How Shall Europe Hang?

Just before signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin reportedly remarked to other members of the Continental Congress, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Franklin understood the gravity and urgency of the moment and its implication: The 13 former British colonies would need to bind together to achieve their goals. Fourteen years later, in 1790, under the leadership of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the new federal government assumed approximately $80 million of foreign, domestic, and colonial debt, much of which had been issued to pay the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.