Alexander Hamilton was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first secretary of the treasury from 1789 to 1795 during George Washington's presidency.
The President, Directors and Company of the Bank of the United States, commonly known as the First Bank of the United States, was a national bank, chartered for a term of twenty years, by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791. It followed the Bank of North America, the nation's first de facto national bank. However, neither served the functions of a modern central bank: They did not set monetary policy, regulate private banks, hold their excess reserves, or act as a lender of last resort. They were national insofar as they were allowed to have branches in multiple states and lend money to the US government. Other banks in the US were each chartered by, and only allowed to have branches in, a single state.
The Whiskey Rebellion was a violent tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. Beer was difficult to transport and spoiled more easily than rum and whiskey. Rum distillation in the United States had been disrupted during the American Revolutionary War, and whiskey distribution and consumption increased afterwards. The "whiskey tax" became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue for the war debt incurred during the Revolutionary War. The tax applied to all distilled spirits, but consumption of American whiskey was rapidly expanding in the late 18th century, so the excise became widely known as a "whiskey tax". Farmers of the western frontier were accustomed to distilling their surplus rye, barley, wheat, corn, or fermented grain mixtures to make whiskey. These farmers resisted the tax. In these regions, whiskey often served as a medium of exchange. Many of the resisters were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution, in particular against taxation without local representation, while the federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers.
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that defined the scope of the U.S. Congress's legislative power and how it relates to the powers of American state legislatures. The dispute in McCulloch involved the legality of the national bank and a tax that the state of Maryland imposed on it. In its ruling, the Supreme Court established firstly that the "Necessary and Proper" Clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the U.S. federal government certain implied powers necessary and proper for the exercise of the powers enumerated explicitly in the Constitution, and secondly that the American federal government is supreme over the states, and so states' ability to interfere with the federal government is restricted. Since the legislature has the authority to tax and spend, the court held that it therefore has authority to establish a national bank, as being "necessary and proper" to that end.
The American School, also known as the National System, represents three different yet related constructs in politics, policy and philosophy. The policy existed from the 1790s to the 1970s, waxing and waning in actual degrees and details of implementation. Historian Michael Lind describes it as a coherent applied economic philosophy with logical and conceptual relationships with other economic ideas.
The Tariff of 1792 was the third of Alexander Hamilton's protective tariffs in the United States. Hamilton had persuaded the United States Congress to raise duties slightly in 1790, and he persuaded them to raise rates again in 1792, although still not to his satisfaction. Protectionism was one of the fulfillments of Hamilton's Report on Manufactures.
The Anti-Administration party was an informal political faction in the United States led by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson that opposed policies of then Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in the first term of US President George Washington. It was not an organized political party but an unorganized faction. Most members had been Anti-Federalists in 1788, who had opposed ratification of the US Constitution. However, the situation was fluid, with members joining and leaving.
The Compromise of 1790 was a compromise among Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, where Hamilton won the decision for the national government to take over and pay the state debts, and Jefferson and Madison obtained the national capital, called the District of Columbia, for the South. This agreement resolved the deadlock in Congress. Southerners had been blocking the assumption of state debts by the Department of the Treasury, thereby destroying the Hamiltonian program for building a fiscally strong federal government. Northerners rejected the proposal, much desired by Southerners, to locate the permanent national capital on the Virginia–Maryland border.
The First Report on the Public Credit was one of four major reports on fiscal and economic policy submitted by Founding Father and first US Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton on the request of Congress. The report analyzed the financial standing of the United States and made recommendations to reorganize the national debt and to establish the public credit. Commissioned by the US House of Representatives on September 21, 1789, the report was presented on January 9, 1790, at the second session of the 1st US Congress.
The presidency of George Washington began on April 30, 1789, when Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1797. Washington took office after the 1788–1789 presidential election, the nation's first quadrennial presidential election, in which he was elected unanimously by the Electoral College. Washington was re-elected unanimously in the 1792 presidential election and chose to retire after two terms. He was succeeded by his vice president, John Adams of the Federalist Party.
In United States history, the Second Report on the Public Credit, also referred to as The Report on a National Bank, was the second of four influential reports on fiscal and economic policy delivered to Congress by the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Submitted on December 14, 1790, the report called for the establishment of a central bank with the primary purpose to expand the flow of legal tender, monetizing the national debt by issuing of federal bank notes.
The Federalist Era in American history ran from 1788 to 1800, a time when the Federalist Party and its predecessors were dominant in American politics. During this period, Federalists generally controlled Congress and enjoyed the support of President George Washington and President John Adams. The era saw the creation of a new, stronger federal government under the United States Constitution, a deepening of support for nationalism, and diminished fears of tyranny by a central government. The era began with the ratification of the United States Constitution and ended with the Democratic-Republican Party's victory in the 1800 elections.
The Panic of 1792 was a financial credit crisis that occurred during the months of March and April 1792, precipitated by the expansion of credit by the newly formed Bank of the United States as well as by rampant speculation on the part of William Duer, Alexander Macomb, and other prominent bankers. Duer, Macomb, and their colleagues attempted to drive up prices of United States (U.S) debt securities and bank stocks, but when they defaulted on loans, prices fell, causing a bank run. Simultaneous tightening of credit by the Bank of the United States served to heighten the initial panic. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton was able to deftly manage the crisis by providing banks across the Northeast United States with hundreds of thousands of dollars to make open-market purchases of securities, which allowed the market to stabilize by May 1792.
A general welfare clause is a section that appears in many constitutions and in some charters and statutes that allows that the governing body empowered by the document to enact laws to promote the general welfare of the people, which is sometimes worded as the public welfare. In some countries, it has been used as a basis for legislation promoting the health, safety, morals, and well-being of the people governed by it.
The Funding Act of 1790, the full title of which is An Act making provision for the [payment of the] Debt of the United States, was passed on August 4, 1790, by the United States Congress as part of the Compromise of 1790, to address the issue of funding of the domestic debt incurred by the state governments, first as Thirteen Colonies, then as states in rebellion, in independence, in Confederation, and finally as members of a single federal Union. By the Act, the newly-inaugurated federal government under the U.S. Constitution assumed and thereby retired the debts of each of the individual colonies in rebellion and the bonded debts of the States in Confederation, which each state had individually and independently issued on its own "full faith and credit" when each of them was, in effect, an independent nation.
The Bank Bill of 1791 is a common term for two bills passed by the First Congress of the United States of America on February 25 and March 2 of 1791.
The state of union is an address, in the United States, given by the president to a joint session of Congress, the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate. The United States constitution requires the president "from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union." Today the state of the union address is given as a speech, though this is not a requirement of the constitution. George Washington chose to address the congress in a speech annually; on October 25, 1791 he gave his third speech.
In United States history, the Report on a Plan for the Further Support of Public Credit is the "valedictory" report issued to the US Congress on January 16, 1795 by the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. In addition to defending the fiscal programs that he had imposed thus far and extolling a system of finance that was "prosperous beyond all expectations", the report enumerated existing sources of revenue, outlined the plan for the "Redemption of the public debt" and its accruing interest to stabilize the current system of funding, and proposed amendments to the System of Public Credit that were designed to "prevent that progressive accumulation of Debt which must ultimately endanger all Government."
Tariff of 1791 or Excise Whiskey Tax of 1791 was a United States statute establishing a taxation policy to further reduce Colonial America public debt as assumed by the residuals of American Revolution. The Act of Congress imposed duties or tariffs on domestic and imported distilled spirits generating government revenue while fortifying the Federalist Era.
Copper Coinage Act of 1792 is a United States statute authorizing copper coinage to be engraved and issued by the United States Mint. The Act of Congress confirmed the procurement of copper not to exceed a weight of 150 short tons (300,000 lb). The United States Mint procured a shipment of copper at a weight of 15 short tons (30,000 lb) as endorsed by the first director of the mint David Rittenhouse.
