Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich

When you think of the founding fathers, you think of men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin—exceptional minds and matchless statesmen who led the colonies to a seemingly impossible victory over the British and established the constitutional and legal framework for our democratic government. But the American Revolution was about far more than freedom and liberty. It was about economics as well. 

Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen here chronicle how a different group of founding fathers forged the wealth and institutions necessary to transform the American colonies from a diffuse alliance of contending business interests into one cohesive economic superpower. From Alexander Hamilton to Andrew Jackson, the authors focus on the lives of nine Americans in particular—some famous, some unknown, others misunderstood, but all among our nation’s financial founding fathers. Such men were instrumental in creating and nurturing a financial system that drove economic growth in the nascent United States because they were quick to realize that wealth was as crucial as the Constitution in securing the blessings of liberty and promoting the general welfare. The astonishing economic development made possible by our financial founding fathers was indispensable to the preservation of national unity and of support for a government that was then still a profoundly radical and delicate political experiment.  

Grand in scope and vision, Financial Founding Fathers is an entertaining and inspiring history of the men who made America rich and steered her toward greatness.

Robert E. Wright is clinical professor of economics in the Stern School of Business at New York University. He is the author of Origins of Commercial Banking in America, 1750–1800; Hamilton Unbound: Finance and the Creation of the American Republic; and Wealth of Nations Rediscovered: Integration and Expansion in American Financial Markets, 1780–1850.

David J. Cowen is a Wall Street veteran and independent scholar in the New York metropolitan area. He is the author of The Origins and Economic Impact of the First Bank of the United States, 1791–1797.