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Latest comment: 15 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
William Bingham was known as the richest man in America. Bingham was only twenty-eight years old when he achieved richest-man status. He made his fortune in three different ventures. First, he ran a privateer operation in the Caribbean during the American revolution for Robert Morris. After the revolution, he bought up any worthless Continental currency he could accumulate, and profited greatly when Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton persuaded the Congress to redeem the currency at par. Next he invested enough gold bars to finance the Louisiana Purchase for Thomas Jefferson, as Napoleon had insisted on gold for payment. He also invested in the area in upstate New York now called Binghamton, and 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km2) in the future State of Maine. Westward migration turned toward Ohio rather than north once the British prohibition on colonizing past the Allegheny mountains was lifted.
This has several flaws.
How did anybody know who the richest man in America was in 1780? It would make you a target for the British and the Congress both.
If we do know, what's our source that it wasn't Robert Morris the Financier? (Or Washington or Byrd of VA, or Livingstone of NY?)
More importantly, two of these ventures are entirely after 1780, and the third largely is.
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