Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1842 edition. Excerpt: ...in France, was under the necessity of ordering back from Amsterdam monies which had been sent thither for the purpose of being shipped to America. If he had not taken this step, the bills of exchange drawn by order of congress must have been protested, and a vital stab given to the credit of the government in Europe. At home, the greatest public as well as private distress existed; public credit had gone to wreck, and the enemy built their most sanguine hopes of overcoming us, upon this circumstance; and the treasury was so much in arrears to the servants in the public offices, that many of them could not, without payment, perform their duties, but must have gone to jail for debts they had contracted to enable them to live. To so low an ebb was the public treasury reduced, that some of the members of the board of war declared to Mr. Morris that they had not the means of sending an express to the army. The pressing distress for provision among the troops, has already been mentioned. The paper bills of credit were sunk so low in value, as to require a burdensome mass of them to pay for an article of clothing." But the face of things soon began to change through the exertions of Mr. Morris. Without attempting to give the history of his wise and judicious manag..menu, it will be sufficient to say, in the language of an elegant historian of the American war, "certainly the Americans owed, and still owe, as much acknowledgment to the financial operations of Robert Morris, as to the negociations of Benjamin Franklin, or even the arms of George Washington." To Mr. Morris, also, the country was indebted for the establishment of the bank of North America, and for all the public benefits which resulted from that institution. By means...
