BOOK REVIEW: THE BANKER WHO MADE AMERICA

Patriotism, George Washington wrote from Valley Forge in 1778, "must be aided by a prospect of interest or some reward." If Washington represented the patriotic side of the American Revolution, Thomas Willing, America's leading merchant and banker at the time, represented the interested side. A devotion to both impulses has marked America's democratic experiment from the very beginning. But while Washington is remembered as the foremost of the Founding Fathers, Willing (1731-1821) has fallen into obscurity, even among historians.

Richard Vague's "The Banker Who Made America" rescues Willing from oblivion, declaring his subject "the most powerful figure in early American history that you've likely never heard of." As the first president of the Bank of the United States, Willing, Mr. Vague writes, "was the dominant economic force in the country."

Willing was born into a prominent Philadelphia family. He inherited a modest fortune and quickly emerged as the leader of the city's conservative business establishment. He helped organize the colonies' resistance to Britain, but stopped short of supporting independence.

In November 1777, as most patriots fled Philadelphia before its capture by the British, Willing remained and collaborated. He even negotiated a proposed truce with Britain's Gen. William Howe, which granted Americans almost everything they could ask for except their independence. Willing duly forwarded Howe's offer to the Continental Congress. There were shouts of treason, but Gen. Washington intervened on Willing's behalf, calling him a "worthy, well-disposed man." Willing remained on good terms, and profitably in business, with both the British and the patriots.

The Bank of England made the British Empire the mightiest in the world, but the North American colonies remained a financial backwater as they struggled to assert their independence. No banks equivalent to those that proliferated in 18th-century England existed in America, and many hoped a republic of yeomen farmers could do without them.

But Alexander Hamilton, among others, recognized that a national bank, in harnessing private wealth to create public credit, was as vital to independence as a military victory. The challenges of keeping an army fed and armed gradually imposed this insight on even the most obdurate members of the Continental Congress. Thus in 1781 the Bank of North America was born. It was the first commercial bank on the continent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_North_America

Seeing the need for a bank is one thing; successfully running one is another. This was the novel task that fell to Willing. He had no practical experience in banking, but then neither did anyone else in America. What he did possess, however, was the confidence of the financial community the bank was meant to harness and serve—confidence the Continental Congress desperately needed.

In 1791, when a much stronger federal government chartered the Bank of the United States, Willing was the obvious choice to run it. The bank was the government's lender, principal depository and financial agent. But it was capitalized primarily by private investors, and it was established to facilitate private as well as public business.

 

Willing retained the confidence of the elite community that owned and used his bank. By the late 1790s, the bank was responsible for most commercial lending in the country. Willing oversaw its vast operations with a punctilious vigilance that earned him the nickname "the old regulator." He was, Mr. Vague writes, "a colossus presiding over the financial landscape of the new republic."

To read the complete article (subscription required), see:
‘The Banker Who Made America' Review: A Willing Servant (https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/the-banker-who-made-america-review-a-willing-servant-5387d9d1)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NEW BOOK: THE BANKER WHO MADE AMERICA (https://www.coinbooks.org/v29/esylum_v29n06a07.html)

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