Thomas Fitzsimons, of Pennsylvania, was intimately identified with the mercantile interests of his city. He is described as “an extensive merchant,” and his family connections were with people engaged in his own line. He married the daughter of Robert Meade, and established business relations with his brother-in-law “who was one of the prominent merchants and shipowners of Philadelphia.”[[189]] It is recorded of him that “His influence in the country and especially among merchants was second to none.... Mr. Fitzsimons was one of those efficient and able men who laid the foundations of the commercial and financial systems of the United States.”[[190]] It is not surprising to find that he was also a “conspicuous advocate of a protective tariff.”[[191]]
Like his prominent associates in Philadelphia, Mr. Fitzsimons combined mercantile and financial operations. He was “for a long time a director in the Bank of North America and President of the Insurance Company of North America, in which latter office he continued until his death.”[[192]] Indeed he was so extensively involved in the speculations of Robert Morris that his resources were seriously crippled by the failure of that gentleman.[[193]]
His intimate knowledge of finance and his immediate business connections doubtless invited him to deal in public securities; and Maclay sets him down among the speculators as follows: “The Speaker gives me this day his opinion that Mr. Fitzsimons was concerned in this business [of speculating] as well as Mr. Morris, and that they stayed away (from Congress) for the double purpose of pursuing their speculation and remaining unsuspected.”[[194]] It is probable that Maclay’s version is correct, for in 1791 Fitzsimon’s agent, Michael Conner, presented for him certificates of 1778 to the amount of nearly $12,000 nominal value which he had evidently bought up.[[195]] He appears also on the records of the 6 per cents and the threes for small amounts, and his operations extended beyond his native state.[[196]]
Fitzsimons was also involved extensively in land speculations with Robert Morris, for the latter in a letter of October 9, 1795, writes to James Marshall, their European agent, to the effect that Fitzsimons and he had put on sale in London “about 360,000 acres of land situated in Georgia.”[[197]] But as pointed out above Fitzsimons’ relations with Morris cost him dearly and snatched away from him all that he had made in public securities and more besides.
Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania, in the midst of his varied activities as printer, diplomat, statesman, and philosopher, managed withal by thrift and investments to accumulate a considerable fortune for his day, about $150,000.[[198]] At his great age on the assembling of the Convention, it would hardly have been practicable for him to have engaged in investments in public securities had he been so inclined; and he died in 1790, before the funding system went into effect. A short time before his death, however, he was interested in land speculations;[[199]] and in his will he bequeaths “lands near the Ohio” and three thousand acres granted by the State of Georgia to him.[[200]] He does not appear to have held any public paper.
Nicholas Gilman, of New Hampshire, was in public life from his youth until his death. He entered the army at the age of twenty-one, and after the War he served in Congress and in other public positions. He does not seem to have been a man of much weight either in private life or the Convention. A French observer remarks of his election as a member of the Federal Convention: “Cette circonstance prouve qu’il n’y a pas un grand choix à faire dans cet Etat, ou que du moins les hommes des plus sensés et les plus habiles ne sont pas assés riches pour accepter une place publique.”[[201]]
In financial matters, there was no doubt of Gilman’s ability. He managed to accumulate a considerable amount of public securities before the meeting of the Convention, and apparently added to his holdings later. In the Nicholas Gilman papers preserved in the Library of Congress there is a list of certificates of the liquidated debt to the amount of $5400.67, declared to be the property of Nicholas Gilman, on December 9, 1786. This paper was bought up by Gilman, for the list of original holders is given. A receipt bearing the date of June 29, 1787, preserved in the above papers, shows Nicholas Gilman to have received interest on $6654.79 of the public debt. He and the various members of the Gilman family of New Hampshire were extensively engaged in transactions in public securities.[[202]] One entry in the Treasury books of the new government shows Nicholas Gilman to have $11,021.95 worth of 6 per cent Deferred Stock;[[203]] and he supplemented his purely fiscal operations by dealing in military certificates (that is, soldier’s paper which could be bought from necessitous holders at a fraction of its value), and in public lands.[[204]]
While Gilman was quick to look after his own interests, his devotion to his native state made him anxious for her towns to participate in the general prosperity enjoyed by holders of public securities after the formation of the Constitution. On September 3, 1787, he had already discovered the probable effect of the proposed Constitution, not yet ready to lay before the people, upon the securities of the government. On that day he wrote to the President of New Hampshire advising the towns to buy up public securities at the prevailing low price in order to have paper to transfer to the federal government in lieu of taxes and other charges. He says: “I find many of the states are making provision to buy in their quota’s of the final settlements, and I must ardently wish that the towns in New Hampshire may be so far awake to a sense of their interest as to part with their property freely in order to purchase their several quota’s of the public securities now in circulation, while they are to be had at the present low rate; which is in this place, at two shillings and six pence on the pound. If they suffer the present opportunity to pass and we should be so fortunate as to have an efficient Government, they will be obliged to buy them of brokers, hawkers, speculators, and jockeys at six or perhaps eight times their present value.”[[205]]
Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, was born in Marblehead in 1744. His father was a merchant of good standing and comfortable estate. His biographer states that after his graduation from Harvard, Elbridge “turned his attention to that line of life in which his father’s prosperity seemed to hold out the greatest inducements to a young and enterprising mind; and he plunged at once into the most active pursuits of commerce. His fairness, correctness, and assiduity, and the extensive knowledge of commercial concerns which he acquired from his father’s experience and his own exertions were crowned with good fortune, and while yet young in business and in years he acquired a considerable estate and a very high standing at Marblehead.”[[206]]
As a merchant, Gerry was closely in touch with the needs of commerce, and was deeply impressed with the necessity for national resistance to the discriminations of Great Britain. In April, 1784, he presented a report to Congress in which he called attention to the fact that Great Britain had adopted regulations destructive to American commerce in the West India Islands, and that these measures of discrimination were growing into a system. “Unless the United States in Congress assembled,” he urged, “shall be vested with powers competent to the protection of commerce, they can never command reciprocal advantages in trade; and without these, our foreign commerce must decline and eventually be annihilated.” The West Indian trade affected New England particularly, and Gerry is thus reflecting a local interest in demanding a national system of commercial protection.[[207]]