AP EXPLAINS: Why is 1st US treasury chief leaving $10 bill?

The architect of the U.S. financial system, who envisioned the way a struggling young democracy could survive.

The hip-hop musical "Hamilton" has been a huge hit on Broadway, with its African-American and Latino cast playing the roles of the white Founding Fathers and big names like President Barack Obama in the audience.

Later with James Madison and John Jay, Hamilton argued passionately in a famous series of essays known as the Federalist Papers that the young United States would need a strong central government and banking system and a constitution to bind the new nation together.

Before the Constitution passed, many feared the U.S. was too feeble to last, with a weak national government and individual states burdened by war debts.

A federal tax system, a national debt, a central bank, a mint with the dollar as currency:

The Treasury Department has said it put Hamilton on the $10 bill as to help "restore faith in economic power of the United States and currency" after the stock market crash of 1929, which led to the Great Depression.