First Bank of the United States

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The First Bank of the United States was a bank chartered by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791. The charter was for 20 years. The Bank was created to handle the financial needs and requirements of the central government of the newly formed United States, which had previously been thirteen individual colonies with their own banks, currencies, and financial institutions and policies. Officially proposed by Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, to the first session of the First Congress in 1790, the concept for the Bank had both its support and origin in and among Northern merchants and more than a few New England state governments. It was, however, eyed with great suspicion by the representatives of the Southern States, whose chief industry, agriculture, did not require centrally concentrated banks, and whose feelings of states' rights and suspicion of Northern motives ran strong. The bank's charter expired in 1811 under President James Madison. The bill to recharter failed in the House of Representatives by one vote, 65 to 64, on January 24, 1811. It failed in the Senate when Vice President George Clinton broke a tie vote that February 20.