NEW BOOK: THE BANKER WHO MADE AMERICA

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V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 6, 2026, Article 7

I don't know if there's any numismatic content in this one, but the history of finance is an adjacent topic, as is the subject of colonial America. Richard Vague is a banker and author who publishes the Delanceyplace blog that we often excerpt here for interesting history book passages relating to numismatics. -Editor

Dear Delanceyplace friends, I am very happy to report that my new book, The Banker Who Made America, Thomas Willing and the Rise of the Financial Aristocracy, is now available on Amazon. I must say that if you think you know the America Revolution—think again. I've spent a lifetime studying that period of American history, but the life of Thomas Willing brings a depth of understanding of that is far beyond anything I had previously imagined. If you enjoy American history, you will love it. Here's an excerpt from the introduction.

On July 1, 1776, at the Continental Congress being held in the stately building we now call Independence Hall, Pennsylvania delegate Thomas Willing cast a vote against independence.

In the stifling heat of that day, the Congress was meeting as a "committee of the whole" to take a preliminary vote on the question of independence in advance of the official consideration. Opinions ranged from a passionate endorsement to adamant resistance.

The prospect of a stalemate loomed. As the delegates scheduled the formal vote for the next day, they faced an anxious evening of persuasion and debate.

Most likely, Benjamin Franklin did much of the persuading deep into that night, and specifically with Pennsylvania delegates John Dickinson, an unwavering Quaker who categorically opposed war, and Robert Morris, who was Thomas Willing's business partner and a fellow member of the very small and tight-knit community of Philadelphia's merchant elite, all of whom had deep commercial ties to Britain. Whatever Franklin's arguments might have been, both Dickinson and Morris chose to absent themselves from the next day's vote.

But Thomas Willing did not absent himself. On July 2 he was present and cast another "no" vote, though it was not enough to change the new outcome.

With the two abstentions, Pennsylvania's vote turned in favor of independence by three to two, and with the two smaller states now also both a yes, the momentous declaration of independence passed with twelve votes for, none against, and New York again abstaining (but adding its assent soon after).

Willing's vote against independence was in fact the embodiment of the preference of Philadelphia's elite merchant class. In fact, in 1775, Pennsylvania's government had expressly prohibited its delegates from voting for independence. Though Willing had been Pennsylvania's leader in protesting the Stamp and Townshend Acts, he, along with many of his associates, were deeply entangled with British wealth and did not see the need for revolution. At the same time, they found themselves in the crucible of an internal political war in Pennsylvania that pitted the conservative elite merchant traders in the colony's port city against those middling and lower sorts – the largely rural Scots-Irish Presbyterian farmers and artisans who had been flooding into that colony, who hated the British, who coveted independence, and who were becoming a radical force for political change. The fate of the country hung in the balance as these factions fought a virulent class war within America that has raged episodically and in different guises ever since.

Willing and those in his orbit resisted American independence, and then they bankrolled it. And often on nothing more than their personal wealth, credit, and reputations. They took the lead and the risk in supplying much needed arms, gunpowder, and funds to the Revolution, likely saving it in its earliest and most perilous months. They were crucial to financing a revolution of democratic and egalitarian ideals, and then they inscribed their financial self-interests into the new nation's founding documents. They built their own wealth, and then they built the nation's, because they accomplished one vital thing: they brought a finance and banking revolution to America that bridged the political revolution of 1776 and the industrial revolution of the 1800s.

Stated simply, Willing was the most powerful figure in early American history that you've likely never heard of. He was America's dominant merchant and banker through the Revolution and the earliest days of the Republic and stood at the very heart of America's founding financial elite. This elite's political and economic conflicts with an emerging class of the so-called "middling and lower sorts," and their creation of a new financial system for the young nation, profoundly shaped American history.