The story of President Andrew Jackson’s conflict with the Second Bank of the United States (BUS) is usually framed as one between two contending forces. On one side of this epic “Bank War” was Jackson, who hated paper money and regarded the BUS as an unconstitutional monopoly that favored the wealthy, violated states’ rights, bribed the press, and subverted democracy. On the other side stood Jackson’s enemies, the Whigs, who praised the BUS for stabilizing the economy and providing the nation with a sound currency. But there is another, often forgotten story behind the Bank War: Jackson’s ability to shape public opinion and undermine his critics by wielding the tools of the federal bureaucracy.

On March 29, 1834, Congress was in the midst of a debate over the legality of Jackson’s controversial decision to remove $10 million of public revenue from the BUS, which functioned as the nation’s fiscal agent and central bank. During the debate, Whig Senator Benjamin Leigh of Virginia broached the topic of corruption in the Post Office Department. When asked to explain the relevancy of his comments, Leigh called the Post Office a “vast political corporation” with “an intimate association with the public press” whose power over the elections of the country was actually greater than that of the BUS.

Few historians doubt that the Post Office Department was one of the most important federal agencies in the antebellum era. Its employment of nearly 27,000 people in 1829 accounted for roughly three-quarters of all civilian officers in the federal government. The founding generation of politicians who authored the legislation of 1792 that created the Post Office firmly believed that a healthy republic depended on an informed citizenry, so they subsidized the circulation of newspapers through the mail below cost. Editors and members of Congress, through the franking privilege, could send newspapers through the mail for free. Individuals could mail newspapers for less than two cents. In addition, the Post Office Department paid some editors for advertising postal routes in their papers, a perk that proved valuable in an occupation characterized by financial instability. Indeed, a good many partisan editors kept their businesses afloat by supplementing fickle advertising and subscription revenues with part-time work as postmasters and governmental contracts for printing legislative debates. Jackson’s official newspaper organ, the Globe, edited by Kentuckian Francis P. Blair, appropriated over $2,500 in patronage from the Post Office Department in 1830, which comprised more than half of the initial public funds that set the newspaper in motion. More than any other press of its time, the Globe promulgated the president’s anti-BUS views to a nationwide audience.

It was in the Post Office Department and other bureaucratic agencies that Jackson dismissed dozens of career-long civil servants under the theory of “rotation of office,” or what his political opponents derided as “the spoils system.” The president replaced many of these postmasters with loyal editors who had broadcast vituperative rhetoric while campaigning on his behalf in the election of 1828. Proponents argued that this policy opened up opportunities for social and material advancement among ordinary white Americans who were normally excluded from elite Washington politics, but critics pointed to heretofore unseen levels of partisanship, corruption, and incompetency. And with good reason. Complaints of partisan abuses of the franking privilege and irregular mail delivery grew in volume and frequency. It may be difficult for twenty-first century Americans to imagine, but the delivery of the mail was a highly politicized affair in the 1830s. One Globe agent urged Blair to tell the postmaster general to cancel the construction of a new post office in Chariton, Missouri because the area was reportedly filled with residents who were “the most violent political enemies of the administration.” So concerned was Henry Clay of the “treachery of the P. Office” that he once advised Senator Daniel Webster to “put your letters under cover to James Harper,” the cashier of the Lexington, Kentucky branch of the BUS.

A Whig-led Senate committee brought to light many of these abuses in an exhaustive report released in July 1834. It documented a long list of corrupt practices and excessive spending habits in the Post Office that had dogged Jackson since the beginning of his administration. One section faulted elite functionaries in the department for consistently choosing their preferred editors to print official documents at public expense, all without properly documenting the editors’ compensation for public record. Even more damning was the report’s targeting of Postmaster General William Barry and his subordinates for rewarding private conveyance firms with extravagantly large bonuses and then calling on these very same firms to fund their own personal expenses. Two of the firms, Stockton & Stokes and E. Porter & Co., both of which were managed by Barry’s friends, practically monopolized contracts for delivering the mail. Jacksonian-affiliated state banks, including one of the notorious “pet banks” that received some of the country’s public deposits, financed much of these schemes through tens of thousands of dollars of loans. In failing to properly advertise mail contracts in newspapers, thus circumventing what was supposed to be an open and competitive bidding process, Barry and his colleagues violated congressional statute and accepted norms. Along the way, the Post Office accumulated alarming deficits: it owed $488,000 to state banks and $635,000 to private contractors. What the committee essentially uncovered was an incestuous cabal of Jacksonian financiers, newspaper editors, and postmasters who misappropriated public money in an attempt to shape public opinion and advance party interests. The stench was so rotten that Jackson eventually replaced Barry with another editor, Amos Kendall.

As the Post Office scandal illustrated, both sides in the Bank War sought political advantage by transmitting campaign material through interregional communications networks funded by public and private money. The BUS financed the dissemination of partisan newspapers and kept track of public opinion through its system of branch offices, while the Jacksonians did the same by harnessing the patronage networks of the Post Office. Focusing on these networks uncovers a multi-sided view of the Bank War and helps to reevaluate, supplement, and move beyond the traditional, individual-driven boxing match between Jackson and his rival, BUS president, Nicholas Biddle. The view that the Post Office exerted a far greater influence over public opinion and party development than the BUS has rarely, if ever, penetrated scholarly works on the Bank War, much less American history textbooks. Jackson struck a body blow to the “Monster” by vetoing legislation authorizing a renewal of the Bank’s charter in 1832, but he used a Post Office staffed by an army of party loyalists to finish the job.