The big question for 1790 was the Federal assumption of the war debts. There were a number of them. There was the internal debt run up by the Continental Congress ( the notoriously worthless Continental currency that had been paid to soldiers and others). There were the internal debts run up by the various states (Massachusetts had such worthless currency that in 1780 it even issued certificates based on the price of a bushel of corn). There was the international debt run up by the Continental Congress (most from France, but also Holland and Spain) and there were even the international debts run up by the states ( when John Adams showed up in Amsterdam to try to get funds from the Dutch bankers, he discovered that representatives from Massachusetts had already been there).

It was generally understood that the Continental debts were all going to be assumed by the new Federal government. The question of the state debts remained, however, and that was a big one, as the states had different debt levels.

Massachusetts was in very deep. It needed international trade- and that was stalled. It had such a terrible time in the 1780's with paying down its debts that hard currency became very scarce. Farmers and merchants in the western areas of the state resorted to passing their own notes and carrying transactions on their ledgers, and when the state legislature attempted to wring hard currency out of the population by requiring taxes be paid in it, there was a revolt- Shays' Rebellion. On the other hand, Virginia, with its tobacco trade, had managed to actually pay down some of its debt.

Hamilton wanted the Federal government to assume all the debts, and there was predictable pushback from the southern states. But the south was also worried about the slavery question. Ben Franklin had adopted abolition as his last great cause. With lots of very skillful politicking by Madison, the compromise had the new government assume a lot of the war debts: Virginia was mollified by having $500,000 of its debt immediately paid. The capitol was put in Virginia, which made Washington happy. And, the slavery question was kicked down the road to a future date. This last turned out to be a great mistake, for in 1790, many in the south assumed that slavery could soon be ended. The economic benefits were debatable (as Washington was discovering on his own farms) and so there was a hazy notion of stopping the slave trade, emancipating remaining slaves by 1800. What actually happened of course is that slavery after 1820 instead became immensely profitable, and so there was a path to the Civil War.

It was after the initial compromise was reached that Hamilton came forward with a plan to have a national bank. This was intensely disliked by Jefferson, who feared it would be dominated by northern merchants who could dominate the government through bribery. Unfortunately for both he and Madison, Washington was in favor of it. He may have been a land-hungry gentleman planter, but he was also the nation's first developer, who could see the reason for such a thing..

Cooke, J. E. (1970). The Compromise of 1790. The William and Mary Quarterly, 27(4), 524–545. https://doi.org/10.2307/1919703