Hamilton, a Bank, a VP and a President, Duels and the Country's First Great Recession

Alexander Hamilton – the genius killed in a duel on this day (11 July) in 1804 – created the US Bank to stabilize currency and capital markets for the new republic.
Aaron Burr, Hamilton's killer, didn’t go to jail for murdering this extraordinary Founding Father. Instead, he finished his term as Jefferson’s Vice President.

Andrew Jackson – the only president known to have killed a man in a duel – killed Hamilton’s Bank, which he saw as an instrument of elites, setting up the nation for its worst recession to that point. (Jackson was one of those populists who didn’t let a lack of understanding about how the economy worked get in the way of his conviction that something dramatic must be done.)

Vice President Aaron Burr killed Hamilton.
President Andrew Jackson killed his great institution.

Hamilton, the orphaned 14-year-old who bravely came alone from the Caribbean to this new place and helped turn it into the world’s first modern democracy.