The Hamilton Scheme

The Hamilton Scheme PDF

Author: William Hogeland

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2024-05-28

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0374720258

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"William Hogeland is the best guide I have found to understanding how we today are, for good and evil, children of Alexander.” —J. Bradford DeLong, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Slouching Towards Utopia How Alexander Hamilton embraced American oligarchy to jumpstart American prosperity. “Forgotten founder” no more, Alexander Hamilton has become a global celebrity. Millions know his name. Millions imagine knowing the man. But what did he really want for the country? What risks did he run in pursuing those vaulting ambitions? Who tried to stop him? How did they fight? It’s ironic that the Hamilton revival has obscured the man’s most dramatic battles and hardest-won achievements—as well as downplaying unsettling aspects of his legacy. Thrilling to the romance of becoming the one-man inventor of a modern nation, our first Treasury secretary fostered growth by engineering an ingenious dynamo—banking, public debt, manufacturing—for concentrating national wealth in the hands of a government-connected elite. Seeking American prosperity, he built American oligarchy. Hence his animus and mutual sense of betrayal with Jefferson and Madison—and his career-long fight to suppress a rowdy egalitarian movement little remembered today: the eighteenth-century white working class. Marshaling an idiosyncratic cast of insiders and outsiders, vividly dramatizing backroom intrigues and literal street fights—and sharply dissenting from recent biographies—William Hogeland’s The Hamilton Scheme brings to life Hamilton’s vision and the hard-knock struggles over democracy, wealth, and the meaning of America that drove the nation’s creation and hold enduring significance today.

Founding Finance

Founding Finance PDF

Author: William Hogeland

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0292745753

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The author of The Whiskey Rebellion “dig[s] beneath history’s surface and note[s] both the populist and anti-populist dimensions of the nation’s founding” (Library Journal). Recent movements such as the Tea Party and anti-tax “constitutional conservatism” lay claim to the finance and taxation ideas of America’s founders, but how much do we really know about the dramatic clashes over finance and economics that marked the founding of America? Dissenting from both right-wing claims and certain liberal preconceptions, Founding Finance brings to life the violent conflicts over economics, class, and finance that played directly, and in many ways ironically, into the hardball politics of forming the nation and ratifying the Constitution—conflicts that still continue to affect our politics, legislation, and debate today. Mixing lively narrative with fresh views of America’s founders, William Hogeland offers a new perspective on America’s economic infancy: foreclosure crises that make our current one look mild; investment bubbles in land and securities that drove rich men to high-risk borrowing and mad displays of ostentation before dropping them into debtors’ prisons; depressions longer and deeper than the great one of the twentieth century; crony mercantilism, war profiteering, and government corruption that undermine any nostalgia for a virtuous early republic; and predatory lending of scarce cash at exorbitant, unregulated rates, which forced people into bankruptcy, landlessness, and working in the factories and on the commercial farms of their creditors. This story exposes and corrects a perpetual historical denial—by movements across the political spectrum—of America’s all-important founding economic clashes, a denial that weakens and cheapens public discourse on American finance just when we need it most.

Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt

Alexander Hamilton on Finance, Credit, and Debt PDF

Author: Richard Sylla

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2018-03-06

Total Pages: 527

ISBN-13: 023154555X

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“A treasure trove for financial and public policy geeks . . . will also help lay readers go beyond the hit musical in understanding Hamilton’s lasting significance.” —Publishers Weekly While serving as the first treasury secretary from 1789 to 1795, Alexander Hamilton engineered a financial revolution. He established the treasury debt market, the dollar, and a central bank, while strategically prompting private entrepreneurs to establish securities markets and stock exchanges and encouraging state governments to charter a number of commercial banks and other business corporations. Yet despite a recent surge of interest in Hamilton, US financial modernization has not been fully recognized as one of his greatest achievements. This book traces the development of Hamilton’s financial thinking, policies, and actions through a selection of his writings. Financial historians and Hamilton experts Richard Sylla and David J. Cowen provide commentary that demonstrates the impact Hamilton had on the modern economic system, guiding readers through Hamilton’s distinguished career. It showcases Hamilton’s thoughts on the nation’s founding, the need for a strong central government, problems such as a depreciating paper currency and weak public credit, and the architecture of the financial system. His great state papers on public credit, the national bank, the mint, and manufactures instructed reform of the nation’s finances and jumpstarted economic growth. Hamilton practiced what he preached: he played a key role in the founding of three banks and a manufacturing corporation—and his deft political maneuvering and economic savvy saved the fledgling republic’s economy during the country’s first full-blown financial crisis in 1792. “A fascinating examination of Hamiltonian economics.” —The Washington Times

One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe

One Nation Under Debt: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the History of What We Owe PDF

Author: Robert E. Wright

Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional

Published: 2008-05-01

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0071543945

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Like its current citizens, the United States was born in debt-a debt so deep that it threatened to destroy the young nation. Thomas Jefferson considered the national debt a monstrous fraud on posterity, while Alexander Hamilton believed debt would help America prosper. Both, as it turns out, were right. One Nation Under Debt explores the untold history of America's first national debt, which arose from the immense sums needed to conduct the American Revolution. Noted economic historian Robert Wright, Ph.D. tells in riveting narrative how a subjugated but enlightened people cast off a great tyrant-“but their liberty, won with promises as well as with the blood of patriots, came at a high price.” He brings to life the key events that shaped the U.S. financial system and explains how the actions of our forefathers laid the groundwork for the debt we still carry today. As an economically tenuous nation by Revolution's end, America's people struggled to get on their feet. Wright outlines how the formation of a new government originally reduced the nation's debt-but, as debt was critical to this government's survival, it resurfaced, to be beaten back once more. Wright then reveals how political leaders began accumulating massive new debts to ensure their popularity, setting the financial stage for decades to come. Wright traces critical evolutionary developments-from Alexander Hamilton's creation of the nation's first modern capital market, to the use of national bonds to further financial goals, to the drafting of state constitutions that created non-predatory governments. He shows how, by the end of Andrew Jackson's administration, America's financial system was contributing to national growth while at the same time new national and state debts were amassing, sealing the fate for future generations.

The Whiskey Rebellion

The Whiskey Rebellion PDF

Author: William Hogeland

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-09-15

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1439193290

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A gripping and sensational tale of violence, alcohol, and taxes, The Whiskey Rebellion uncovers the radical eighteenth-century people’s movement, long ignored by historians, that contributed decisively to the establishment of federal authority. In 1791, on the frontier of western Pennsylvania, local gangs of insurgents with blackened faces began to attack federal officials, beating and torturing the tax collectors who attempted to collect the first federal tax ever laid on an American product—whiskey. To the hard-bitten people of the depressed and violent West, the whiskey tax paralyzed their rural economies, putting money in the coffers of already wealthy creditors and industrialists. To Alexander Hamilton, the tax was the key to industrial growth. To President Washington, it was the catalyst for the first-ever deployment of a federal army, a military action that would suppress an insurgency against the American government. With an unsparing look at both Hamilton and Washington, journalist and historian William Hogeland offers a provocative, in-depth analysis of this forgotten revolution and suppression. Focusing on the battle between government and the early-American evangelical movement that advocated western secession, The Whiskey Rebellion is an intense and insightful examination of the roots of federal power and the most fundamental conflicts that ignited—and continue to smolder—in the United States.

The Economic Policies of Alexander Hamilton

The Economic Policies of Alexander Hamilton PDF

Author: Alexander Hamilton

Publisher: e-artnow

Published: 2018-11-02

Total Pages: 597

ISBN-13: 8027244153

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This eBook has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. It presents Alexander Hamilton's views on American economy. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the main author of the economic policies of the George Washington administration. He took the lead in the funding of the states' debts by the Federal government, as well as the establishment of a national bank, a system of tariffs, and friendly trade relations with Britain. His vision included a strong central government led by a vigorous executive branch, a strong commercial economy, with a national bank and support for manufacturing, plus a strong military. Contents: Writings and Speeches on Taxation and Finance Papers on National Bank Papers on Coinage and the Mint Papers on Industry and Commerce Writings and Speeches on Commercial Relations Biography of Alexander Hamilton by Emory Speer

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers PDF

Author: Alexander Hamilton

Publisher: Read Books Ltd

Published: 2018-08-20

Total Pages: 455

ISBN-13: 1528785878

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Classic Books Library presents this brand new edition of “The Federalist Papers”, a collection of separate essays and articles compiled in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton. Following the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776, the governing doctrines and policies of the States lacked cohesion. “The Federalist”, as it was previously known, was constructed by American statesman Alexander Hamilton, and was intended to catalyse the ratification of the United States Constitution. Hamilton recruited fellow statesmen James Madison Jr., and John Jay to write papers for the compendium, and the three are known as some of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Alexander Hamilton (c. 1755–1804) was an American lawyer, journalist and highly influential government official. He also served as a Senior Officer in the Army between 1799-1800 and founded the Federalist Party, the system that governed the nation’s finances. His contributions to the Constitution and leadership made a significant and lasting impact on the early development of the nation of the United States.

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