“Dear United States Congress . . .” Ten letters by Alexander Hamilton documenting the birth of America’s financial system are for sale in Philadelphia.
The letters are valued at $150,000. They span Hamilton’s five and a half years as President George Washington’s treasury secretary and relate to the founding of the U.S. Treasury, the establishment of the Bank of the United States, and war in Europe.
Hamilton was one of the United States’ Founding Fathers. He not only established the nation’s financial system and served as its first Secretary of the Treasury but he also founded the U.S. Coast Guard and the New York Post newspaper.
The Broadway musical Hamilton has spurred new interest in this particular Founding Father.
Among the Hamilton letters is a 1789 missive ordering the implementation of the first public loan by the U.S. government.
The Raab Collection, a rare-documents dealer, is selling the letters individually. Price estimates range from $14,000 to $30,000.
The letters previously belonged to a family in New England. Historians were unaware of the letters’ existence until recently.
Raab Collection president Nathan Raab says it’s exciting and rare to find 10 letters of Hamilton’s all written while he was Secretary of the Treasury and related to the founding of the nation’s financial system.
(Photo: AP)
