Roughly Speaking

The uber-musical “Hamilton” comes to Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theater in June, and in this episode of the show: Some Maryland history related to Alexander Hamilton, founder of the nation’s financial system and its first Secretary of the Treasury. In McCulloch v. Maryland, a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court in the winter of 1819, statesman Daniel Webster defended the legitimacy of a national bank that had opened a branch in Baltimore. The Maryland General Assembly, sympathetic to struggling state bankers, had tried to tax the federal bank out of existence. Webster invoked Hamilton’s belief in the ----implied powers---- of the Constitution to broadly define the national government’s supremacy over the states. As a result, McCulloch is considered one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in history.Our guest, Kathleen Day, covers the decision in her new book of American financial history.A long-time journalist, Day is now on the faculty of the Johns Carey Business School, where she lectures on the