Why read The Founders and Finance?

Book cover of The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other Immigrants Forged a New Economy

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In 1776 the United States government started out on a shoestring and quickly went bankrupt fighting its War of Independence against Britain. At the war's end, the national government owed tremendous sums to foreign creditors and its own citizens. But lacking the power to tax, it had no means to…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Founders and Finance as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Michael Barone

Author

It is an interesting fact that Hamilton and Gallatin, who served as Treasury Secretary during most of the republic’s first quarter-century, were immigrants from commercially more active locales, Hamilton from the sugar island of St. Croix, Gallatin from the stony Calvinist banking center of Geneva, Switzerland.

As congressman from the Pennsylvania frontier, Gallatin opposed Hamilton’s national debt and Bank of the United States, that gave the infant republic circulating money and workable finance. But as Jefferson and Madison’s secretary of the Treasury Gallatin maintained the bulk of Hamilton’s system and managed—with help from fellow immigrants John Jacob Astor and Stephen…

From Michael's list on the struggles of the early America republic.