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Finally, Hamilton proposed to aid the nation’s infant industries. Through high tariffs designed to protect American industry from foreign competition, government subsidies, and government-financed transportation improvements, he hoped to break Britain’s manufacturing hold on America.
Alexander Hamilton was the designer of the American financial system. He established a national bank, promoted manufacturing, and paid off US debts from the American Revolution.
The economic history of the United States began with British settlements along the Eastern seaboard in the 17th and 18th centuries. These 13 colonies gained independence from the British Empire in the late 18th century and quickly grew from colonial economies towards an economy focused on agriculture.
Thomas Jefferson opposed Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan because he thought it was too expensive, that it gave too much power to the federal government, and because he favored a vision of America as a nation of small farmers, not industrial workers.
During 1790 and 1791, Hamilton embarked on an ambitious plan of economic nationalism. He intended the plan to solve the economic problems that had plagued the United States since the American Revolution and to provide the means to defend the new republic.
Hamilton, however, argued that the bank was not only constitutional but also important for the country’s prosperity. The Bank of the United States would fulfill several needs. It would act as a convenient depository for federal funds. It would print paper banknotes backed by specie (gold or silver).
No one in Congress or the administration challenged Hamilton’s arguments that the United States had a legal and moral obligation to pay off these debts, and that it had to do so in order to establish the credit of the United States, and its citizens, in European financial markets. The second element was more controversial.
In December 1790, Hamilton also proposed the fifth element in his financial plan: the federal chartering and funding of a powerful institution—a national bank, which would be called the Bank of the United States and modeled to some extent on the Bank of England.