ABSTRACT

Once the war with England was over and Independence, fought for and won, had become an established fact, the new nation came face to face with the harsh realities of sovereignty; it began to experience economic difficulties. There is no doubt that the towering figure of that period was Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury in Washington’s first Cabinet. Son of a Scottish father and a mother of French Huguenot descent, this American had a clear understanding of the immediate problem confronting the young Republic, certainly a far clearer understanding than that of Jefferson. Indeed, he took brilliant advantage of Jefferson’s lack of experience in economics, and later Jefferson would bitterly regret having let himself be used as a tool for operations whose full and to him inherently harmful import he had not grasped at the time. The debate was long and vehement.