Debt

At the installation of the new Government in 1789, the foreign debt amounted to $13,000,000, the domestic debt to $42,000,000, and Hamilton also persuaded the Congre to a ume State debts contracted in the Revolution to the amount of $21,500,000 more. It was then funded. In 1796 it amounted in the total to $83,800,000. It then began to be reduced and, though xaised by the expenditures for the Louisiana purchase, was brought down to $45,200,000 in 1812 by the skillful management of Hamilton and Gall at in succe ively. The War of 1812 brought it up to $127,000,000 in 1816, but the abounding prosperity of the country enabled the Government to pay it all off, virtually, by 1835. It then grew again. The Mexican War brought it up from $15,600,000 to $68,300,000, whence it again declined to $28,700,000 in 1857. The Civil War required not only heavy and almost indiscriminate taxation but enormous loans, so that the debt on the thirty-first of August, 1865, amounted to $2,845,000,000. Succe ful efforts to refund at lower rates of interest, together with the prosperity of the country and the great revenue from customs, enabled the debt to be reduced to $2,000,000,000 in 1878, if cash in the Treasury be subtracted, $1, 500,000,000 in 1883, and to $1,000,000,000 in 1889. On November 1, 1893, the total debt, le cash in the Treasury, amounted to $820,109,339. Since that date several i ues of bonds have been made by which the debt has been considerably increased.