Sublime

By August 11 bank scrip had zoomed from the $25 offering price to $300, with government bonds also touching delirious new heights. When bankers drained credit from the market, speculators dumped their scrip, the bubble burst, and prices plummeted. Hamilton steadied the market by buying government securities, but Jefferson was convinced that scrip h

Thanks to the astute, if mercurial, diplomacy of John Adams, such an invasion never happened. When the president sent two envoys to France that October, without consulting his cabinet first, Washington was beset by serious doubts. “I was surprised at the measure, how much more so at the manner of it?” he told Hamilton. “This business seems to have

The Philadelphia mutiny had major repercussions in American history, for it gave rise to the notion that the national capital should be housed in a special federal district where it would never stand at the mercy of state governments.

He, more than any other individual, knew which of the tens of thousands of administrative positions in that government were crucial to his purposes, and after a quarter of a century of power in the state, he had “Moses Men” in most of these posts.

Although Washington seemed unaware of it, Hamilton had been training for the Treasury post throughout the war, boning up on subjects as diverse as foreign exchange and central banks. Like Washington, Knox, and other Continental Army officers, Hamilton had perceived an urgent need for an active central government, and he grasped the reins of power w

Far from being Hamilton’s willing dupe, Washington understood his programs thoroughly. Though he knew America would remain agricultural, he wanted to augment its manufacturing capacity. Starting with his inauguration, he had delighted in wearing clothes of American manufacture to stimulate the textile industry. At Mount Vernon he refused to drink p

The peace treaty had granted the United States the territory between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi. This produced friction with Spain, which shut the lower Mississippi River to American commerce, threatening the livelihood of restive western farmers. There was a more distant threat to peace: in 1785 Barbary pirates from northern Afr

It was Hamilton, they say, who correctly anticipated a future that would

The fight over financial policy was fast becoming a fight over the proper direction of the country; Washington was caught in the blazing crossfire between his brilliant treasury secretary and his equally brilliant secretary of state.