Hamilton and the Economy
The young America needed a smart and eager Secretary of the Treasury, and that's what it found in Alexander Hamilton under the George Washington administration. Hamilton knew that the country's economy was in danger of going belly-up if there was not a drastic change and clear establishment of federal control of the direction of the budding economy. Alexander Hamilton's economic plan obligated America to pay off its national debt, establish a national bank, and establish tariff rates to make the most of American manufacturing. At the time that Hamilton became the Secretary of the Treasury, the nation was over fifty million dollars in debt, largely due to the costs of war and the foreign debts to accompany them. Hamilton's anticipation of global commerce in the decades and centuries to come fostered the creation of the Report on Public
Hamilton did many things for the nation via his witty economic proposals. Long-term investments like this were important to Hamilton, and he would make a few more demands of Congress to help cradle the economy in the future. Congress did not support Hamilton's idea with extreme enthusiasm, but within the next year they passed modest tariff rates that fundamentally did exactly what he wanted them to do. Many were against the idea of a national bank, expressed by the argument from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison that America did not have the power to do such a thing nor was the establishment of a bank prioritized or even mentioned in the Constitution. The Secretary wanted more responsibility for the country's money. This was a rather demanding goal for the economy, but one that would, if successful, solidify the nation's credit. The tariffs were important to the federal government, which extracted the majority of its revenue from the taxes until the time of the Civil War. Hamilton also wanted all state debts to be paid assumed by the Federal government, which he believed was the proper source of responsibility for financing national defense. It was Hamilton's idea that the nation should pay off all war debts plus interest in full. If it was not for Alexander Hamilton, the certainty of the nation's credit and economic stability may still be in the terrible jeopardy that it was as America was growing up. His encouragement of the American economy's growth can be seen today by the still-existing national bank that controls inflation with the Federal Reserve System, and the taxes on imported goods. Namely, Hamilton wanted to control inflation, which Andrew Jackson had made a seriously problem by misuse of the previous national bank.
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