This chapter brings readers’ attention to the fact that throughout United States history, government has been an active and necessary part of building the country. In the colonial period, for example, laws regulating taverns and other businesses proliferated. After the Founding, under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton and the federalists, the central government was seen as the necessary force needed to support an economy that then enabled the country to participate on the world economic stage. The anti-federalists, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, aceded to the need for the government to support the economy in the ways proposed by the Federalists.