Hamilton gave us a national bank through entirely constitutional grounds and explained what is constitutional and what is not in his Essay on the National Bank one of the greatest state papers ever issued from one of our greatest statesmen.
Hamilton has as much right (or More) to be called “the father of the constitution” as Madison.
The first source of examining a case before the USSC is to consult the Federalist where relevant. Hamilton wrote two/thirds of these magnificent writings the greatest to come from the Western Hemisphere.
Without Hamilton the nation would likely have not survived and the National Bank was one of the principle means of ensuring that survival. His obsessive concern was that the Union be preserved and had no loyalty to a state which overrode that concern.
Jefferson was way out of his league tangling with Hamilton (the nation’s greatest lawyer) in judicial matters and Washington’s quick acceptance of his argument rather than the sophistic nonsense Jefferson wrote shows this. Of course, Washington loved Hamilton like no other man and considered him the son he never had. After Jefferson attempted to undermine the Administration while serving in it, he did not even want to hear his name.
The National Bank had nothing to do with canals and did not result in federal funding for them. The Bank was established to place the federal government on a sound financial standing and it succeeded even more brilliantly than ever imagined.
On the contrary, Hamilton played a weakness of the Constitution to justify his national bank imo, giving an unreasonably wide interpretation of the "necessary and proper" clause (1.8.18) to justify bank.
As previously mentioned, the reason that delegate Benjamin Franklin failed to get word “canals” included in postal roads clause (1.8.7) is because delegates didn’t want to give Congress an excuse to regulate INTRAstate banking.
After all, consider that ConCon delegates could have easily included the word banking in either of the Section 8 clauses, but didn't do so.
"Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
"Clause 5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;"
As Jefferson and Madison had indicated, wide interpretations of the "necessary" clause render the limited powers expressly delegated to Congress by the states meaningless.
After all, why expect a corrupt Congress to deal with the states for new powers in compliance with Article V, when it can simply argue that everything it does is "necessary and proper?"
In fact, Jefferson had put it this way about interpreting Section 8.
"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids." —Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793.
Consider that if the Supreme Court had decided against banking powers for Congress in McCulloch v. Maryland that Congress could have successfully proposed a banking amendment to the Constitution to what was then a later generation of state legislatures, similarly as other amendments have been added to the Constitution.
Or the states could have ignoring a proposed banking amendment.
Again, the early Supreme Court naively unconstitutionally expanded the fed's powers in McCullock like the rookie Congress would have done two years earlier if it weren't for Madison's veto.