Following the American Revolutionary War, Alexander Hamilton became the first Treasury Secretary of the newly-formed United States.
He also found time to establish the Bank of New York, the centralised Mint, the Bank of North America, and the First Bank of the United States. His 'moment' however was to assume the Revolutionary War debts of the various states at the Federal level, making the new central authority liable for repayment. This helped create a strong central authority, while giving individual states a positive reason for federalising. They might have ceded sovereignty, but they also ceded their debt obligations. Hamilton's statecraft therefore placed the new and relatively precarious US on the path to g...
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