The Bank of North America (Before Hamilton’s First Bank of the United States)

Thanks to the power of musical theater and the genius of Lin-Manuel Miranda, I can now speak in public spaces about Alexander Hamilton and the First Bank of the United States without watching people’s eyes glaze over in real time. And I am duly grateful. But there is a preceding chapter to this story, which Matthew Wells tells in “The Bank of North America,” subtitled “Before the First Bank of the United States, another, less well-known institution helped the fledgling United States find its financial footing (Econ Focus: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Third Quarter 2026). Wells sets the stage: The nascent country’s financial situation was a major source of uncertainty. The weak and decentralized federal government created under the 1777 Articles of Confederation, along with the states, carried a debt burden of at least $70 million, owed to domestic lenders, as well as Dutch banks and the French and Spanish governments. To put the debt in context, the colonial GDP prior to the war…