ref name="govan"/>

His management of the Bank, which served as the nation's central bank before that term existed, stabilized currency and credit while creating the concentrated power that Jacksonian democrats found threatening. His branch banking system, which extended the Bank's presence throughout the nation, provided financial services while demonstrating the national reach that local banks could not match. The Bank's regulation of state bank currency, which it achieved through its policy of presenting notes for redemption, created the stability that unregulated banking could not achieve.<ref name="remini"/>