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Who Bankrolled the American Revolution? | The New Yorker

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Our history too often sidesteps the question of finances. But sonorous ideals don’t keep an army supplied with uniforms, guns, and grub.

Save this story Save this story “Money makes the world go round,” the cynical old maxim, and Broadway show tune, runs. “Follow the money,” a maxim minted in the film “All the President’s Men,” has become just as familiar. Yet in practice we rarely follow the money far enough to discover how it actually moved, or who set it in motion. The financing of the material conditions of history—how buses are hired for a great march; who pays for the guerrillas’ guns and grub—mostly remains opaque in our chronicles. When we look at the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, the last questio

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