Currently offered only as part of the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

While Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures is now acknowledged as one of the greatest of American economic papers, Congress promptly tabled it upon delivery in December 1791. Having won the hard-fought battle for his Assumption Plan, he did not push for its adoption. But in March 1792, Congress requested ideas to raise additional revenues needed to defend the nation’s Western frontiers from British Forces and their Indian allies. Hamilton was able to answer the call for funding with the present act’s import tariffs, which boosted American manufactures.

Also see the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

The Constitution gave Congress the right to determine the process by which foreign-born residents could obtain citizenship, and a 1790 Act of the First Congress laid out the process. This 1795 revision required all persons who wished to become naturalized citizens to go to a court to declare their intention at least three years prior to formal application. They would have to take an oath of allegiance, be a person of good moral character, agree to support the Constitution, and renounce any former sovereign and hereditary titles.

“any alien, being a free white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States, or any of them, on the following conditions, and not otherwise....”

By limiting naturalization to “free white” persons, the early acts effectively prevented any people of color or indentured servants from gaining citizenship. Over the next century and a half, these restrictions were at first reinforced (for instance in the notorious Naturalization Act of 1798, part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which extended the required residency period to fourteen years), but then eventually eliminated by subsequent revisions.

Currently offered only as part of the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

As “Phocion,” Hamilton articulates an early incarnation of the Federalist creed, including compliance with the 1783 peace treaty with Britain, an end to attacks on Tories and Tory property, and the submission of the states to the central authority of the United States. This essay was only Hamilton’s third political tract, and the first of his mature writings on policy.

Also see the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

“Many Slaves …share in the dangers and glory of the efforts made by US, the freeborn members of the United States, to enjoy, undisturbed, the common rights of human nature; and THEY remain SLAVES!... The enlightened equity of a free people, cannot suffer them to be ungrateful.”

Also see the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

“There was also a prior Judgment against David Reynolds & his son James … but did not return the Execution nor sell till Wednesday the 2^d of November, when James Reynolds about 6 Months ago came forward to claim these lands in virtue of a deed from his father prior to Sands mortgage.”

In July 1783, James Reynolds married Maria Lewis. From mid-1791 to mid-1792, Alexander Hamilton and Maria Reynolds had an affair. In November 1792, James Reynolds was imprisoned for forgery in a scheme to purchase the pensions and pay claims of Revolutionary War soldiers. Ironically, in May 1793, Maria (represented by Aaron Burr) filed for divorce from James on the grounds of adultery; the court granted the divorce two years later. Here, after Hamilton’s affair was known to James Monroe and very few others, Hamilton was somehow involved in a legal case having to do with James Reynolds just months before news of the scandal exploded.

Currently offered as part of the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

Currently offered only as part of the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

On Saturday, July 18, 1795, a public gathering at New York’s City Hall nearly turned into a riot. News of a recently completed Treaty of Amity and Commerce with Great Britain, negotiated by John Jay and granting significant latitude to Britain, had arrived in the states. Tensions were high, and the meeting turned increasingly raucous. Hamilton attempted to defend the Treaty, but Republicans, carrying American and French flags, shouted down the former Treasury Secretary.

Also see the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

“The conduct of Count de Grasse so far as it hath come to my knowledge charms me; his drupping the British fleet sufficient to Convince teach them they might not & could to keep at due distance & not enter the Cheasapeake or again attempt to Interrupt the siege, & at the same time not suffering himself to be too far diverted from his first & main object…”

Currently offered only as part of the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

“I do myself the honor to transmit to your Excellency the duplicates of two Acts – one for establishing the Treasury department – and one for registering and clearing vessels, regulating the coasting trade, and for other purposes.”

Currently offered only as part of the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

“Mr Locke says the world has all sorts of men. All degrees of human wisdom are mixed with all degrees of human Folly. To me, and I believe, to you, this world would be a Region of Torment, if such a Recollection existed in our memories.”

Also see the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

Following the punishing battles at Paoli and Germantown, which left Philadelphia vulnerable to British control for the winter, the Continental Army under Washington spent two weeks recovering at Whitpain, Pennsylvania.

Alexander Hamilton was then Washington’s chief staff aide, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, a position he would hold for four years. He played a crucial role in handling much of the General’s correspondence with Congress, state governors, and other military officers.

Currently offered only as part of the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding.

“it is far less important, who of many men that may be named shall be the person, than that it shall not be Jefferson.”

Also see the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding

“It is manifestly the interest of the parties concerned to avail themselves of this act. They are now intirely at the discretion of the Government....”

New York adhered to the common-law prohibition against foreigners owning land. If a citizen purchased property in his own name but the money came from a foreigner, the purchaser was considered a trustee, and the State could seize the property. But Dutch investors, second only to France in their aid to America during the Revolution, invested heavily in American stocks, bonds, and western lands, working largely through their agent Théophile Cazenove.

Also see the Alexander Hamilton Collection: The Story of the Revolution & Founding

A previously unrecorded partial draft of Hamilton’s famous letter to Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris. Hamilton discusses the “situation and temper” of New York, and its tax plan, which was intended to be based on a fair assessment of her citizens’ circumstances and abilities to pay.

“perhaps the true reason was a desire to discriminate between the whigs and tories. This chimerical attempt at perfect equality has resulted in total inequality”

Including two March 3, 1791 Acts of Congress: Resolution to Establish U.S. Mint, and Act that President be requested to report to Congress on “the quantity and situation of lands not claimed by the Indians, nor granted to, nor claimed by any of the citizens of the Unties States within the territory ceded to the United States by the State of North-Carolina, and within the territory of the United States north-west of the river Ohio.” Also the March 30, 1791 Proclamation of Permanent Seat of Government, signed in type by Washington and Jefferson.

Contrasting with the agrarian view of many Virginia founding fathers, New Yorker Alexander Hamilton saw an industrial future for the United States. After nearly two years of study and with the aid of Assistant Secretary Tench Coxe, Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton compiled his famed Report on Manufactures at the request of Congress. With the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures, Coxe and Hamilton advocate creating the nation’s first public-private partnership to develop the area around the Great Falls of the Passaic River, using the cataract for power.

“Justice and the support of the public credit require, that provision should be made for fulfilling the engagements of the United States, in respect to their foreign debt, and for funding their domestic debt upon equitable and satisfactory terms.”

Alexander Hamilton understood the necessity of placing the new nation on firm financial ground.

On January 9, 1790, Hamilton delivered to Congress his First Report on Public Credit, a strategy for achieving seven key goals for America’s financial system. One of his primary recommendations was the federal assumption of all states’ war debts, amounting to approximately $22 million in addition to foreign powers who were owed nearly $11 million, and American citizens who had sold food, horses, and supplies to the Army, who held $43 million in debt. Hamilton’s ambitious debt plan aimed to draw both creditors and debtors closer to the federal government by honoring all the Revolutionary War debts in full, paying off the resulting national debt over time from excise taxes and land sales.

Many Southerners opposed Hamilton’s plan, believing it would create a dangerous centralization of power, unfairly penalize the southern states who had already paid off more of their debts, and give the North too much financial control. Ultimately, in a deal between Hamilton, James Madison and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, southern legislators agreed to support the Plan in return for locating the permanent national capital (then temporarily in NY) on the banks of the Potomac River.

The Gazette of the United States, the semi-official newspaper of the federal government, published the acts that codified Hamilton’s Assumption Plan in four parts: “An Act Making Provision for the Debt of the United States” (passed Aug. 4, in the Aug. 7 issue); “An Act to Provide more Effectually for the Settlement of the Accounts between the United States and the Individual States” (passed Aug. 5, in the Aug. 14 issue); “An Act Making Further Provision for the Payment of the Debts of the United States” (padded Aug. 10, in the Aug 21 issue); “An Act making Provision for the Reduction of the Public Debt” (passed Aug 12, in the Aug. 28 issue).

This affidavit is from a federal court case that Judge Nathaniel Pendleton heard in Georgia.