The First Time Of Trouble…

By: Shauntel Jones, Trey

Rodriguez Tranija Colley, Brendon Clark

Alexander Hamilton! • Alexander Hamilton (January 11, 1755 or 1757 – July 12, 1804) was the first

United States Secretary of the Treasury, a Founding Father, economist, and political philosopher. He led calls for the Philadelphia Convention, was one of America's first Constitutional lawyers, and cowrote the Federalist Papers, a primary source for Constitutional interpretation.

• Born on the British West Indian island of Nevis, Hamilton was educated in the Thirteen Colonies. During the American Revolutionary War, he joined the New York militia and was chosen as an artillery captain. Hamilton became the senior[1] aide-de-camp and confidant to General George Washington, and he led three battalions at the Siege of Yorktown, Virginia. Hamilton was elected to the Continental Congress, but he resigned to practice law and to found the Bank of New York. He served in the New York Legislature, and he was the only New Yorker who signed the U.S. Constitution. As Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, he influenced formative government policy widely. An admirer of British political systems, Hamilton emphasized strong central government and implied powers, under which the new U.S. Congress funded the national debt, assumed state debts, created the First Bank of the United States, and established an import tariff and a whiskey tax.

• By 1792, a coalition led by Hamilton and a coalition led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had arisen (the formative Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties), which differed strongly over Hamilton's domestic fiscal goals and his foreign policy of extensive trade and friendly relations with Britain. Exposed in an affair with Maria Reynolds, Hamilton resigned as the Secretary of the Treasury in 1795 and returned to Constitutional law and advocacy of strong federalism. In 1798, the Quasi-War with France led Hamilton to argue for, organize, and become the de facto commander of a national army.

• Hamilton's opposition to his fellow Federalist John Adams contributed to the success of Democratic-Republicans Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr in the uniquely deadlocked election of 1800. With his party's defeat, Hamilton's nationalist and industrialization ideas lost their former national prominence. In 1801, Hamilton founded the New York Post newspaper as the Federalist broadsheet New York Evening Post.[2] Hamilton's intense rivalry with Vice-President Burr eventually resulted in a duel, in which Hamilton was mortally wounded, dying the following day.

Who Founded America?• In only seven years, from 1788 to 1795, the US underwent a dramatic financial revolution; starting from

scratch and swiftly acquiring all the key components of a modern financial infrastructure. By the time the westward expansion and the industrial take-off were ready to swing into action, a strong financial system was there to back them . But what allowed the US to develop these instruments?

• While the Independence War was still going on the young Alexander Hamilton presented what would later become the backbone of the US financial system. Hamilton planned to use a foreign loan to set up the currency-issuing Bank of the United States (BUS) that would in turn finance the government . Based on the English Example, the institution would have public securities as part of its capital.

• Hamilton was adamant that future growth and good governance would allow the Republic to float easily its national debt and limit the recourse to foreign funds to the very early stages. A first attempt to acclimatize central banking in the US was initiated in 1781 by Robert Morris (using French capital) but it was not successful .

• When Hamilton became secretary of the Treasure in 1789, he quickly endeavored to implement his plan. In 6 years he managed to import institutions that had taken decades to develop in England and the Netherlands (p.67). The US started with a significant wartime debt to service, further expended by Hamilton’s decision to incorporate to the federal debt, the ones contracted by the individual states.

• But the fiscal apparatus also needed to be created and the government could not levy the $3.6 million required yearly by its creditors before 1792. State debts had been assumed by the federal government to avoid that a single default stained the credit of the others as well as to prevent competition for revenue base. This decision led to the creation of active secondary markets for Treasury bonds.

America…• Why did different groups of people come to America? • The first people into the Americas were nomadic hunters. They didn't plan to come here,

they followed the migrations of the game animals. There was no point where somebody said "hey, welcome to the New World" Like most people, they were interested in getting enough to eat and leaving things a bit better for their children. We don't consider them "Native Americans" as they weren't born here and they predate the development of today's Native Americans (Indians). Rather we call them "PaleoIndians." They walked across dry land from Asia. The great ice age lowered the water of the Bering strait and created a new land, Bernicia. Bernicia is generally thought to have been a flat plain, dry and dusty. It did support plant and animal life. Once in the Americas, they found the passage south blocked. The ice sheets from the Rockies had merged with the ones from the Hudson Bay region. An important part about the Bering land bridge was that when it existed, the ice blocked the way to what would be the United States. When the ice melted, the land bridge disappeared, but the way south was open. Recent investigations have shown that there were small refuges along the western coastline. Sea faring peoples could have migrated south along the coast. However, finding their campsites now requires exploration in deep water. The people lived in small family groups. Too many would take the hunters ability to obtain game and would quickly empty the region of animals. Remember, once you know an area, finding food is much easier. You know where the springs are, when the animals feed and where to wait on the game trails. Nomads prefer to stay in certain regions rather then pushing off into the unknown. Clothes were made of skins, sewn together. Weapons were made of stone, bone and antler. If a kill was made, everyone ate well. When game was scarce, people starved. The date they arrived is in dispute and keeps being pushed back. The land bridge existed between 10,000 and 25,000 yeas ago. Supposedly the way south wasn't open much before 12,000 years ago. At the same time sites in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Chile have been dated to 16,500 years ago. Current thought is that people were in Alaska at least 18-22,000 years ago and found a way south.

The Future Of America • The United States of America (commonly referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or

America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories, or insular areas, in the Caribbean and Pacific.

• At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with about 307 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by land area and population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.[7] The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with an estimated 2008 gross domestic product (GDP) of US $14.3 trillion (23% of the world total based on nominal GDP and almost 21% at purchasing power parity).[4][8]

• The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their independence from Great Britain and their formation of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence.[9] The Philadelphia Convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a strong central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.

• In the 19th century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, the national economy was the world's largest.[10] The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a founding member of NATO. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for approximately 50% of global military spending and is a leading economic, political and cultural force in the world.[

How Did America Begin?• In only seven years, from 1788 to 1795, the US underwent a dramatic financial revolution;

starting from scratch and swiftly acquiring all the key components of a modern financial infrastructure. By the time the westward expansion and the industrial take-off were ready to swing into action, a strong financial system was there to back them (p.62). But what allowed the US to develop these instruments?

• While the Independence War was still going on the young Alexander Hamilton presented what would later become the backbone of the US financial system. Hamilton planned to use a foreign loan to set up the currency-issuing Bank of the United States (BUS) that would in turn finance the government (p.64). Based on the English Example, the institution would have public securities as part of its capital (p.65).

• Hamilton was adamant that future growth and good governance would allow the Republic to float easily its national debt and limit the recourse to foreign funds to the very early stages. A first attempt to acclimatize central banking in the US was initiated in 1781 by Robert Morris (using French capital) but it was not successful (p.66).

• When Hamilton became secretary of the Treasure in 1789, he quickly endeavoured to implement his plan. In 6 years he managed to import institutions that had taken decades to develop in England and the Netherlands (p.67). The US started with a significant wartime debt to service, further expended by Hamilton’s decision to incorporate to the federal debt, the ones contracted by the individual states (p.68).

• But the fiscal apparatus also needed to be created and the government could not levy the $3.6 million required yearly by its creditors before 1792 (p.69). State debts had been assumed by the federal government to avoid that a single default stained the credit of the others as well as to prevent competition for revenue base (p.70). This decision led to the creation of active secondary markets for Treasury bonds (p.71).

Founder Of America…

The Trade Policy…

• To say much about the stance of a country's trade policy requires, at a minimum, data on the average tariff level. Unfortunately, standard U.S. trade statistics only started calculating average tariff figures from 1821. To fill the gap in the historical data, I gathered information from early government documents to calculate the average tariff on total and dutiable imports for the period from 1790 to 1820.(2) These figures reveal that tariffs started out at relatively low levels, about 15 percent in the 1790s, but rose thereafter to generate additional revenue and help finance the War of 1812. Because re-exports were a significant component of U.S. foreign trade at this time, my study suggests that it is important to adjust for drawbacks (rebated tariff revenue on re-exported goods) to determine the true level of the tariff.

• One of the classic, early statements on U.S. trade policy is Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures in 1791. This report called for government support of manufacturing through subsidies and import tariffs, but it is commonly believed that the report was never implemented. Although Hamilton's proposals for bounties (subsidies) failed to receive support, my research has shown that Congress adopted virtually every tariff recommendation put forward in the report by early 1792.(3) These tariffs were not highly protectionist duties, because Hamilton feared discouraging imports, the critical tax base on which he planned to fund the public debt. Indeed, because his policy toward manufacturing was one of limited encouragement and not protection, Hamilton was not as much of a protectionist as he is often made out to be. Hamilton's moderate tariff policies found support among merchants and traders, the backbone of the Federalist Party. But disappointed domestic manufacturers shift ed their political allegiance to the Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both of whom were willing to consider much more draconian trade policies aimed at Britain.

• Indeed, as president, Jefferson was responsible for one of the most unusual policy experiments in the history of U.S. trade policy. At his request, Congress imposed a nearly complete embargo on international commerce from December 1807 to March 1809. The Jeffersonian trade embargo provides a rare opportunity (or natural experiment) to observe the effects of a nearly complete (albeit short-lived) elimination of international trade. Economists usually describe the gains from international trade by comparing welfare at a free-trade equilibrium with welfare at an autarky equilibrium. In practice, such a comparison is almost never feasible because the autarky equilibrium is almost never observed, except in unique cases such as this one. By mid-1808, the United States was about as close to being fully shut off from international commerce as it has ever been during peacetime.

• Monthly price data allow us to observe the dramatic impact of the embargo: the export-weighted average of the prices of raw cotton, flour, tobacco, and rice, which accounted for about two-thirds of U.S. exports in the United States, fell by one third within a month or two of the embargo. The price of imported commodities rose by about a third as the number of ships entering U.S. ports fell to a trickle and imports became increasingly scarce. According to my calculations, the static welfare cost of the embargo was about 5 percent of GDP.(4) Thus, the embargo inflicted substantial costs on the economy during the short period that it was in effect.

• The embargo, along with the dramatic reduction in trade as a result of the War of 1812, is commonly believed to have spurred early U.S. industrialization by promoting the growth of nascent domestic manufacturers. Joseph Davis and I used his newly available series on U.S. industrial production to investigate how this protection from foreign competition affected domestic manufacturing.(5) On balance, the trade disruptions did not decisively accelerate U.S. industrialization as trend growth in industrial production was little changed over this period. However, the disruptions may have had a permanent effect in reallocating resources between domestic infant industries (such as cotton textiles) and trade-dependent industries (such as shipbuilding).

The Colonies Of The Trade…• To say much about the stance of a country's trade policy requires, at a minimum, data on the average tariff level. Unfortunately,

standard U.S. trade statistics only started calculating average tariff figures from 1821. To fill the gap in the historical data, I gathered information from early government documents to calculate the average tariff on total and dutiable imports for the period from 1790 to 1820 These figures reveal that tariffs started out at relatively low levels, about 15 percent in the 1790s, but rose thereafter to generate additional revenue and help finance the War of 1812. Because re-exports were a significant component of U.S. foreign trade at this time, my study suggests that it is important to adjust for drawbacks (rebated tariff revenue on re-exported goods) to determine the true level of the tariff.

• One of the classic, early statements on U.S. trade policy is Alexander Hamilton's Report on Manufactures in 1791. This report called for government support of manufacturing through subsidies and import tariffs, but it is commonly believed that the report was never implemented. Although Hamilton's proposals for bounties (subsidies) failed to receive support, my research has shown that Congress adopted virtually every tariff recommendation put forward in the report by early 1792. These tariffs were not highly protectionist duties, because Hamilton feared discouraging imports, the critical tax base on which he planned to fund the public debt. Indeed, because his policy toward manufacturing was one of limited encouragement and not protection, Hamilton was not as much of a protectionist as he is often made out to be. Hamilton's moderate tariff policies found support among merchants and traders, the backbone of the Federalist Party. But disappointed domestic manufacturers shift ed their political allegiance to the Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both of whom were willing to consider much more draconian trade policies aimed at Britain.

• Indeed, as president, Jefferson was responsible for one of the most unusual policy experiments in the history of U.S. trade policy. At his request, Congress imposed a nearly complete embargo on international commerce from December 1807 to March 1809. The Jeffersonian trade embargo provides a rare opportunity (or natural experiment) to observe the effects of a nearly complete (albeit short-lived) elimination of international trade. Economists usually describe the gains from international trade by comparing welfare at a free-trade equilibrium with welfare at an autarky equilibrium. In practice, such a comparison is almost never feasible because the autarky equilibrium is almost never observed, except in unique cases such as this one. By mid-1808, the United States was about as close to being fully shut off from international commerce as it has ever been during peacetime.

• Monthly price data allow us to observe the dramatic impact of the embargo: the export-weighted average of the prices of raw cotton, flour, tobacco, and rice, which accounted for about two-thirds of U.S. exports in the United States, fell by one third within a month or two of the embargo. The price of imported commodities rose by about a third as the number of ships entering U.S. ports fell to a trickle and imports became increasingly scarce. According to my calculations, the static welfare cost of the embargo was about 5 percent of GDP. Thus, the embargo inflicted substantial costs on the economy during the short period that it was in effect.

• The embargo, along with the dramatic reduction in trade as a result of the War of 1812, is commonly believed to have spurred early U.S. industrialization by promoting the growth of nascent domestic manufacturers. Joseph Davis and I used his newly available series on U.S. industrial production to investigate how this protection from foreign competition affected domestic manufacturing. On balance, the trade disruptions did not decisively accelerate U.S. industrialization as trend growth in industrial production was little changed over this period. However, the disruptions may have had a permanent effect in reallocating resources between domestic infant industries (such as cotton textiles) and trade-dependent industries (such as shipbuilding).

Today’s America…

• The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are believed to have migrated from Asia. They began arriving at least 12,000 and as many as 40,000 years ago.[27] Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. After Europeans began settling the Americas, many millions of indigenous Americans died from epidemics of imported diseases such as smallpox.[28]

• • • The Mayflower transported Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, as depicted in William

Halsall's The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor, 1882• In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus , under contract to the Spanish

crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous people. On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Spanish settlements in the region were followed by ones in the present-day southwestern United States that drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; France eventually claimed much of the North American interior, down to the Gulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, about 50,000 convicts were shipped to Britain's American colonies.[29] Beginning in 1614, the Dutch settled along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island.

What Ship Sailed Off With Alexander Hamilton?

What Happen To The Ship?• On January 29, 1942, without warning, one torpedo of a four-

torpedo spread from U-132 slammed into Alexander Hamilton's starboard side, directly abeam of the stack. The blast destroyed three of the ship's seven boats. The interior of the ship was plunged into darkness-no heat, steam nor electricity remained. ... Alexander Hamilton settled low in the water. Comdr. Arthur G. Hall, USCG, ordered abandon ship with the ship powerless and in imminent danger of being torpedoed a second time. ... Eight officers and 75 enlisted men went over the side into the four remaining boats, USS Gwinn came alongside later to take off the last of the cutter's crew. Throughout the night, Restive, Frisky, and the Coast Guard tug Redwing attempted to salvage the ship, but without success. ... Twenty-six men were killed instantly, six died later of the injuries sustained in the torpedoing. Ten more injured men required hospitalization.