What were the broad outlines of the first national debt’s history?
The nominal level of the debt was almost unchanged during the administrations of George Washington and John Adams. It dropped a bit but then surged back due to the undeclared quasi-war with France in the last years of the eighteenth century. The next president, Thomas Jefferson, found it difficult to pay down the debt at first. He made some progress, but then couldn’t pass up on the Louisiana Territory. During his second term the debt dropped from over $80 to just over $40 million. However, his successor, James Madison, got into a little scrape with Britain, the world’s leading superpower. Historians often claim that the War of 1812 was a wash, a tie. That might be but the nation ended the war more deeply in debt than ever, to the tune of over $120 million. Presidents James Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson kept the country out of war and kept expenditures in line. In every year, except the recession years following the Panic of 1819, the national government ran budget surpl
