Girard was too busy to do much original investigating, for he was a very rich man—so he did the next best thing, and the thing that all wise, busy men do: he picked a few authors and banked on them.
Girard loved Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. And one reason why he was drawn to them was because they all spoke French, and he had a high regard for the French people. Franklin and Jefferson were each sent on various important diplomatic missions to France. Paine was a member of the French Assembly, and Girard never ceased to regret that Paine was saved from the guillotine by that happy accident of the death-messenger chalking the inside of his cell-door instead of the outside. "If they had only cut off his head, he then would have been recorded in American schoolbooks as the Honorable Thomas Paine, assistant savior of his country, instead of being execrated as Tom Paine, the infidel," said Girard.
In the time of Girard, the names of Franklin, Jefferson and Paine were reviled, renounced and denounced by good society; and it was in defending these men that Girard brought down upon himself the contumely that endures—in attenuation, at least—even unto this day.
Let these facts stand: Franklin taught Girard the philosophy of business and fixed in his mind the philanthropic bias.
Jefferson taught Girard the excellence of the "demos," and at the same time gave him an unforgetable glimpse of Greek architecture.
Paine taught Girard the iniquity and folly of a dogmatic religion: the religion that was so sure it was right, and so certain that all others were wrong, that it would, if it could, force humanity at point of the sword to accept its standards.
Franklin and Paine were citizens of Philadelphia, and Jefferson spent many months there. The pavements that had echoed to their tread were daily pressed by the feet of Girard. Their thoughts were his. And when pestilence settled on the city like a shadow, and death had marked the doorposts of more than half the homes in the city with the sign of silence, Girard did not absolve himself by drawing a check and sending it to a committee by mail. Not he! He asked himself, "What would Franklin have done under these conditions?" And he answered the question by going to the pesthouse, doing for the stricken, the dying and the dead what the pitying Christ would have done had He been on earth.
Girard believed in humanity; he believed in men as did Franklin, Jefferson and Paine, and as did that other great citizen of Philadelphia who, too, was willing to give his life in the hospitals that men might live—Walt Whitman.
No one ever called Walt Whitman a financier. Some have said that Stephen Girard was nothing else. In any event, Girard and Whitman, between them, hold averages true. And they both believed in and loved humanity. And here is a fact: when we make up the composite man—the perfect man—taking our human material from American history, we can not omit from our formula Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Stephen Girard and Walt Whitman.