Debt and Taxes
As a young nation, the United States had acquired a massive amount of debt during the Revolution. A severe depression affected the nation during 1784-85. Problems between farmers in debt and collectors in Massachusetts led to events such as Shays' Rebellion. The South was especially affected by the economic problems. Almost 60,000 slaves were lost during the Revolution, almost 30,000 in South Carolina and Georgia alone. To create more financial problems for the South, Great Britain refused to import Southern goods into the British West Indies, one of their largest markets. Eventually, Hamilton's idea of paying off the debt would bring about better relations with other countries.
Read more about this topic: America's Critical Period
Famous quotes containing the words debt and/or taxes:
“I have been told, that in some public discourses of mine my reverence for the intellect has made me unjustly cold to the personal relations. But now I almost shrink at the remembrance of such disparaging words. For persons are love’s world, and the coldest philosopher cannot recount the debt of the young soul wandering here in nature to the power of love, without being tempted to unsay, as treasonable to nature, aught derogatory to the social instincts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The law before us, my lords, seems to be the effect of that practice of which it is intended likewise to be the cause, and to be dictated by the liquor of which it so effectually promotes the use; for surely it never before was conceived by any man entrusted with the administration of public affairs, to raise taxes by the destruction of the people.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)