TJ Develin retweetledi
The American Revolution was bankrolled by one man. The richest in America. He died broke in debtor's prison.
Robert Morris.
In 1781, he raised $1,400,000 on his own personal credit to march George Washington's army to Yorktown. The Continental Congress had no money. The states refused to send any. France had stopped. The final $20,000 came from Haym Salomon, a Polish-Jewish broker who personally underwrote the rest. The richest man in the country put his balance sheet behind the war and ended it.
AOC said this week that "the American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time."
The math doesn't survive the source documents.
Morris signed the Declaration of Independence. He signed the Articles of Confederation. He signed the Constitution. One of only two founders to sign all three. He served as Superintendent of Finance from 1781 to 1784, ran the Continental Navy as Agent of Marine, and chartered the Bank of North America. The financial machinery of the United States was built by the merchant who had spent the prior decade running the largest shipping firm in Philadelphia.
John Hancock was the wealthiest man in Boston. George Washington owned 8,000 acres at Mount Vernon. The signers were merchants, planters, and lawyers at the top of colonial society. The complaint was taxation without representation, levied by a Crown an ocean away. The Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts hit merchants hardest. That's why merchants funded the war.
Then the math finished Morris off.
He owed nearly $3 million by 1798. He sat in Prune Street debtor's prison for three years. George Washington visited him there. Congress passed the Bankruptcy Act of 1800 in part to secure his release. Morris died in 1806 with a five-line obituary in the Philadelphia papers.
$1.4 million in personal credit. $3 million in personal debt. The richest man in America bankrupted himself funding the war AOC says was fought against him.
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