The Founding Fathers would be proud

In 11 days, The Donald returns bringing peace and prosperity with him

Jan 09, 2025

The Declaration of Independence ended, “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Money they had. After the war, many did not. For example, during the Revolutionary War, George Washington lost half his fortune.

John Hancock inherited a shipping business and a chain of retail stores that were worth millions and made him one of the richest men in colonial America. He put his money where his huge signature was by spending 100,000 pounds sterling on artillery alone.

He fled Boston in 1776 and lost his home but not his fortune. He escaped to Philadelphia and helped finance the revolution.

As for Washington, he was land rich and became wealthy when he married Martha. How does the saying go? First in war, first in peace; he married a widow. He financed a network of 500 spies (including a Surber) and dipped into his wallet to keep the revolution going.

The Brits raided Washington’s property and his net worth by the end of the war had been cut in half. He became president in part because he needed the salary. He was land rich and cash poor again.

Big Ben Franklin was the Elon Musk of the 18th century.

Apprenticed to an older brother, he learned the printing business. A successful publisher, he retired from printing at age 41 to concentrate on his other enterprises.

He was a founder of University of Pennsylvania. He helped create the first hospital in America. He invented the lightning rod, which saved many lives over the years. He invented the Franklin stove. And so on and so forth.

His support of free speech was indisputable.

The Continental Congress sent Franklin and John Adams to Paris to get French aid. He was a rock star in his beaver skin hat—something he never wore in America.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, the Brits ransacked his home.

The fellow who really lost everything was Robert Morris.

Willard Sterne Randall reported:

Robert Morris, one of America’s early millionaires, was known as the chief financier of the American revolution. The illegitimate son of a Liverpool tobacco trader grew up in Maryland before becoming a youthful partner in an international trading house in Philadelphia. He grew rich building ships, cramming them with Chesapeake tobacco and trading it at an enormous profit for goods from Europe and beyond.
A Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, he received its authorization to create a navy committee and commission a squadron of ships to raid British commerce. Congress paid him to build two of its first four ships, including what its captain, John Barry, called “the finest ship in America.” Morris invested heavily in privateering ships that disrupted British military and trade vessels, and he used his global contacts to help import munitions for the war effort, earning millions in commissions.
With no banks in the British colonies, Continental currency had no backing and had become virtually worthless. After Congress asked Morris to become superintendent of finance, he immediately set up the first Bank of the United States. Selling shares and making short-term loans, Morris made private credit the foundation of public credit.
At war’s end, Washington refused to send the troops home without back pay, but the Treasury was empty. Morris said the only solution was to issue notes backed by his own credit. He personally signed 6,000 notes stamped “Public Debt” in denominations of $5 to $100.
In the postwar depression, he speculated unsuccessfully in frontier lands and became bankrupt. He spent three years in a debtors’ prison only blocks from Independence Hall.

Everything he had worked for all his life was gone in the defense of liberty.

That he is almost forgotten today saddens me. But the nation he helped build lives on. The sacrifices did not end with the war.

In a piece for Time magazine, Randall wrote, “Alexander Hamilton, who created the financial system of the U.S., was so broke when he died in a duel that his friends had to take up a collection for his funeral.”

The musical got it wrong. He wasn’t black or Puerto Rican. I don’t know how well he sang. But when the nation needed him most, he was there in war and in peace.

This posting is in response to Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, who said, “Trump is creating a cabinet full of billionaires because his second term is going to about screwing all of us to help make his billionaire friends even more filthy rich.

“It’s oligarchy. Not democracy.”

Of course it is not a democracy. No sane person wants that. A democracy is mob rule that gets innocent men lynched. We have something worse, a bureaucracy that crushes the common man in the tyranny of the common good.

The best example is James Edgerton Sr., a dairy farmer. He was the inspiration for Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech painting.

The physical model was Carl Hess, but Edgerton’s speech to the school board on Arlington, Vermont, was the inspiration because he stood up against the crowd to publicly oppose raising taxes to replace a burned down high school.

Greg Sukiennik of the Manchester Journal wrote 75 years after the painting was published, “Edgerton had lost his entire herd of dairy cattle to a brucellosis outbreak. Government-mandated culling to prevent the spread of the bacteria, found in unpasteurized milk of infected animals, had spared but one heifer on the family farm. No cows meant no milk—and no milk check.

“Edgerton Sr. had been an active supporter of education in Arlington, but facing economic disaster, he was concerned about his ability to afford the tax increase that would fund a new school. And so he stood up that night and voiced his concern.”

The same government that ordered him to kill his herd raised his taxes.

Don Surber

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