Biddle, Jackson, and a Nation in Turmoil (Book Talk) | Fireside Chat

Good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's fireside chat. I'm a surprise guest tonight. I'm filling in for Mike Barsanti. My name is Emily Guthrie and I'm the library company's new librarian. I'm mostly pleased to introduce tonight's speaker who is Cordelia Francis Biddle. Cordelia is an independent historian and an author of several works of both fiction and non-fiction. Her works of fiction include Sins of Commission, The Actress, Without Fear, Deception's Daughter, and The Conjurer. Each of these novels is set during the early Victorian era in Philadelphia and explore women's issues in the chasm between wealth and poverty. A prior novel, Beneath the Wind, examined colonialism during the Gilded Age. Her non-fiction books include St. Catherine, The Life of Catherine Drexel, and of course Biddle, Jackson, and a Nation in Turmoil, The Infamous Bank War, the subject of tonight's fireside chat. As a journalist, Cordelia has written for Town & Country, Hemispheres, and W, and has won the Award for Three Perfect Days in Philadelphia. Her interpretive tour for the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion won the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's 2013 Education and Public Programs Award. Cordelia has taught creative writing at Drexel University's Pannoni Honors College since 2008. She received the Pannoni Honors College Award in 2012 and in 2021 was honored with the Award for Excellence in Adjunct Teaching at Drexel. To learn more about our speaker and to order her books, please visit her website at www.cordeliafrancisfiddle.net. Cordelia will speak for about 30 to 40 minutes tonight, which will leave us time for your questions and comments afterwards. You're welcome to submit your questions through the Q&A feature here on Zoom or to use the chat function. Either one is fine. Without further ado, Cordelia, I'll turn it over to you. Thanks so much, Emily, and it's wonderful to sort of be with all of you. I love the idea of the fireside chats. I just love them. We're returning to the Roosevelt era. It makes me feel very comfortable and really quite delighted. I also want to give a major thank you to Connie King, who aided me in all of my research at the library company. I haunted the reference room. I spent years there, I think, delving into all the newspapers. I'm an absolutely determined researcher. Thank you to Connie for allowing me to do that and also to aiding me in where I might find other pieces of information. It was a joy. It's just a joy. I'm sorry I'm not doing another book right now because I would be back there again. My newest book, which you can see, there's the cover, Biddle Jackson and the Nation in Turmoil. I'm focusing on Nicholas Biddle, who lost an epic battle with then President Andrew Jackson. As we know, history rewards the victors, but I believe that Biddle deserves his own story. In Biddle Jackson and the Nation in Turmoil, I aim to set the record straight. It's very tempting to imagine Nicholas Biddle's life had it not been for Andrew Jackson, who detested the idea of a central bank. Would the Second Bank of the United States, instead of being abolished in 1837, have burgeoned as a strong and trusted financial institution? Would Wall Street, favored as a hub by Jackson's vice president and successor, the New Yorker Martin Van Buren, have never been born? Would Philadelphia now, as during Biddle's era, be the center of American finance? And would Nicholas Biddle, who sought to create a fair and just system of regional offices encouraging the movement of fiscal aid from one state to another, be remembered as a visionary, instead of being criticized as the Second Bank's last president before the Great Depression plunged the nation into chaos? We'll never know, because at work within the fierce battle between Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle was a paradigm shift in the national political mood. In retrospect, that shift seems inevitable. The ruling class, if you will, versus a rising group of laborers and self-made men who wanted absolutely no truck with the status quo. As president, Jackson was a populist hero who appealed to a constituency that had previously felt marginalized, many of them rural or less educated urban dwellers. However, his popularity came at a cost to the nation. The divide between classes, between states, between slave owner and abolitionist. That division wasn't coincidental or haphazard. It was fed by political rivalries pitting one party against another. In this case, the Whigs who were mostly Northern versus the Democrats who were mostly Southern. Mistrust bordered on hatred. Neither Biddle nor Jackson were exempt from slander during their epic struggle. For Biddle, whose nature tended toward evaluation and persuasion, being publicly pilloried must have been galling. Jackson, though, as we probably all know, relished a good fight. As Thomas Jefferson told Daniel Webster in 1824, and I quote, I feel very much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson become president. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has very little respect for laws or constitutions. His passions are terrible. When I was president of the Senate, he was a senator and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. His passions are no doubt cooler now. He has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man, end quote. It was that very sense of menace that appealed to Jackson's adherence. During the election of 1828, Jackson's supporters physically attacked voters casting ballots for then President John Quincy Adams. The newspapers of the era, which, as I mentioned, I read in their physical form at the library company, provided an absolutely horrifying overview of an America nearly torn asunder by partisan politics. As you will see from this first slide, here we have King Andrew I born to command and he is treading on the Constitution. This was one of the many political cartoons that were, they escalated in vitriol as time went on. And then we have the mature Nicholas Biddle. When President Andrew Jackson vowed to kill the central bank in 1832, he set in motion the divisive bank war that culminated in 1837 and, as I mentioned, almost bankrupted the nation. Jackson and his supporters felt deep antipathy toward the idea, just the very idea of a central bank, believing that it benefited only the wealthy. As early as 1810, the Pennsylvania legislature had argued against the recharter of Alexander Hamilton's first bank of the United States due to expire in 1811. Nicholas Biddle was then a 25-year-old neophyte state legislator. He argued passionately and for three hours, speaking only from a handful of notes, that a central bank was a national necessity. The start of his speech was deceptively simplistic. The young man clearly considered himself the smartest person in the room, and I quote, you are to raise an army. You must therefore pay money over the whole frontier of the United States. You are to raise a navy and you must pay at the remotest ports on the Atlantic or the lakes. If you mean to pay with national debts with paper, it must be with a national paper. The institution from which it issues must be stamped with something like a national character. As he wound up for the punch, his eloquence and his ire increased. I quote again, in this situation, without credit or money, while your commerce is stopped and your manufacturers languish, do you think its effect will be confined to the city? In a sweeping ruin, which will overwhelm humble and useful industry, in the general submersion of small traders, the only beings who will be seen floating on the wreck are those very, quote, moneyed aristocrats whom the resolutions denounce with such indignation. Biddle lost the argument. The Pennsylvania legislature and subsequently national legislature allowed Alexander Hamilton's bank to expire, with the result that money to fund the War of 1812 was scarce and a financial depression ensued, which then necessitated a new national bank. The Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 1816. During the infamous bank war over the Second Bank, Biddle, the bank's president, fought Jackson with daring, tenacity, and vigor. So did members of Congress, not under the sway of old hickory. Jackson cannily took to a friendly press, accusing Biddle of treason, while Biddle informed partisan editors and journalists that the president promoted anarchy and that his adherents were motivated solely by avarice and self-interest. As you saw from the original political cartoon that I showed, the era really indicated how deeply partisan the issue of a central bank had become. Here is another, the set-to between old hickory and bully Nick. Sorry, you can't read all of the small print on that, but the politics just really nearly tore the nation asunder. Here's old Jack Mauser destroying the bank and all the bankers and being cheered on by his adherents. The next one is a bit squeamish-inducing, so look away if you've just eaten your dinner. It's entitled The Political Barbecue. We have Andrew Jackson being roasted on a spit. So hatred on both sides. And then my absolute favorite, because of its reference to Macbeth, which clearly somebody reading the newspaper understood, Banco's Ghost. That was one aspect of Nicholas Biddle's life, but it was only one. In my nonfiction work, as well as within fiction, I want to get to the heart of the people about whom I'm writing, which is easy if I'm writing fiction. I create the characters, and so I invent their histories. In nonfiction, I employ what I call informed conjecture. I learn the facts, I read the letters and journals, and I ask myself why. What inspired a particular behavior or reaction? What engendered a life choice? And I asked myself that with Nicholas Biddle. Born in 1787, he was a child prodigy. Graduated from what is now Princeton University at the age of 15. Youngest person to this day to do so. Don't imagine that he was a very mature 15, though. Letters back and forth with his parents show a very young man trying to impress his classmates and their female friends. He couldn't keep his finances straight, no matter how hard he tried. His mother fretted over him not eating properly. His father, that he wasn't getting enough exercise. In other words, I think of him in our today's parlance as a fairly typical, if rather geeky teen. His native intelligence and his good humor eventually won the praise of his peers who asked him to join the Cliosophic Society, a literary and debating club, where he was nicknamed Chromaticus. I'm not sure whether that was a compliment or a jibe, but that was his name. Upon graduation, he found himself at loose ends. His father, Charles, arranged to have his son appointed as personal secretary to the American minister to France, John Armstrong. The year was 1804. The young man left home earlier than his parents had anticipated due to an unforeseen guest whom Nicholas disliked intensely. That guest was Aaron Burr, a longtime friend of Charles, who fled to Philadelphia after shooting Alexander Hamilton and Charles Biddle took him. From 1804 to 1807, Nicholas Biddle traveled through Europe and Greece. In France, he aided in translating portions of the Louisiana Purchase and met the Marquis de Lafayette, whom he later advised on financial matters. He also attended Napoleon's coronation, saving the ticket stub, which is in the archives at Andalusia, and gushing, what a sight is this for a philosopher, which you can just imagine somebody of that age considering himself a philosopher. Biddle's European journals provided a wealth of detail. I found them at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where they had been believed lost, but in fact were hiding in plain sight and had been misfiled. By happenstance, I was rereading War and Peace at the time, and I began to wonder about Biddle's purpose in traversing Europe at the height of the Napoleonic Wars. So again, let me reference the library company's excellent collection of historical newspapers that made it clear that we Americans were extraordinarily anxious about Bonaparte's movements. Was he going to invade New Jersey? Perhaps that was a possibility. Young Biddle's European journals are deceptively breezy accounts of famous dinner companions, notable architecture, a supper taken with Lord Elgin, a young man privately accused of being a thief, and pilfering the famous marbles from Athens. There was no mention of battlefields or troop activity, which he must have seen when he traveled from France into occupied Austria. Not until he reached Greece and was, in his words, quote, safe from the noisy cannonades of Europe, end quote, did he mention the wars that were consuming the continent. In today's parlance, he had a perfect cover. The young scholar out to discover the world, it helped that he possessed almost a photographic memory and was a linguist. Lending credence to the theory, admittedly my theory, that he was acting as a confidential agent, Biddle journeyed to Washington to confer with then President Thomas Jefferson before returning to his family in Philadelphia. That change of itinerary surprised his parents, who had planned to meet him at the Lazzaretto in the Delaware River, but wrote to him agreeing that he was serving his nation. It's clear that they understood whatever role he was playing. So let me show you what he looked like then. Oh wait, I've gone, lost that. Here he is, young Nicholas Biddle, who looks here like a romantic poet, a little Byron-esque. This is how he appeared when he traveled Europe. After all that adventure, including a sojourn in Malta, where the commander of the American Mediterranean squadron provided strategic information regarding the British naval presence in the area, Nicholas dutifully followed his father's wishes and became an attorney. He also began contributing to and subsequently edited the portfolio, the preeminent literary magazine published in Philadelphia. Its authors were the nation's leading lights. Charles Brockton Brown, one of the creators of the genre Philadelphia Gothic, Benjamin Rush, signing himself as Marcellus, and John Quincy Adams, who had been a Harvard classmate of Joseph Denny, the magazine's original editor. In addition to the portfolio, Biddle began editing the journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1810. The letters between William Clark writing from his home in Virginia and Biddle make for exhilarating reading. I won't go into all the details now, but they were a wonder to read and discover. Biddle's queries and Clark's responses regarding locales, the expedition's progress, translations of Native American words, there was a palpable excitement that existed between the two men. One shaping words and experiences into a cohesive form, and the other reliving an extraordinary exploration. The letters reside in the Library of Congress and they still enthrall, despite Nicholas Biddle's often sloppy handwriting, which I had a very hard time deciphering. But you can sense speed and awe in every one of his pen strokes. Biddle's close relationship with James Monroe dates from the young man's European travels. Monroe was then Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain. Biddle served as his private secretary after being Armstrong's secretary, which resulted in a lifelong friendship between the two men. Although Biddle was clearly at pains to impress his mentor, as you will see in a moment, the letters are full of marvelously tortured phrases, lines excised, lines inserted. You can almost see him struggling to find the perfect mo-mo. As you see here, there again, this is draft correspondence. This is newly discovered. I'm the first author to see the draft correspondence. The finished letters are in the Library of Congress and they resemble nothing like this. They are very methodical, maybe a few lines and that's it. So these, which were sitting in a descendant's attic and not even his children knew of these letters' existence, they could have just vanished. It's a fair joy. In all of Biddle's draft correspondence with Monroe, he excised words and phrases, making the final versions politically prudent and innocuous. When I compared the draft and final versions of the letters, it became quite clear to me that Biddle was acting as Monroe's confidential agent during years 1818 and 1819. A mysteriously designated O or Mr. O kept reappearing within the letters and it wasn't until I've made connection to the Adams-Oniz Treaty that I discovered Oniz's identity. He led a shadow Spanish legation based in Philadelphia and he and Biddle had social contacts. Biddle introduced him to Monroe. During the Missouri Compromise, Monroe again turned to Biddle, depending upon him to secure critical votes from Pennsylvania legislatures in order to help pass the bill. Given Biddle's early life and his wide and varied interests presiding over the nation's central bank, it was a surprising outcome. Again, it was a Monroe connection and again it involved serving as then President Monroe's eyes and ears during the scandal-ridden inception of the Second Bank of the United States. The then directors were accused of graft, incompetence, and even theft. Biddle was appointed a director and he was so appalled at what he discovered that he created an octavo volume entitled The Commercial Digest, in which he made recommendations for improvement, altering officers' term limits, branch reports, voting, and prescribing any officer from engaging in share speculation, which seems a given now, but at the time was not. He also examined the laws of foreign nations regarding commerce and tariffs. Here's a picture of the Second Bank of the United States, which we all know very well as it's still where the building still exists. In 1823, at the age of 37, he assumed the presidency of the bank. A letter in the Pennsylvania Historical Society shows him responding to a branch chair in Savannah, signing his name with a large flourish and adding in small block letters, the President of the Bank of the U States when it fell to almost nothing. When I discovered that letter, I felt it encapsulated his nascent high spirits as if the boy at Princeton remained an integral part of the man's adult nature. I'll also add that he was fond of writing witty, rhyming couplets all of his life. He may have presented a serious figure while strolling Philadelphia streets, but he was also a gregarious person who loved to entertain in his house on Spruce Street as well as in Andalusia, his country estate. Despite Biddle's jocular aside when being named bank president, a family history of service to country was in his DNA. One uncle served in the First Continental Congress. His father fought in the Revolutionary War and subsequently served as vice president of Pennsylvania. The uncle for whom he was named died a hero during a 1778 naval engagement with a larger British vessel. Nicholas had been instilled with a sense of noblesse oblige since birth. There's a picture of Andalusia, his country estate. Which originally belonged to his wife Jane's family. As you can see, the quintessence of leisure existence. Here's a portrait of Jane, here's Andalusia again, and a portrait of Jane Biddle, Jane Craig Biddle, painted by Sully. Biddle's fight with Jackson was as much a clash of cultures as it was of ideology. Jackson, the rough-hewn frontiersman determined to vanquish what he considered an effete aristocracy and Biddle, the erudite scion of a cultured family. A letter Biddle wrote Joseph Hopkinson in February 1834 reveals a self-assurance verging on blindness. He could not imagine that a man of his intellect and reading could possibly be wrong. And I quote, this worthy president thinks that because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned judges, he is to have his way with the bank. He is mistaken and he may as well send at once and engage lodgings in Arabia. Biddle was wrong in that assessment, as we know, public opinion go ever more wrathful. Jackson derided in the press as King Andrew, as you saw, and Biddle, given the pseudonym Sobriquet of old snatch and grab in George Lepard's potboiler, the Quaker City. The halls of Congress were no less divided. In 1834, the Senate voted to censure Jackson over the bank issue. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who served as an aide to Jackson during the War of 1812, disagreed with the vote and brought loaded pistols into the Senate chamber. He and Daniel Webster and their supporters engaged in a day-long shouting match. Senator David Crockett, who would die at the Alamo, compared Jackson to a dictator, and I quote, I do believe Santa Ana's kingdom will be a paradise compared with this in a few years, end quote. Tyrant, traitor, imperial despot became labels curled by both sides. The Whigs referring to Jackson, the Democrats referring to Biddle. The newspapers, of course, relished the ongoing battle, which, of course, fanned the flames of partisanship. Jackson narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Thomas, one of Biddle's brothers, died in a duel defending his brother's honor. The fight had become hideously personal. After that, the battle spun out of control. Jackson's supporters insisting that their man intended to run for a third term in order to, quote, save the country. This national rage may seem eerily familiar, but like our contemporary era, Americans were riveted. Newspapers such as Polson's, which is printed here in Philadelphia, or Baltimore's Niles Register, both pro-Biddle, or the Washington Globe, which was pro-Jackson, devoted endless amounts of ink to the ongoing saga. Letters to the editor fumed and raged, with readers attacking one another in print. At the time, it seemed that the nation was about to implode. Biddle's rage reached a peak during a speech he delivered at Princeton in 1835, during the midst of his battle with Jackson and Jackson's battle with Congress. He didn't name Jackson or Van Buren or their congressional supporters, but his audience knew precisely to whom he referred. At that point, he still clung to the hope that he could win the fight. And I quote, their knowledge of themselves inspires low estimates of others. Their theory is to have no principles and to give no opinions, never to do anything so marked as to be inconsistent with doing the direct reverse, and never to say anything not capable of contradictory explanation. Accordingly, they worship cunning, which is only the counterfeit of wisdom, and deem themselves sagacious only because they are selfish. They believe that all generous sentiments of love of country for which they feel no sympathy in their breasts are hollow pretenses in others, that public life is a game in which success depends upon dexterity, and that all government is a mere struggle for place. Such persons may rise to great official stations, for high offices are like the tops of pyramids, which reptiles can reach as well as eagles, end quote. Let me close with a quote that I find epitomizes Biddle's resolve and stamina, and I admit gave me hope while I was writing this rather difficult period in our nation's history, and I'm going to put it up so that you can all read it along with me, you don't have to read it aloud. It's from the same speech of 1835. Never desert the country, never despond over its fortunes, confront its betrayers, they will denounce you, disregard their outcries. It cannot be that our free nation can long endure the vulgar dominion of ignorance and profligacy. You will live to see the laws re-established. And now I would love to have your questions, comments. Thank you so much Cordelia, that was that was really wonderful and excellent research. Well it's all really due to the library company. It sounds like that, and thank you for your kind words about Connie and her reference services, she's wonderful and I'll be sure to pass that along to her tomorrow. So it looks like we already have some some questions, so I will read those out to you from the chat. We have a comment that says thank you for a wonderful talk. From the Q&A, we have a question from Michael Taylor, and he asks what happened to Biddle after the second bank of the United States charter ended? Oh, he really crept back to Andalusia, he was absolutely broken in spirit. The battle went on for a while, he felt that he needed to pay back monies that he believed that were owing to other people who are creditors. So he really bankrupted himself, and fortunately his wife was able, his wife's fortune was able to rescue him and they were able to keep Andalusia. But he was a broken man, and his health failed, and I discovered at Andalusia a book, I guess I would call it a scrapbook, that he was putting together to look back at his life, and he took speeches that he'd written and so forth, and he was gluing them, he looked at the pages, I could tell that his health was failing because the glue pot clearly was smudging, and he was a very methodical person, although his handwriting wasn't very good. But the pages were crooked, the additions to the pages were crooked on the page, and then I reached one day where there was nothing added, and I realized that he had died, and it was awful to discover. I really felt that I was actually in the library at Andalusia when I looked at this, and I felt that he was standing over my shoulder, and he hadn't come down to work that day, and I wept. I had to get up and walk away from the archival material lest I weep upon it, but he was absolutely broken in spirit. He was not a politician, he couldn't cope with this terrible battle, and he thought he would win. We have another question from Warren Williams. He asks, did either Biddle or Jackson comment on the original founding of the First Bank by Hamilton to defend or attack the legitimacy of a national bank in general? Well, that's a very interesting question, because one of Jackson's confidants, not a member of his cabinet, was Alexander Hamilton's son, one of Alexander Hamilton's son, who hated the Central Bank. I'm not going to get into the full psychological drama of that, but he worked very hard behind the scenes to kill the bank that his father had created, and his memoirs make for quite remarkable reading of how he manipulated Jackson. I don't think Jackson really, it was, I'm not sure whether Jackson, the bank wasn't perhaps Jackson's central issue, but it was Van Buren's central issue. It was people who were in Jackson's cabinet, and they had the president's year, and he mistrusted banking altogether. He had himself been bankrupted at one point, and he mistrusted banking, and he mistrusted the bankers because he felt that they were the money they leaked. I don't see any other questions, so while we're waiting for, oh, one just popped up. This question is from Kenneth Romanowski, who asks, you mentioned Thomas Biddle and his duel. Were other family members as supportive? Yes, in fact, all of the family members were very supportive of Nicholas Biddle. Well, felt that they were being personally attacked as well because they had been, yes, they had been among the nation's elite. They came to this country in 1681 as Quakers, settling in New Jersey first and then eventually coming to Philadelphia, but they felt that they had given their blood for the country and helped formed it, and so the fact that Jackson would attack one of their own, they couldn't understand. Remember, this was a very weird time in American politics. This was the beginning of states' rights and the battles over states' rights. This was the beginning of the self-made man, and so this sense of the cultured people who had traditionally ruled the country, if you want to lab the countries a better word, they felt under attack, and the battle or the duel between Edward Biddle and Pettus was a given, I think. They shot each other at close range. Edward Biddle had very poor eyesight and he needed to get close, and it was just awful. Lots of emotional discoveries in the archives. Indeed. I spent a lot of time crying. I have a question for you. Yes. Pardon me if you address this at the beginning of your talk, and I missed it, but are you related to Nicholas Biddle? No, I didn't mention that, but yes, I am. I am a great, great, great, I don't know how many greats, granddaughter. I'm a direct descendant. Nicholas Biddle's grandson married my great-grandmother. Yes, that's correct. His name was Edward Biddle, and he was the man who was really responsible for making certain that all of this correspondence went to the Library of Congress, because the bank records, horribly, were destroyed. They were sent to a paper mill in Trenton and pulverized. Oh, ouch. I know. Oh, awful. I don't know whether there are other records that are extant, but nobody seemed to feel that it was necessary to keep them. Oh, oh, terrible. Yeah. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about your research process and how the idea for this book came about, and if there are any especially exciting discoveries that you made at the Library of Congress. The idea for the book, I attended some dinner for the Federal Reserve Bank, and a man I was sitting next to said, oh, you're a descendant of Nicholas Biddle, and, you know, there's no really new book on him. And I thought, oh, that would be very interesting, because there was a biography of him written by Thomas Govan in the 1950s, but Govan didn't have any access to this information that I discovered, which are these letters, this correspondence between Biddle and Monroe. And so he only saw what was at the Library of Congress. I think what I loved best about my research at the Library Company was really to delve into not just the historicity, but to understand personal thought, not just political thought, but what was intriguing to the people at that era. And there again, it's how I look at any kind of historical research for my novels as well. What were the advertisements like? I mean, in this case, in Biddle's case, they were advertisements for runaway slaves. I spent hours trying to figure that out, and so what was it like to be an enslaved person in Philadelphia at the time? But some of it did, and so that kind of information guided me further into an understanding, a deep understanding of the era, until I almost felt that I was living in it. Absolutely. Great answer. Thank you. I see we have another question. This question is from Ned Drinker. Does Nicholas Biddle's library exist intact at Andalusia, and is any of it accessible to the public, whether actually or virtually? It still exists, absolutely. If you take a tour of Andalusia, which you can do, I'm not sure what the new COVID, very, very new COVID rules may be, but you can tour Andalusia. You have to make a reservation in advance. It's kept as a museum, but because it has all the original artifacts, they only allow so many people in at a time. The library is fabulous. It is fabulous. All of the original editions of the portfolio are there. All of Biddle's books are there. The books that he, you know, written in ancient Greek and Latin, French, Italian, you could spend your life in that room. And as you're in his library, you can then look out at the Delaware River, because you are at Andalusia, and you are at his desk. You are where he would have been sitting while he was working and pondering. So I do suggest that you visit it. I don't think you could, I was allowed to pull books off the shelves. I don't think they would allow just a visitor to do that, but they were very kind to me and permitted me to indulge myself in the library. Who manages the house now? No, it's the Andalusia Trust does, and they have a wonderful archivist and the head of the trust, who is, her name is Connie Houchins, and she is a wealth of knowledge. And she was the one who helped me decipher Nicholas Biddle's handwriting, which I, you know, tried to turn it upside down and sideways, and she looked over. I think that's an O, and that might be an A. And what I found really intriguing was that when he was happy, his sentences sloped upward, and when he was depressed, his sentences sloped downward. So I got a clear sense of his mood. It really is incredible that the library is intact in his home. Has the house never been out of the family? No, it never has been out of the family, and it's a wonderment. It really is. As family members, we have a, you know, reunion, and we take picnics and walk the lawns once a year. It's really quite extraordinary that it's still there. I mean, I think of it as kind of a northern Monticello, because it is so perfectly intact. There never were any enslaved people there, but we're at Monticello, obviously, but the gardens are intact. All of the plantings that Biddle created, we felt that he was a gentleman farmer. Great. I think I don't see any further questions, so I guess we'll go ahead and wrap up, unless there are any final comments you wanted to share. I don't think so. It's just hard not being in person, because it would be so wonderful to be able to just see all of your faces and understand what you were thinking, but if you have questions, you can send them to me via my website, and you can find out more about the book there, and it makes for dense reading, I will admit, and I'm very happy about that, but I felt that I really needed to give the era its due, and also him, and so it's not just about the bank. It really is his whole story leading into his battle with Jackson, but also his backstory and his relationship with his wife, his relationship with his mother-in-law, who was a force of nature in all sorts of good ways, and his relationship with his children, and he was very jocular with his children, and I include those letters to them. They actually made me laugh aloud, so I got to escape from Andrew Jackson on vacation. I certainly want to read the book, and I'm sure you sold more than a few copies tonight. We do have one final question here, in addition to a couple thank yous that popped up, and the question is, was he part of the Bailey Banks and Biddle? Well, that's interesting, because I'm not sure how, I mean, obviously, I have to step back for a second. There are a lot of us Biddles. We are, I think, we are just mostly males. I'm the first female in three generations, so if you think about that, I have three male cousins and a brother, and so if you think about how many Biddles with the name Biddle there are, I'm not sure who Bailey was or Banks, but the Biddles went into all sorts of other trades as well. Nicholas Biddle was very well educated. It was his wife, Jane, who really had the family fortune, so like me, we've all worked for a living, so I'm not sure. I'm just not sure what that connection is, because that's really later than his era, but I would imagine that that must be a relative. I don't know. Thank you. A few more thank yous have popped up in the chat, so we have a really good audience tonight, so I guess we'll end by again thanking Cordelia for their wonderful presentation. It was really, really fantastic, and then thank the audience for coming, and I would love to see everyone here next week at the same time when our presentation will be by Dr. Emily Casey, and she'll be discussing her research on the painting that hangs in the library company's main reading room, Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, Abolition and Empire in the Post-Revolution Atlantic World, so I hope to see you all, or have you all be there, because we don't see you, so thank you all so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you all for listening, and thank you very much, Emily.