Meet Thomas Willing, ‘The Banker Who Made America’

This colonial banker opposed the Declearation of Independence, yet helped to stabilize the new United States financially.

"The Banker Who Made America: Thomas Willing and the Rise of the American Financial Aristocracy" by Richard Vague. Polity)

In the 1976 movie “All the President’s Men,” Hal Holbrook’s character Deep Throat advised investigative reporter Bob Woodward to “follow the money” to get the facts on Watergate. Author Richard Vague adopted that same philosophy in researching Thomas Willing, one of the most powerful figures in colonial times but a relatively unknown figure today—until now.

Willing may be unfamiliar to many, but as presented in Vague’s expansive biography, “The Banker Who Made America,” he was a financial visionary and one of the most influential political figures of the 18th century. Willing and Alexander Hamilton together helped establish a proper financial foundation in the early days of the Republic.