Academic - Scholarly - Economics - History - Nineteenth Century; Financial historians have already convinced many scholars that financial development, including the development of government securities markets, played a leading role in the economic growth of the US, Britain, Holland and Japan. Niall Ferguson and James Macdonald have recently argued that financial institutions, particularly markets for government securities, were indeed crucial to the development of the modern nation state and democracy. As a result of these recent important contributions many long neglected subjects, including the development of secondary markets for sovereign debt issues, are currently being revisited: The US National Debt brings together rare documents illustrating such long neglected aspects of US financial history. With a general introduction, endnotes and a consolidated index, the edition will enable scholars to navigate through these difficult-to-comprehend sources.