The Panic of 1907 convinced many Americans of the need to establish a central banking system, which the country had lacked since the Bank War of the 1830s. After Democrats won unified control of Congress and the presidency in the 1912 elections, President Wilson, Congressman Carter Glass, and Senator Robert Latham Owen crafted a central banking bill that occupied a middle ground between the Aldrich Plan, which called for private control of the central banking system, and progressives like William Jennings Bryan, who favored government control over the central banking system. Wilson made the bill a top priority of his New Freedom domestic agenda, and he helped ensure that it passed both houses of Congress without major amendments.