Before the musical made him famous again, Alexander Hamilton was the most underappreciated Founding Father — the man who designed the financial system, the national bank, the customs service, the Coast Guard, and the institutional infrastructure that made the United States a functioning nation. While Jefferson gets the poetry and Washington gets the monuments, Hamilton built the machinery that actually runs the country.

This episode examines Hamilton's institutional legacy beyond the personal drama, tracing the financial architecture he created from nothing, the Report on Manufactures that predicted America's industrial future, and the government structures that still operate on his blueprints.

• The financial system Hamilton built from scratch — national debt, customs, the mint, the first national bank
• The Report on Manufa ...