If you haven’t followed the money, you don’t know the real story of America’s Revolution. Nothing reveals it more clearly than the life of Thomas Willing – early America’s dominant merchant, first bank president and first central banker. Richard Vague shows how Willing bankrolled and helped save the Revolution before shaping the financial architecture of the new Republic. He was so influential that John Adams claimed Washington and Hamilton were governed by him. Yet Willing voted against independence, reflecting deep class conflict in 1776. Tension has shaped U.S politics since.