Alexander Hamilton had put forth the first part of his plan for the creation of the American economy and quickly ran into a wall of dissent.

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Hello and welcome to the political history of the United States.

Last time we spent our episode looking at the workings of Hamilton's report on public credit.

As we discussed this entire plan of his not only laid out the present path forward for the United States, but indeed set up what Hamilton believed to be the long term financial security for the country.

Hamilton fully believed that the United States was a country of nearly limitless potential and saw no reason that it should not compete with the great European powers, specifically the British, for economic dominance.

As we are going to begin to examine this week and really throughout much of the season, not everybody is going to prove to be happy with Hamilton's proposals.

In short order, this is going to expose so many of those rifts within the government, many of which had been put aside temporarily to get the new government up and running.

There had been the anti Federalists who had opposed the Constitution after all.

Yet even then they posed more of a hindrance than any kind of serious problem.

James Madison was always pretty sure that eventually everybody was going to come around and by this point only Rhode island remained a holdout.

This is to say nothing of the fact that by this point the anti Federalists were collapsing.

They would put up some resistance towards the Bill of Rights, but by the time that it gets ratified, they are dead in the water as any kind of a political movement.

Even then, though, they had never exactly been a political party in the modern sense anyway.

More they were a group of people who were all united around a single issue rather than a broader overall agenda.

In time, this is going to morph into what we would today recognize as political parties which largely organized around the agenda of those who followed Hamilton and those who opposed him.

So let's take a look at just how Hamilton is going to so thoroughly polarize just about everybody.

Historians have often taken pains to write about how Hamilton's report would spell the beginning of the end of the previously close friendship and alliance between Hamilton and Madison.

Some of this probably has to do with the thematic elements that exist.

The always juicy drama of two former friends becoming bitterly opposed enemies.

However, there is good reason why this becomes such a focal point.

Because in short order, this quickly growing rivalry is going to come to define the first decade of the government, Madison would very quickly come to take issue with Hamilton's plan on who would benefit from the debt getting paid back.

Recall from last time we talked about how some wanted to see the original bondholders from the Revolution benefit from the assumed to be upcoming windfall.

Hamilton's thought on all of this was that the original bondholders had sold, the speculators had bought them up, thus trusting an American currency, and therefore they should be the one to reap the windfalls.

This sets up the principle that the United States government cannot step in and interfere with a private transaction.

James Madison disagreed with Hamilton, and by the middle of February he was busy making several rebuttal speeches of his own, arguing that those who had originally held the debt should at least be paid what they were owed at the time of the sale.

These speeches were anything but dry either, and indeed appear to have at times become quite spirited.

In other words, Madison was aware that so many had sold off their bonds for mere pennies on the dollar because at the time the currency was so thoroughly collapsed in the United States that the bonds held virtually no value, forcing min to sell at a loss.

His argument behind this was that it was simply a fair dealing and that to deny those original bondholders was in essence to steal from them.

Madison argued that his proposal was both just and moral.

Despite his best efforts, though, James Madison was destined to lose this point in Congress.

The loss here for James Madison stung him deeply.

He viewed the outcome of the vote as being morally repugnant and felt that a basic sense of justice required a different outcome.

Specifically, his outcome.

Really.

This disagreement would mark the first meaningful crack in the relationship between Madison and Hamilton.

However, it would be anything from the last.

The problem, as we are going to see more clearly here shortly, comes down to a very different fundamental belief over how the country should run.

Both men saw the future of the United States in starkly different terms, and yet both remain steadfastly devoted to the task of ensuring that their vision be the one that define the future path for the country.

Madison wrote the following to his father on February 27.

The proposition for compromising the matter between the original sufferers and the stock jobbers, after being long agitated, was rejected by a considerable majority.

Less, perhaps from a denial of the justice of the measure than a supposition of its impracticability.

The idea is much better relished, I find, in the country at large than it was in this city.

This is a somewhat telling take from Madison and goes very directly to what we've been talking about.

We see him talking to his father about that sense of justice that was being denied.

We also see him explain that his loss was not because people disagreed with him.

No.

But rather because figuring out the original bondholders was just impractical.

He likewise throws out there that outside of the big cities, which are presumably filled with those greedy speculators, the idea of rewarding the original bondholders was far more popular.

Now, I will admit that I can't actually find specific information as to the popularity one way or the other out in the country regarding how the debt would be paid.

I fully believe that, assuming that they were aware of the debate in the first place, the original bondholders probably were interested in getting the benefits of the coming profit.

Then, as is the case now, most people are going to give an eager thumbs up to having more money as opposed to less.

I am, though, not willing to discount that Madison might have been saying these words to soothe his own slightly bruised ego.

Of course, Madison understood that the new nation needed money.

He had, after all, been an eyewitness to the Confederation and what it meant for a government to be flat broke.

Where he differed from Hamilton, however, was that he never viewed the economy as being the engine for reform that Hamilton did.

In fact, Hamilton's plan very much depended on a close relationship with the British.

Sure, the United States had their special relationship with France as a result of their partnership in the war.

However, France was increasingly becoming a more risky trading partner.

A few weeks ago, during episode 5.23, we discussed the proposed idea of discriminatory trade.

Madison was eager to stick it to the British via the Tonnage bill, effectively making it more expensive for the British to do business with the United States.

The problem with this, though, is that France only did a fraction of the amount of business with the United States, as the British did.

Furthermore, the French were not exactly a stable trading partner either.

Alexander Hamilton was not at all looking to stick it to the British.

Indeed, his plan required not just mending old bridges, but indeed expanding the relationship with the country's former overlords.

Hamilton understood that the easiest tax to justify was going to be the impost on the importation of goods.

Not only did this bring in much needed revenue.

But such trade would have the secondary advantage of growing the economy.

At the same time, if the best trading partner for the United States was Great Britain, would such discriminatory treatment not also harm the United States ability to collect on the impost by stifling trade from their most natural trading partner?

Would it not be cutting off the proverbial nose to spite the face?

The British, as it turned out, were also not exactly thrilled by the plan either.

There was no normalized relations between the two countries.

Therefore, the discussions between Hamilton and Beckwith were not exactly official diplomatic communications.

Despite this, Hamilton still knew that Beckwith was well connected back in London, and that although this was not an official channel of communication, it could operate as something of an unofficial back channel.

To this end, Hamilton laid out his beliefs that, yes, the discrimination cooked into the tonnage bill was a mistake, one that he personally objected to, and that the relationship between the British and the Americans should.

Should be made closer.

What Hamilton ultimately wanted was a commercial treaty with Great Britain.

George Washington was at least in agreement, to the point that he would have been happy to get the pebble out of his boot.

That the British were.

Recall that the British had not exactly lived up to the Treaty of Paris, which ended the revolution.

They continued to maintain forts along the frontiers.

Now, this was not just something that they were doing to draw the ire of the United States, but instead, they were desperate to protect the very valuable fur trade.

Should they lose these forts, it could threaten all of Canada and that lucrative trade.

For the Americans, though, it meant that the British were maintaining an unauthorized presence on American soil, something which by its very nature was a challenge to the sovereignty of the United States.

This was merely the most serious issue between the two countries.

However, it was far from the only problem.

Washington, although not exactly sending a minister of his own, was interested in sending a mission to England to try to work these differences out via diplomacy.

For that role, he tapped Gouverneur Morris, who was at the time in Paris.

Washington, though, was counseled by James Madison that he should avoid any such mission.

Madison worried that a mission like this might injure the nation's relationship with France.

Still, though, Washington had his mind set and wanted to at least begin the process of attempting to normalize relations with Great Britain.

Hamilton's affinity towards the British wasn't exactly some dark secret.

Pretty much everybody was very well aware of it.

In fact, this reputation would become something of a black mark for him and was something often used by his rivals to prove that Hamilton was a monarchist, something which he would spend a great deal of energy denying.

Madison, on the other hand, retained many of those common prejudices against the British that his contemporaries often shared.

Recall that Madison had been a big proponent of that discriminatory tonnage bill.

What Madison believed is that England had two options.

There were a lot of nations in the world.

The United States was large and seemingly filled with unlimited resources.

Surely there were going to be other options when it came to trade alternatives that would allow the United States to thrive without having to worry about what the British did.

Of course, the British were not playing fair.

They continued to prohibit American merchants from those valuable markets in the West Indies.

They were actively violating the Treaty of Paris by holding those western forts.

They were refusing to compensate the Americans for the slaves that they had taken during the war.

Plus, even back in Britain, the ministry was not exactly friendly towards their lost colonies and they had little interest in doing much to shake up the status quo.

Hamilton's report on the public credit caused these rifts to expand into deep chasms.

Indeed, once the report was made, the immediate backlash would help further cement the emerging political differences and ideologies of these two giants of the era.

Although there was pushback to Hamilton's plan to not discriminate in favor of the original bondholders from the war, what would prove to be a far more contentious issue was over the assumption of the state's debt.

In this instance, Madison's own view over the prospect of the assumption of the state's debt was going to be a bit more nebulous, as motivations from local state level politics would also play largely into his equation.

Now, right in the middle of this question over the assumption of debt, there would be a bit of a detour to deal with a quick fight over slavery.

Although it should be mentioned here that also involved in this was the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, who themselves also filed a petition.

This Society's president was Benjamin Franklin, and this petition was the final public act of his life.

At this point, these groups understood that the institution of slavery was not going anywhere.

However, the slave trade seemed like it might be ripe for the picking.

After all.

As we are going to see so much over the next few seasons, pretty much as soon as anybody mentions doing anything to slavery, the Southern states would begin screaming foul from the rooftops.

This time was no different, and quickly both the Carolinas and Georgia launched into a defense of the institution, pointing out that ratification of the Constitution had been predicated on Congress keeping their hands off of slavery.

When the petition reached the House, the delegates wasted little time in pointing out that there wasn't much that they could do.

Poor Alexander Hamilton.

About the last thing in the world that he wanted was to have the question of slavery invading his economic reforms.

He fully understood that the Constitution was clear there was nothing that could be done for the next two decades, so why muddy the water now with a seemingly pointless battle?

As for his own views on the matter, it has long been held that Hamilton was staunchly opposed to the institution itself.

However, new evidence suggests that his relationship to slavery may well have been more complex.

The timing of this is likely not a coincidence either.

The Schuylers were one of the larger slave owning families in New York, themselves owning 13 people.

Regardless of Hamilton's relationship with slavery, though, right now this was an unwanted hindrance for him.

There was really Nothing that he could do about it right now.

And all it served to do was make the already skittish Southern states that much more protective of slavery.

Although the debate over slavery went nowhere because really there was nowhere for it to go, it did cause damage to Hamilton.

This entire ordeal had highlighted just how much power Hamilton was attempting to usurp from the state and transfer to the federal government.

Sure, this had been a concern back during the ratification conventions, but now here it was, staring them all in the face.

If Hamilton's plan was to strengthen the central government and the fear of the Southern states was that a strong central government would interfere with slavery, didn't it make sense for them to vehemently oppose Hamilton?

The debates that ensued produced language that was so provocative from South Carolina's Adanas Burke that it very nearly triggered a duel between himself and Hamilton.

This was no minor threat either.

Hamilton has already shown us that he was open to dueling, having served as John Lauren's second in his duel with Charles Lee.

Plus, I think we all know at this point how Hamilton's story is eventually going to end.

Now, in the end, Burke would end up apologizing for his statements and the matter was resolved without the need for pistols.

I wouldn't blame you if you are sitting there wondering why I opened up a discussion on the assumption of states debt from the Revolution and then immediately jumped into the topic of slavery.

The reason is that this debate over slavery would help color the debates throughout the spring on Hamilton's economic schemes.

The Southern states were spooked by the prospect of a powerful federal government interfering with slavery, despite the fact that their hands were all tied for the time being.

This also goes to illustrate that universal truth that none of this was occurring within a vacuum.

Even as Hamilton presented his funding plans, other political issues were present.

Just as in politics today, there was never just a single issue being debated, but rather there were always numerous bills and reports and crises of all various sizes which were busy influencing the decision of the Congressman.

This question over slavery fell right in the middle of the debate over assumption that we are about to talk about.

It represents baggage that these representatives were bringing with them into these debates.

The question over assumption would further prove to be an exceptionally complex and often fraught political question.

The problem was, that assumption came with a whole lot of questions regarding the scope of the federal government as compared to the states.

These questions were over the fairness of the program and a whole lot of regional differences.

So let's start working through it.

The battle over assumption would expose a fundamental difference between Madison and Hamilton.

Specifically, despite the fact that both men were avowed nationalists back during the Constitutional Convention, it did not preclude Madison from remaining loyal and interested in protecting the rights of his home state of Virginia.

Hamilton, who had been born in the Caribbean, had no such inclination towards any particular state.

This allowed Hamilton to think far more nationally, because he never had that deep allegiance to any particular state.

We have discussed at length what Hamilton wanted out of this.

He hoped to strengthen the national government by uniting the interests of the creditors in a single nationally based entity.

For some of the states, this sounded pretty great.

Massachusetts and South Carolina, for instance, were pretty eager for assumption because both states still carried large amounts of debt.

Furthermore, with the right to pass tariffs now belonging exclusively to the national government, states themselves had lost their most valuable way of raising revenue, meaning that these large debts were now essentially just dragging them down.

They lacked the money to pay them and would have been thrilled for the national government to come in and take the debt off of their hands.

Other states, like Virginia and North Carolina, were opposed to assumption.

Now, this isn't because they had responsibly paid off all of their debt in a timely fashion.

Indeed, both states still owed money, although they had at least paid off some.

Rather, they were interested in the final settlement, which would pay out credits to the states that had contributed more, essentially creating debtor and creditor states.

Both North Carolina and Virginia were set to benefit greatly from the final settlement.

For them, they wanted that final settlement, something which had no manifest form just yet to come.

Before the process of assumption.

Virginia wanted to hold out and make sure that the final settlement came, and knew that once assumption was granted, there would be a whole lot less motivation for a final settlement to ever be reached.

In fact, for this group, they perceived more advantage in the final settlement than they did in the assumption itself.

The way these states saw it, should assumption be approved, it would cause those state securities, the ones that made up the state debt, to skyrocket in value.

Generally, Virginians viewed those now holding the bonds as being nothing more than northern speculators, meaning that the assumption of the debt would do little for either Virginia or North Carolina other than put money in the pockets of those speculators.

What these states believed is that once assumption took place, the other states who were going to benefit a lot less from the final settlement would be far less eager to give a generous settlement that would provide them with limited to no positive benefit.

Now as you may have guessed from that discussion on Virginia and North Carolina, those speculators holding the securities were eagerly encouraging the government to hurry up and assume the debt.

They knew that they were in for a windfall and they were eager to get on with it.

Making matters more complex is that even within these states, there are those who fully recognized that assumption of the state's debt would see the federal government become far more powerful.

For those who were fighting to maintain states rights, they knew well that this was a step in the wrong direction.

Madison, still stinging from his loss over discrimination, was determined to secure a different outcome when it came to Assumption.

Keep in mind here that Madison is a Virginian and that Virginia as a state remained one of the most staunchly opposed states in the Union.

Madison's plan here was to focus more on the final settlement rather than the question of assumption.

As we just discussed, for those states that actually had paid down some of the debt, the final settlement was far more valuable than was Assumption.

They wanted the settlement to precede assumption.

And that is exactly what Madison was trying to accomplish.

And for the most part, it worked.

Those states that were more eager to see assumption were quick to let Madison know that they would support a final settlement being reached prior to agreeing to assumption.

With that, the first point in the salvo went to Madison.

At this point the entire project of Assumption appeared to be dead.

When on April 26, the House voted to end the debate on the matter.

Or at least so it should seem.

Part of the problem is that this entire ordeal had been jarring for Madison.

By the end of April, when that vote came to end the debate, the entire battle over slavery that I had mentioned earlier had already taken place.

With the battle over slavery having shaken Madison, he was still deeply worried about those who had been on the losing side of the assumption debate.

The battle was over, at least on paper.

However, Madison understood that the defeat had not been some kind of overwhelming fait accompli, and that in fact everything that had taken place was by very thin margins.

Throughout the country there was a current of real discontent over the state of Assumption.

Madison wrote to Edmund Pendleton on April 13, stating that although the matter of assumption had been narrowly defeated, the blow was not exactly mortal.

To the project.

A few days later, on April 17, Madison wrote to James Monroe saying that the measure is not, however, abandoned.

It will be tried in every possible shape by the zeal of its patrons.

The Easter members talk a strange language on the subject.

They avow some of them at least, a determination to oppose all provision for the public debt, which does not include this, and imitate danger to the Union from a refusal to assume we shall risk their prophetic menaces if we should continue to have a majority.

So clearly Madison was not feeling wonderful about the status of Assumption.

Despite its defeat, the battle was presenting a risk to the stability of the Union, and above all, Madison was still steadfastly determined to hold this entire project together.

The tides here would begin to shift again in May when a group of New Hampshire merchants came forward and asked for just a bit of extra protectionism from their local industry.

Specifically, what they wanted was to increase the fee paid by foreign vessels entering into American ports.

On its own, this kind of request isn't exactly all that noteworthy.

However, it came at such a specific moment that it opened a door for James Madison.

We talked about discriminatory trade earlier today and more extensively back in our episode 5.23.

Recall that Madison had favored discriminatory trade, something which Hamilton was quite opposed to and ultimately not seeking a trade war with Britain.

The Senate voted against discrimination.

To be clear, the New Hampshire merchants were not asking for any kind of discrimination against a specific country, but rather they were looking for broad protection against all foreign vessels.

Madison, though getting a bit greedy, saw this as a golden opportunity to reverse his defeat from the previous year.

To this end, Madison went ahead and took control of the issue and amended their request to add a higher duty on all foreign built ships entering into American ports from nations lacking a commercial treaty with the United States.

The New Hampshire shippers had left out that whole bit about commercial treaties.

Initially, things went well here for James Madison and his amendment.

It was agreed to.

But here Madison wasn't going for a mere single no.

He wanted to hit a home run.

With this victory behind him, he upped the ante and proposed a second amendment, this time stating that foreign vessels lacking a treaty with the United States would be prohibited from carrying about any produce or materials from the United States.

In other words, if you want something from us, it will be American ships making the delivery.

This was far more controversial.

Madison did give in just a little bit here and included an exception which would hopefully lead to the British opening up the West Indies to American shipping.

This was enough to get the thing done.

So here again, we have another huge win for James Madison.

The problem is that Madison had, despite his victories, overplayed his hand throughout all of this.

It wasn't like Madison was enjoying universal love for his plans.

He was always working with extremely slim majorities.

Therefore, it did not take a whole lot of energy to begin to erode away those slim victories.

This begs the question, though.

Obviously something had to happen that would begin to change things.

So what was it?

Although it was agreed to include Madison's amendment in the final vote, many of the delegates remained uneasy at the prospect.

Sure, they had their gripes with Great Britain.

The Treaty of Paris was not being properly honored.

Americans were shut out of the valuable markets that were the West Indies.

Everybody across the board wanted this to change.

The problem was that their hesitation remained over pushing the British too far and potentially inadvertently launching a trade war.

Everybody could sit there and pretend that France was a great trading partner, but even in the best of times, they paled in size when compared to the British as a partner.

So ahead of that final vote, a sense of buyer's remorse was already beginning to settle in.

Misgivings about the original deal were probably, unsurprisingly, being spurred on by Hamilton.

This worked, and by the end of June, Madison had seen a shocking reversal.

With his discriminatory bills being stopped, drained the final vote.

With Jefferson just now arriving on the scene, he and Madison would quickly form an alliance with each other.

However, when it came to discrimination, it was too late, just as had been the year before.

Despite how close he had gotten, Madison had lost the point.

This brings us back full circle to the question of assumption.

The states were still deadlocked over the question of assumption.

The debates had ended back in April, yes, but the bill had never actually been defeated.

It was just sitting there, lacking the votes to pass.

Now, though, with discrimination being defeated and Madison suddenly losing ground again, the question of assumption was safe to make a return.

The deadlock that was holding assumption from being passed had always been razor thin.

And with people now changing their minds on discrimination, which just weeks earlier had passed, Madison and Jefferson were worried about the prospect of Hamilton securing a total victory.

Now, we have not really talked about other things going on yet, but there was another issue moving through Congress that had also become infuriatingly deadlocked.

New York was always meant to be a temporary capital for the United States.

The practical capital of the United States to this date had always been something of happenstance.

Obviously, things would first get set up back during the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

However, after getting chased out of the city during the Revolution, it would spend the next several years just kind of bouncing around.

Everybody understood that the country needed a stable capital and indeed had addressed this back during the Constitutional Convention, agreeing that the states needed to pick a spot for a federal district to be formed.

However, in true constitutional fashion, other than the size of the district, nothing else had been specifically laid out.

The southern states wanted the capital, surprise, surprise.

In the south, located along the Potomac river, the New England states were okay, with the capital remaining exactly where it was.

Finally, those in the middle states favored Philadelphia.

So what this all boils down to was the reoccurring fight over regional differences.

Each region was busy arguing for why they, and not the other guy, should get to become the capital of the nation.

You may be wondering what this has to do with assumption.

Thomas Jefferson, again seeing the threat of Hamilton securing a total victory, decided that they needed to do something about it.

Now, I'm going to go ahead and go over the telling of what happened here.

However, I do want to make a small disclaimer.

What we know about the events that I'm about to discuss comes from an account that Thomas Jefferson wrote for himself about a year after the event took place.

So a little bit less than contemporaneous.

Second, Thomas Jefferson isn't always the most reliable of narrators.

As American historian Joanne Freeman frequently likes to point out, sometimes Thomas Jefferson lies.

I'm not necessarily saying that his account here is a lie, just that we should always remain mindful when it comes to accounts and recollections from Thomas Jefferson.

Per Jefferson, while visiting with George Washington, he ran into Hamilton, who was feeling rightly bummed out about his inability to pass assumption.

This was, after all, a central part of his entire funding plan.

According to Jefferson, Hamilton was in fact so bummed out about this that that he informed Jefferson that the failure of assumption would mark the end of his time at Treasury.

He implored Jefferson to rally the Southern states to the cause.

Jefferson, seeing an Alexander Hamilton who was ready to make a deal, and knowing that Madison was eager to avoid a complete and total loss to Hamilton, decided that the best way to proceed was to sit down with both parties and just work through the problem.

Jefferson invited them to a dinner on June 20.

The details of the dinner itself went unrecorded, so we have no idea what actually took place.

However, what we do know is that when the men emerged, they had the framework of a New Deal in place that would have drastic consequences on the future of the United States.

Hamilton was going to get his win as it was decided that the Southern states would get on board with assumption.

The price of playing along is that the new Federal Capitol was going to be built in the south at a site off the Potomac River.

Incidentally, this was also going to be a pretty huge victory for George Washington financially, as the new federal district that would come to bear his name was going to be located just a short way from his Mount Vernon home.

In a nod to the Middle States.

While the new Federal district was being constructed, Philadelphia would serve as the temporary capital for at least the next 10 years.

It is worth mentioning that, and I'm sure all those in the Middle States had their fingers crossed for this, that many raised an eyebrow at the prospect of the Federal district being completed anytime soon and just assumed that Philadelphia might just remain the capital long into the future.

As historian Gordon Wood points out, although this compromise proved that compromising for the stability of the nation was still possible, there certainly were those who were uneasy about the new arrangement.

James Monroe worried about the effect of reducing the power of the states and the possibility that such a move would put everybody at the whim of a national government that may not have their best interests in mind.

As I'm guessing you probably already know, this is indeed going to become the division that is going to define so much of the politics for the United States.

Now, I do want to qualify this discussion of this incredibly successful dinner party by mentioning that not everybody is exactly on board with it being something that was nearly as successful as Jefferson claims.

Stanley Elkins and Eric McKittrick point out that while there probably was some degree of talking shop at the meal, it's also pretty unlikely that such a huge bargain was struck there.

Indeed, even before the critical meal was shared, things had already begun to move.

Either way, the agreement was successful.

By July, it was increasingly clear that assumption was going to pass and that the future Federal city was going to be located along the Potomac.

The Southern states were sufficiently satisfied getting the capital, and the northern states were desperate for assumption.

Philadelphia got to play capital for 10 years and crossed their fingers that this whole federal district idea was going to get buried in paperwork and ultimately forgotten.

The often bitter fights of those months laid down not an exception, but rather a predicate for the deals of much of the Washington administration.

Lines were being drawn, if not yet in a totally conscious manner, between the Hamiltonian led Federalists and the not yet named Democratic Republican party led by Madison and Jefferson.

Geographical battles were likewise put on display, previewing a future where the north and south often found themselves at odds with each other.

At the center of that geographical dispute was the one thing that many in Congress were still not terribly eager to talk about.

The institution of slavery.

Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful two weeks.

I hope that you are staying healthy and that you are staying safe, and I will see you back here next time as we explore the bank of the United States.

States.