The instability of state banks leads to the chartering of the Second Bank of the United States in 1816.

Political support for the revival of a national banking system is rooted in the early nineteenth century-transformation of the country from simple Jeffersonian agrarianism towards one interdependent with industrialization and finance.

In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the federal government suffers from the disarray of an unregulated currency and a lack of fiscal order; business interests seek security for their government bonds.

A national alliance has arisen to legislate a central bank to address these needs.

The political climate—dubbed the Era of Good Feelings—favors the development of national programs and institutions, including a protective tariff, internal improvements and the revival of a Bank of the United States.

Southern and western support for the Bank, led by Republican nationalists John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and Henry Clay of Kentucky, is decisive in the successful chartering effort.

The charter is signed into law on April 10, 1816 by President James Madison, who had presided over the expiration of the First Bank of the United States's charter in 1811.

However, the war had convinced him of the need for a central bank, which he hopes will aid the government in borrowing money and also help curb inflation. 

Designed along the same lines as the first bank, the new charter empowers the US president to name five of the bank’s twenty-five directors.

William Jones becomes the bank’s first president.

Opposition to the Bank's revival emanates from two interests.

Old Republicans, represented by John Taylor of Caroline and John Randolph of Roanoke, characterize the Second Bank of the United States as both constitutionally illegitimate and a direct threat to Jeffersonian agrarianism, state sovereignty and the institution of slavery, expressed by Taylor's statement that "...if Congress could incorporate a bank, it might emancipate a slave".

Hostile to the regulatory effects of the central bank, private banks—proliferating with or without state charters—had scuttled rechartering of the first BUS in 1811.

These interests will play significant roles in undermining the institution during the administration of U.S. President Andrew Jackson, from 1829 to 1837.

The BUS is launched in the midst of a major global market readjustment as Europe recovers from the Napoleonic Wars.

The central bank is charged with restraining uninhibited private bank note issue—already in progress —that threaten to create a credit bubble and the risks of a financial collapse.

Government land sales in the West, fueled by European demand for agricultural products, insures that a speculative bubble will form.

Simultaneously, the national bank is engaged in promoting a democratized expansion of credit to accommodate laissez-faire impulses among eastern business entrepreneurs and credit hungry western and southern farmers.