ASTOR, GIRARD, PARISH AND THE SECOND BANK OF THE UNITED STATES

Patriotism was not altruism. The bonds promised the investors a triple profit, and in 1814, Girard, Astor and Parish, looking to guarantee their investment, tendered and undisguised Hamiltonian proposal to the Madison administration - to enhance the value of their investment by making government bonds exchangeable for stock in a new BUS. The proposal faltered when Treasury Secretary Gallatin, privy to the deal, departed for Ghent as as part of Madison's peace commission. When Pennsylvania's senators, Michael Leib and Abner Laycock, blocked the appointment of their nemesis (and Gallatin's favourite) Alexander Dallas as Gallatin's replacement at the Treasury Department, the bank plan looked dead. But after the burning of Washington, and following direct intervention by what Dallas called an anonymous "deliberate concert amongst the Capitalists", the Pennsylvanians gave way, Dallas was confirmed and the bank proposal was back on track. After a few legislative false starts, the pro-bank forces in Congress, now led by the repentant Speaker of the House Henry Clay and his nationalist comrade John C Calhoun, won enough support from hitherto southerners and westerners to prevail in April 1816[55].

[source : The Rise of American Democracy : Jefferson to Lincoln, by Sean Wilentz, p 204]

The source for this appears to be "Alexander James Dallas : Lawyer-Politician-Financier" by Raymond Walters Jr.

I cannot find free access to this but Walters wrote "The origins of the second bank of the united states" in Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press. And the story that Girard, Parish and Astor proposed a new national bank which was pushed through with their agreement, together with Alexander Dallas and John C Calhoun appears true. Walters concludes:

Years later Calhoun told the senate that "the bank owes as much to me as any other individual in the country; and I might even add that, had it not been for my efforts, it would not have been chartered." The statement is true enough, but it does not tell the whole story. Had not John Jacob Astor, David Parish, Stephen Girard and Jacob Barker organized pro-bank sentiment among the capitalists and won the support of Secretary Dallas, had not the dogged persistence and persuasive pleading of Dallas won over President Madison, Congress and a large portion of the public, the bank would not have been chartered.

...Under vigorous, honest and able management the bank survived to give the nation orderly banking for nearly two decades, until Andrew Jackson brought its career to an end in 1836.

From this we can take that Walters considered Nicholas Biddle as "vigorous, honest and able", and that the traitor Jackson did a baaaaad thing by killing the bank, as he boasted.

This interesting little tale of bankers and traitors establishing the BUS2 adds to the confusion arising from the Barings, allegedly at the financial nerve centre of the British Empire against the new independent America but extending significant lines of credit to the USA when it could have denied the credit and allowed the USA to go under.

Very, very curious.