Financial Founding Fathers -- The Men Who Made America Rich by Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen, UChicago Press '06, $25, 240 pages, ISBN #0-226-91068-7. Index, Inspiration (bibliography), Concordance, grouping of b&w glossy images.
The publication of Financial Founding Fathers is likely to give some historians a "Why didn't I think of that idea for a book?" moment. So much has been written about the process of forming an American polity in the last quarter of the l8th century that we tend to forget how the new nation's growth was financed. The United States made its mark upon the world largely as a mercantile and manufacturing success story, but for this to happen, financial backers were a sine qua non.
Thanks to Ron Chernow's authoritative biography of Alexander Hamilton, we gain detailed knowledge of how the Bank of the United States was formed. And most are aware of such heavy hitters as President Andrew Jackson and his link to the Second Bank of the United States and that of its first president, Nicholas Biddle.
But Wright and Cowen, in this engaging volume, introduce us to others, who contributed mightily, for good or for ill, in stirring the pot, yet are forgotten today. Are you aware of Tench Coxe, William Duer and Albert Gallatin, for instance? (no fibbing, now) Coxe could use only nine of his fingers, because his tenth was perpetually held into the wind to see which way it was blowing. He was a staunch Royalist during the Revolution, then flipflopped to the colonists' cause and started his government career as a Federalist, only to jump ship to the Republicans later. Opportunism aside, he was an able bureaucrat, who served as Hamilton's deputy in the Treasury Department but was disappointed in his quest to succeed Hamilton.
William Duer may be considered the villain of the piece. He preceded Coxe as Hamilton's deputy, but found it difficult to place national interest ahead of self interest. When he sought to corner the entire U.S. securities market and informed his creditors that he wasn't about to pay them, he was clapped into jail, outside of which angry New Yorkers called for his head.
Unlike Alexander Hamilton, you won't find Albert Gallatin's image on American currency, even though he served as treasury secretary twice as long as Hamilton. When Lewis and Clark decided to name the three forks of the Missouri River after the nation's top Republicans, he honored Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin. And yet Albert Gallatin is largely unknown today. Perhaps some are better than others at burnishing their own silver for posterity.
In the early going, many opposed Hamilton's idea of a government-subsidized bank that would contribute to economic growth. The Bank of the United State's initial capitalization was $10 million, of which $2 million came from the American government's budget. While pocket change for today's Wall Street financiers, $10 million was so large for its day that had there been a Dow Jones in those days, the Bank's assets would have accounted for half the Dow's total value.
For a university press volume, Financial Founding Fathers is unusually accessible and an indispensible aid in understanding the full story of America's founding.
