[48]. State Papers: Finance, Vol. I, p. 19.
[49]. W. De Knight, History of the Currency, p. 21.
[50]. State Papers: Finance, Vol. I, p. 325.
[51]. Ibid., Vol, I, p. 231.
[52]. Callender, not a very reliable authority on most matters concerning Hamilton, claims that twenty-five million dollars was made by the funding of the public debt, and that about ten millions more was made out of the state debt assumption process. He further declared that a public debt of eighty million dollars had been created of which only about thirty millions was all that was necessary. Gallatin held also that the unnecessary debt created by the assumption act amounted to about eleven million dollars. Callender, A History of the United States for 1796, pp. 224 ff. The ethics of redeeming the debt at face value is not here considered although the present writer believes that the success of the national government could not have been secured under any other policy than that pursued by Hamilton. Callender claims that those who held it were, in large measure, speculators and that they made huge fortunes out of the transaction. By a stroke of the pen the federal government created capital to the amount of millions in the hands of the holders.
[53]. A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States, p. 31.
[54]. Tables from Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States, pp. 367–368, and An Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of the United States for the Year 1795, p. 65
[56]. Undoubtedly a large appreciation had taken place between 1787 and 1800.
[57]. “The public securities of the United States of America were a dead, inactive kind of property, previous to the establishment of the constitution of the new government; then they became at once the object of avarice. They before had an existence as to value, on the slender hope of having something done for them at some distant future period; and obtained a motion only from the sagacity of the few, who happened to be right in their conjectures respecting the then future events of American financeering. Upon the adoption of the new system of government they assumed all the properties of a rising credit, and became an immense active capital for commerce.” James Sullivan, An Inquiry into the Origin and Use of Money (1792). Duane Pamphlets, Library of Congress.
[58]. Tench Coxe, A View of the United States of America (1795), p. 360. Tucker, Progress of the United States (1843), p. 205.