 Good afternoon, everyone. I'm John Davino, the president of the board of the East Carolina Homestead, and I welcome you to our February edition of our Enrichment Lecture Series. Today we have author and historian, Willis Farron Randall, who will discuss his book, The Founder's Fortunes, How Money Shaped the Birth of America. Before we begin, I would like to thank our sponsors. Without them, we would not be able to do many of the things that we do at the homestead. Broughtoncars.com, 802 Cars, Vermont Humanities, AARP Vermont, and Homelight Investment. At this time, I would like to introduce our speaker, Willis Thuron Randall. He is a distinguished scholar in history and professor emeritus at Champlain College. Prior to academia, he worked for 17 years as an investigative reporter, during which time he garnered the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize, the Loeb Award, and the John Hancock Award. Will completed his graduate studies at Princeton University before moving to Vermont to write and teach history. He has appeared frequently on C-SPAN, the History Channel, as well as being interviewed on National Public Radio. He is the author of numerous books on early American history, many of which I have read, including Six Founding Father Biographies. Hopefully, many of you have read Ethan Allen, His Life in Times, which is available, by the way, through the Ethan Allen Homesteads Museum's gift shop. Today he will share his accounts from his latest book, The Founder's Fortunes, How Money Shaked the Birth of America. Will? Thank you, John. I'm honored to be in this particular spot to keep this series going, which I think is so worthwhile. So it's always a pleasure to talk to the members in the audience of the Ethan Allen Homestead, which I've been doing I guess now for about 15 years off and on. I want to explain why I wrote a book on The Founding Father's Fortunes. I want to start with the decoration of independence and the final lines of it, in which they pledged our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Our lives is not a question if the leaders of the revolution had failed, they would have been taken to England, tried for treason, and subject to the ritual execution of the British hanging, drawing and quartering, and they were aware of this because several of the members of the Continental Congress who were there, signing the document had been to London, and to pass through the city's gates. You would see high up on posts, the skulls of three Scottish earls, who had led a revolt, only 30 years before. So, they were aware of the possible penalty to their lives. But what were the fortunes. They pledged their fortunes. And that's really the subject of this book. What were their fortunes, what did they expect. How did it work out for them. How did it affect the Revolutionary War, and the first generation of the United States. So I want to talk about the impact in very personal terms, and their fortunes so I chose a half a dozen of the well known figures, starting with Benjamin Franklin but also talking about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. Sam Adams, John Hancock, and Robert Morris. We may know those names, most of them. Benjamin Franklin is probably the best known American worldwide. When the hit Hamilton Broadway play was written, the playwright had a song about Benjamin Franklin, but he took it out, because he said, anything with Benjamin Franklin and that he'll take over. So, so Hamilton the song that the play doesn't have anything about Benjamin Franklin so I think I'll try to fill some of that gap. Franklin, new chapter of the book shows him arriving in Philadelphia, a 17 year old boy. This is part of that. This is part of the story that we all know, because Franklin wrote an autobiography that school kids and children have read or had to read for a couple of centuries. He wrote he wrote about himself at first and his struggles as early life, but he arrived with about enough money to buy two loaves of bread. His clothes were filthy and soaking he had rode passengers across the Delaware River. He saw people well dressed people heading toward a church and he went in and went to sleep on a pew. That's how he started his career in Philadelphia. And I really trace how he used his his great skills a printer, it learned printing from his brother's press in Boston. And he could get a job in Philadelphia which was the largest town in the colonies. At the time, the largest town in the British colonies was not much bigger than one peel year, about 10,000 people. But he signed on with the printer he learned the business so well that within a few years he was able to start his own newspaper. And from that base of printing, he was able to become a publisher. Publishing sermons and hymns of clergymen that came through most especially George Whitfield. So he became a success he began introducing novels that had been written in England. He made partnerships with other printers and other towns. He printed the books and he sent them unbound to the other printers who bound them. He even got himself appointed postmaster of Philadelphia and that of postmaster of the British colonies, which saved him the postage. So he could distribute his books free of charge, and he built up a fortune by reinvesting what he made from printing and publishing in real estate. By the time of the Revolutionary War he owned 89 rental properties in Philadelphia alone. And that wasn't the basis of his fame the basis of his fame was to fill a gap that the Penn family would who owned fellow Pennsylvania were not filling and that was to defend the city. So he first springs into prominence by organizing a militia and building forts during King George's war. He did that again when the Revolutionary War came but he was he was a genius at organizing, but he also had the business side. So he was printing the manual of arms. He was selling the weapons. He was selling instructions to soldiers even as he raised an army. He built two forts with his volunteers, one that was close enough to protect his house and his properties. So he started as the most excess politician in Pennsylvania, and also one of America's wealthiest men by the time he was 45 years old, because he was so well known. The Pennsylvania Quakers, control the assembly of the colony, sent him to England where he acted as what we would call a lobbyist and ambassador combined. Pennsylvania and then for four other counties. So he became the best well, the best known American abroad, which, which brings us to George Washington, George Washington met Franklin. When both of them wound up heading West and from Philadelphia with the British Army of General James Braddock, which would be absolutely destroyed Washington was the only officer. He was along as a volunteer militia officer. He was the only officer not to be killed or wounded. But he met Franklin, when Franklin was trying to raise supplies wagons horses for Braddock's army, and the Pennsylvania farmers did not want to give credit to the, to the King of England because they thought they'd never be repaid be repaid. So Ben Franklin's brilliant idea basically was to say that there were hussars British hussars cavalry, which would come to the farms, take the horses and the wagons, etc. He was the logistical man, and Washington turned out to be the bookkeeper on the expedition, secretary to Braddock, the man who paid the soldiers paid the contractors. He was charming young affable and Braddock, an old armchair general with no battlefield experience actually took the advice of George Washington, and split his forces, and when he went to attack the French, and what is now Pittsburgh, which was a disaster because the forces split. The second column cannot reinforce first. So George Washington's military career would not be that thing that successful until the Revolutionary War. But they got to know each other, and that would be a lifelong important friendship. Washington himself had been born, not poor. But his mother was widowed three times. She was a single mother we would say now, raising George and his brothers and sisters. She was extremely strict, and he got on the wrong side of her seriously by borrowing her best horse and writing it and injuring it until it had to be put down. So they never really got along very well after that. He didn't get to go to school regularly but he found in the shed the surveying tools that his father had left, and he taught himself surveying, and it turns out George Washington was a math whiz. I had a professor at St. Michael's College evaluate his math skills and say that he had at least as much math skill as any math major in a college today, which would help him with artillery. And that was one thing, logistics. He was extremely popular. Even in one defeat after another, and became the leading American officer on the side of the British who's actually briefly a British general before the Revolution began. But after five years of frontier warfare against the French. It was time to settle down, fix up the, the house he'd been left by his half brother, we call it Mount Vernon. It wasn't much of a house that when it when Washington took over, and he decided it was time to marry. I heard that there was a wealthy widow Martha Washington, and he stopped by on a road to Williamsburg and stopped by to offer his condolences well he offered them very very well. And so the serving went out to tell his, his enslaved companion to go home take the horses, and George Washington spent the night. The next day they were engaged. And I depict, and not only the wedding. The good things about the wedding. But also the problems that were already beginning because George Washington had to order everything, as any American did. He was manufactured from England, and his suit for the wedding arrived six months late, for example, whenever he ordered clothing for Martha, it never fit. Americans were sort of in bondage to the merchants and the bankers of England. They, and the British kept tightening the laws against the Americans. So they had fewer and fewer privileges. There were no banks. There was no American currency. Washington had to buy hose and rakes and shovels from England for his field workers. He had to buy clothing from England, because nobody was making it in America. And as time went on he became extremely aggravated with the British system. You had, because of the bank, you had to spend, you had to spend notes, send notes to a banker of yours, a broker in England. And it just so happened that he sent one note, and three people who owed him money, sent notes at the same time. There's were no good. There's bounced and so did his. So when George Washington managed in effect to bounce a check for the first time he was in debt. And I think that such a shock that he decided to study the financial system of the time. And first thing he did was to see how much he was paying to the British to ship his crops warehouse them process them pay taxes pay duties, and he found out that the British were getting 75% of his profits. So he changed his business model from growing tobacco which was labor intensive to growing wheat, which didn't go to England, but went to surrounding farms and towns, and eventually he began building his own ships to ship wheat. As far as way far away as Italy in the Caribbean. So he was a very successful business man by the time the revolution came. He was the best known founding father after Franklin, and Washington was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, again, was not from a wealthy family, not none of the founding fathers. And Jefferson, like Washington, I lost his father when it's only 11 years old. Jefferson was sent off to a private school by that I mean there was a minister who was a pretty good teacher who had a sort of a wing on his house where he took in boarding students, and he was their teacher. So Jeffers was an avid student he loved to study. He almost loved to overstudy. He spent seven years studying law before he set out to make a nickel as a lawyer, as opposed to Patrick Henry, who spent two weeks with two books he borrowed from Jefferson and never even opened. Patrick Henry was a born arbiter, Thomas Jefferson was not, but he was a careful scholar. Jefferson fell in love with a beautiful young woman in Williamsburg, where he went to join the House of Burgesses, Virginia government, and he found they had something very much in common love of music. When he tried to play the violin he managed to get something like a Strativarius violin for about $500 our money, when the owner went home to England in disgust with the Americans. So he tried to play music and so he tried to order a specially made piano forte for her from England. But by doing so he was violating the treaty that the planters and merchants for making not the treating but agreement to stop importing British goods until they stopped raising taxes and regulations. He married the daughter of a slave trader who left a fortune, but also a fortunate debt. And for a wedding present. They wound up with wagon loads of slaves just arrived from Africa. And so Jefferson would have to start building and feeding housing for them, even as he slowly built Monticello which is probably the slowest construction project since the medieval cathedrals. It took him 54 years to finish the house, because he was always playing broke. He was going broke because farmers live from harvest to harvest if there was a drought there was no income, he went deeper into debt to the English. But but Jefferson could write, and that's what he really wanted to do. He gave up his law practice, because no one was paying him. He never went into a courthouse again, after 1775, but he went up into his house on the mountain Monticello, and began writing the first long explanation of the American complaints against the British. It got read by other Virginia lawmakers, and he was sent to Philadelphia to take part in the second Continental Congress. By the time he arrived he was already famous for what he had written. So he's the one that was chosen on the committee with Adams and Franklin, and a few others to draft the Declaration of Independence, which he did without consulting any books, mostly from his own mind and learning. And a few local newspapers, but in three weeks he crafted the Declaration of Independence, and then Congress set to work amending it, cutting out something like 85 words phrases etc, including the clause that would have abolished slavery. So the anti slavery language and the Declaration of Independence hit the cutting room floor. And Jefferson in disgust as soon as he could when packed Virginia to become a leader of his, what he considered his country, there was no United States. So he was very much the leading Virginian for much of the rest of his life until until he was sent to Paris. He was sent to Paris soon after the duck. He was sent to Paris soon after Benjamin Franklin was sent there to come up with a treaty from the King of France to support secretly support the American Revolution, and lend money and weapons. So, I devote a fair amount of this book to how America got weapons to carry on the Revolution, eight year long war, and how eventually the French sent even cannon, all the way from France in convoys, unloaded into small boats that brought them to all along the coast and cannon from France that Franklin had arranged to get showed up at Saratoga for the famous battle there, and the British were vanquished by arms from France, and men from America. I devote a fair amount of time to that relationship, and how our diplomatic clandestine diplomatic missions worked in in in Europe, and how we got. We didn't have any money we didn't have any bank we didn't have any currency. How are we supposed to pay for these loans to buy the weapons can and etc. Well, the man who came up with that idea is called as Robert Mars. He comes known as the financier of the Revolution born in England, his father was a tobacco trader who brought tobacco from the Chesapeake region to England. But Robert Morris when he was 15 became a clerk in a Philadelphia counting house they were called very young he became a full partner, and he was an expert in setting up what we would call international trade. He had wonderful connections for trade. And so when the Revolution came along. He decided to use those contacts to set up, not only agreements with the French, where we would pay for weapons and loans with our future tobacco crops. The interesting side lights to this to me was, why did the French decide to throw in with the Americans the French had a monarchy why would one monarchy want to go up against another monarchy the whole idea of Revolution was not in anybody's mind Well, there are some obvious reasons I guess the British had defeated the French, the French would want revenge. The French would want Canada back that it surrendered to the British after the French and Indian War, but the little fact that I stumbled on that explains a lot was that the French were hooked addicted on something called snuff. A very good quality tobacco that would be ground to pop powder, and they would put it on the side of their hand, or hold a pinch with an index finger and thumb, put it to their nostrils, inhale it and then sneeze. Well, snuff was the rage in Europe. The problem for the French is they didn't have any colonies that grew tobacco. So they had to pay the British the enemy for the snuff. When I say it was the rage it was the rage all through the court of the king. And if the king liked you he would give you a snuff box, and we'll come back to that a little later. But people walked around snorting and sniffing and sharing flavored snuff with each other. And didn't seem to be able to live without it. Robert Morris figured out that he could use orders of tobacco for the from the future, we would call them futures today to get credit to buy weapons and secure the help of the French. So Morris, who had built up a fortune in international trade donated his best ship to George Washington began to build ships, and took over the first Navy committee of the Continental Congress. So the man who launched the American Navy was a tobacco merchant born in England named Robert Morris. He put his, his money into building ships called privateers and privateers were our, our private Navy we didn't continental Navy was not very, very much maybe 20 ships, but there were hundreds of privately built and crude and owned ships that attacked British ships and attacked British commerce and brought the ships intact in deport to be auctioned off and the profits were shared all the way down from George Washington who got a 10% cut of the loot from these to pay for his troops and his army, all the to the lowest cabin boy, or powder boy on each of those ships. So a young boy could sign on one of these ships and wind up owning it and eventually own several of them. So, Robert Morris became the first American billionaire by dealing in ships and in private area. He was the man who became financier of the revolution because the problem that the Continental Congress never overcame was money, because there was no currency. There were no American coins. In fact, Americans had to walk around with a purse with nine different coins for nine different countries. Because they didn't have one of their own his Spanish dollars Portuguese coins Dutch coin guilders pound sterling French francs etc, a very awkward system. So what what Morris came up with was a system, which we call banking, he invented the first bank of North America. He took as this youthful advisor, a young officer with Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and between them, first they committed formed our first commercial bank. And then the Bank of the United States, when the constant, the Constitution was written 10 years after the revolution, but the big problem Americans had personally, and as a government was how to pay for things. How to come up with a coinage in my book I have a section of illustrations, including a continental dollar, which really wasn't worth the paper the parchment it was printed on. They were devalued so much. Alexander Hamilton as a colonel on Washington staff was making 60 continental dollars a year. And now that's that's really was worth about $5. And instead of taking the salary and buying a horse, which he needed. He bought a dancing ticket to come to one of the dances Martha Washington and the officers why put on when they weren't out fighting. And then he borrowed a horse. So he was also a genius. And finance was the problem money was the problem and when the revolution was over with the help of France, after the great victories at Saratoga and Yorktown, with the help of the French weapons and French gold to pay for the supplies for the Americans. When that was all over. He collapsed because there was there was no real money in the colonies. And that left the problem of what do you do with thousands of armed men in the continental army. They were already muting against Congress because they weren't being paid. And Robert Morris came up with the idea of using his own personal fortune. And he sat one weekend with an order of large order of special paper, cutting up 6000 pieces of paper into notes. Robert versus personal notes paid off Washington's army. So the men could go home with little money, their dignity and without lining up and shooting the members of Congress. So it's Robert Morris really, who bankroll not only the revolutionary government, but personally paid off George Washington's troops. So, Robert Morris is a fascinating character in part because after the revolution was over. The British didn't honor the peace treaty. They wouldn't leave the Great Lakes. They wouldn't forgive any of the debts, and they actually cut off the United States trade with our neighbors, Canada, the islands in the Caribbean, with the French and Portuguese and Europe. So we really blockaded in peacetime. And Robert Morris couldn't ship tobacco or make any money from trade. So he made a terrible mistake of switching to speculating and land. And if the French were crazy about tobacco, Americans were crazy about land. There were 24 different land companies competing with each other to get millions of acres of the frontier over the mountains, where we are right now, which was considered out of bounds by the British government. It was to be settlers were not allowed to go west of the ridge of the Appalachians, but they all expected eventually to become land rich and Robert Morris was one of those who tried to switch to land speculation, but nobody had any money. The founding fathers were all by this time land rich and cash poor. They couldn't sell land. Nobody had the money for rent. It got so bad that George Washington who owns something like 100,000 acres along the Potomac and all the way to through Ohio to could not collect rent from former soldiers, his own veterans, they couldn't pay him. And when a few of them wouldn't pay him, he actually took them to court and evicted them, which is one of the sad notes of his career, but land rich and cash poor. So Robert Morris actually was one of three signers of the Declaration of Independence, who would go bankrupt. And if you were bankrupt at that time, what it meant is, you went to prison, debtors prison. Robert Morris, financier of the revolution signer the Declaration of Independence was escorted by the sheriff of Philadelphia to the prune street jail, where he spent three years in debtors prison. So that was one of the shocks that I found two other signers also who had speculated land lost everything wound up bankrupt and also wound up in debtors prison. So what really prompted me to write this book was reading a long time ago a theory by someone named Charles beard Columbia University professor, writing in 1913, asserting that the founding fathers were in it for the money. He, he was writing at a time when socialism was beginning to sweep the country in opposition to the robber barons, when there was terrific inequality of wealth, terrible labor conditions etc. So it was on the edge of a revolutionary period again in 1913, one beard with his famous hypothesis said the founding fathers were in it for the money. So he, he tried to topple the founders from their pedestals and while they were down on the ground, he went through their pockets, and he found. And from that conclusion, he drew the conclusion that they were in it for the money. And what I've done is study who it was who attended the Constitutional Convention, who wrote the rules who wrote the new government, wrote the Constitution, and it led to our whole economic system. And what I found is a 55 delegates five had more stocks and bonds than the other 50 combined. Most of them had very little money, and very little invested in financial instruments bonds that could profit from a new system with a new bank and a new currency. So for example, there's a gentleman named Gilman from New Hampshire member of Congress, he'd owned a general store until he got a job in Congress. I found the chief justice of New Jersey, his entire stock portfolio was bringing him $10 a year when Hamilton created the new bank of the United States and replaced all the old war bonds with new United States bonds. And his profits went up to $12 and 45 cents a year instead of $10. So you have to be very careful with grand theories in the light today of the thousands of documents we have. When beard wrote the only had records of some of the states. I've had the benefit of a lifetime of going through archives and doing the research for biographies and what I've learned. So as an investigator reporter and as an historian, you can find just about anything on the on the public record. And that is if the public record is kept intact. As to Beards theory. Well, he created the Progressive School of History, and for generations that impelled graduate students historians to look at the dark side of American politics, and of the founding fathers. And I think you have to examine the evidence before you cast either darkness or light. And that's what I've set out to do with this book. I think the best known of the founding fathers today may have surpassed even George Washington invention Franklin, and that's Alexander Hamilton. Because of a hit Broadway play that is still running, even be after COVID it's stages up again, the audiences are packing in and Alexander Hamilton, and his story are probably the best known founding father story today. Even if you have seen the play and you know the story, you might be surprised at what happened after the end of it. And that is, after Hamilton was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr. He had so little money. The man who had founded the Bank of the United States, her entire economic system, who set it up was so honest that he was broke. So broke when he died that his colleagues, his friends had to take up a collection to pay for his funeral. So, if, if you need an example of how honest these men were as they pursued prosperity for their country, I think there's really none better than Alexander Hamilton. Our system I think has thrived because of the enters the enterprise of private citizens who put it aside in the public interest. And that's the story of the founders and their fortunes, and how their money has shaped the policies, the institution, the declaration of independence, the two most important of our documents, how they got the country off to a good start, even at the, at the cost of of their own fortunes. They were fortunate because they had created the United States, but they were, they were unfortunate if they were only setting out to make money. The founders fortunes, how money shaped the birth of America is, is my 12th book and I'm going to keep digging and finding out all I can about that generation. Thanks very much. Well, thank you, Will. Again, you shared several anecdotes in your book and in your talk today from your book. And I have just finished reading the book myself about two days ago. And as in many of your other books, you have a knack of bringing out anecdotes that even though we have all read a lot about the American Revolution, you seem to be able to find human interest stories there that really make the story much more meaningful. So I appreciate what you do there. And thank you for sharing your time with us today. I want to remind her to everyone. If you are watching this talk on Sunday, February 20, immediately after this program ends, you would be able to go to the link which many of you have received the zoom link and join will in a question and answer period. If you haven't had that zoom link, you can send me an email at the address that I have a fully hopefully up on the screen definitely 13 at Comcast.net, and I will send you that link. If all else fails, give me a call at my home number which is 802-863-5403 operators will be standing by to help you to get into the question and answer period. Well, thank you very much for joining us today with this great talk. Thank you very much john.