Sent to Paris as America’s first ambassador, he sought arms and loans. He invested his profits in real estate, accruing 89 rental properties. Arriving in Philadelphia a seventeen-year-old runaway, he used his printer’s skills to launch a newspaper, publish books, and sell them through partnerships with printers in other towns. The quintessential rags-to-riches story was Benjamin Franklin’s, and he wrote it himself in his famous autobiography. He personally signed 6,000 notes to pay off Washington’s troops when the war ended.

Raiding British convoys, he became the richest man in America. Robert Morris, generally considered the financier of the Revolution, donated ships from his fleet of tobacco-trading vessels and turned to privateering. In a long postwar depression, he couldn’t sell or rent his lands. Like most of the Founders, Washington was rich in land and slaves but cash poor. During the eight-year-long struggle, he lost half his wealth, largely because he neglected his farms. Studying his records, he calculated that the British government and bankers were taking seventy-five percent of his profits.Ĭhosen unanimously by Congress as commander-in-chief of Continental forces, he refused a salary, asking only to be reimbursed his documented expenses. As the British continued to impose hefty taxes, Washington had to turn to British brokers and bankers and slid into debt. As the threadbare son of a thrice-widowed single mother, he could not afford dancing lessons-the ticket to Tidewater society- and had to borrow a horse to ride off to fight in the French and Indian War.īut that soon changed when after five years of frontier warfare, he married the colony’s wealthiest widow. Philadelphians would not accept Virginia currency.įor the Second Continental Congress, George Washington arrived in a coach drawn by matched horses with liveried outriders.

While James Madison, son of a wealthy planter, took his seat in Congress, his horse was evicted from a stable nearby. The first of the grievances enumerated in the Declaration of Independence was that Britain had banned all banks and colonial currencies.

James madison signed the constitution