“He thought up, some would argue, the whole notion of what modern America is in terms of the way government works, in terms of finance banking. He saw the importance of certain structures we take for granted, before they even existed.”

All Hamilton needed was a way to make his ideas happen. George Washington gave Hamilton that power. When Washington became president, he forgot their disagreement during the war. He asked his former aide to become the country’s first secretary of the treasury.

The job would be difficult.

“The United States at that time was a financial basket case.”

Business historian John Steele Gordon wrote a book about Hamilton.

“There was no real money supply. In the colonial days they had used a hodgepodge of coins from British, and Spanish, and Portuguese, and what have you. It was a very chaotic system.”

In other words, there was no such thing yet as American money. John Steele Gordon says America also had to borrow heavily to pay for the Revolutionary War. The new nation was deeply in debt. It had to find ways to bring in money and pay what it owed.

One way to get money was to borrow it. But no one wanted to lend money to the United States unless they were sure they would get it back. So, the Congress asked Treasury Secretary Hamilton to write a report about how to build up the government's credit.

Hamilton's report said the government must pay back the full amount of all its debts. This caused a dispute.