In 1786 the Congress of the United States asked the thirteen states for 3.8 million dollars to pay the debts of the Revolution. It collected 663 dollars. This is the story of the broken money machine underneath everything else in these years — the crisis that drove an army to the edge of mutiny, ruined the richest man in America, and finally put muskets in the hands of farmers. A government that could not tax, only ask. Soldiers like Joseph Plumb Martin, who gave 7 years to the war and came home with a certificate worth pennies, sold to speculators driving about the country, in his words, like so many evil spirits. A war debt paid down with fresh debt until the nation was openly defaulting, and could not find one person willing to lend it a dollar. And the one modest fix — a small tax on imports — killed twice, each time by a single state exercising a veto the rules handed it. It is not a story of villains. It is the story of a government built so carefully to prevent tyranny that it could not do the first thing a government exists to do: pay what it owes.