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Robert Morris: The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution
By William Graham Sumner 2000/03 - Beard Books
A financial history of the American Revolution and one of the few books written on the subject. The work adds considerably to the body of knowledge known at the time it was first published. Publisher Comments
Originally published in 1891, this two-volume work combines the biography of Robert Morris, the Philadelphia financier who became Superintendent of Finance during the American colonial period, with a financial history of the American Revolution. While not an exhaustive treatment of the subject, the book adds considerably to the body of knowledge known at the time it was written. A fascinating irony is that Robert Morris, the trustee of American finances, spent three years in prison near the end of his life for personal debts.
No book review available
William Graham Sumner was born in Paterson, New Jersey on October 30, 1840. An American sociologist and political economist, he was schooled in Hartford's public school, entering Yale in 1859. Between 1863 and 1866 Sumner studied theology at Göttingen and at Oxford, before returning to Yale for almost three years as a classics tutor. He was ordained an Episcopal minister and from 1872 was professor of political and social science at Yale. In economics he advocated a policy of extreme laissez-faire, strongly opposing any government measures that he thought interfered with the natural economics of trade. In A History of American Currency (1874), his first book, Sumner focused on the money issue, then agitated by calls for the retirement of the Civil War "greenbacks" and later the establishment of a "bimetal" standard of gold and silver. Although he paid little attention to the demonetarization of silver in 1873 (a move critics later called the "Crime of '73) he was As a sociologist he did valuable work in charting the evolution of human customs—folkways and mores. He concluded that the power of these forces, developed in the course of human evolution, rendered useless any attempts at social reform. He also originated the concept of ethnocentrism, a term now commonly used, to designate attitudes of superiority about one’s own group in comparison with others. His major work was Folkways (1907). In 1890 Sumner fell victim to what was termed a "nervous illness," the result of a punishing work schedule that had resulted in sixty articles and two books in the previous three years. Although he resumed his duties at Yale in the fall of 1892, the collapse took a permanent toll on his energies and output. Between 1876 and 1890, he had published some 108 articles and seven books. In the five years following his breakdown, he wrote "only" four articles and two books. Although in 1896 he added another dozen articles and a book, he averaged but two articles a year during the rest of his career. Whatever his intellectual shortcomings, Sumner's hardheaded honesty and bold address of underlying issues has kept alive interest in his thought and career in recent decades. He died in April 10, 1910.
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distressed to see leading classical economists support international bimetallism, among them his Yale colleague Francis Amasa Walker. Holding his fire, he initially called only for a sound currency, but in 1878 finally attacked bimetallism publicly.
Other Beard Books by William G. Sumner
