Senator William Bingham

William Bingham (March 8, 1752 – February 7, 1804) was an American statesman, wealthy merchant, land developer, and Federalist politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He represented Pennsylvania as a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1786 to 1788 and later served as a United States senator from Pennsylvania from 1795 to 1801. A prominent member of the Federalist Party, he contributed to the legislative process during one term in the Senate, participating in the democratic governance of the early republic and representing the interests of his Pennsylvania constituents. Bingham was among the wealthiest Americans of his era, with some contemporaries describing him as the richest person in the United States around 1780.

Bingham was born on March 8, 1752, in Philadelphia. He was educated at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania), from which he graduated in 1768. In 1773 he traveled to Europe for the first time, an experience that helped shape his later commercial and political connections. Upon returning to America, he joined the Philadelphia Society and soon became involved in the revolutionary cause through clandestine service abroad.

During the American Revolution, Bingham was sent by the Continental Congress’s Committee of Secret Correspondence to Martinico (modern Martinique), ostensibly as a merchant, in order to establish communications through that French colony with Silas Deane, the committee’s agent in France. He departed America aboard the frigate Reprisal on July 3, 1776. While in the Caribbean and on subsequent voyages, he cultivated relationships with French merchants, engaged in joint ownership of privateers, captured several British ships, and arranged for shipments of munitions, guns, and other vital supplies to the United States. He returned to America in 1777 with several cargoes of war materiel that were crucial to the revolutionary effort. Through these ventures in privateering and trade, he accumulated a substantial fortune and, toward the end of the Revolution, was widely regarded as the richest man in the United States.

In the 1780s Bingham expanded his activities into finance, land development, and civic affairs. During the provisional government of the United States at Philadelphia, he drafted the by-laws for the Bank of North America, the nation’s first de facto national bank. He viewed the national debt as a constructive instrument that could attract capital and bind investors to the success of the federal government. During George Washington’s first administration, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton is reported to have sought Bingham’s counsel in matters of taxation, tariffs, and the construction of a national banking system. Bingham also maintained extensive shipping ventures through his mercantile house, Bingham, Inglis, and Gilmor. He became a leading member of the Pennsylvania Society for the Encouragement of Manufactures and Useful Arts, donating a Philadelphia property to be converted into a textile factory. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1787, reflecting his standing in the intellectual and commercial life of the city.

Bingham played a visible role in the social and military life of postwar Philadelphia. During the 1780s he organized and commanded the Second Troop of Philadelphia Light Horse, a cavalry outfit of about 50 dragoons noted more for its glamorous appearance than for combat service. William Jackson, who served as the troop’s first major, later became Bingham’s land agent. In April 1789 Bingham and his troop escorted President-elect George Washington through Pennsylvania on his journey from Valley Forge to New York City to assume the presidency. He also became a major land developer, purchasing extensive tracts in upstate New York and in Maine. One of his principal New York holdings lay at the confluence of the Chenango and Susquehanna Rivers; his agent, Judge Joshua Whitney Jr., named the settlement Binghamton in his honor. Bingham later acquired roughly two million acres in Maine, a tract that became known as the Bingham Purchase. He was also active as a land surveyor and as a promoter of internal improvements, serving in the Society of Roads and Inland Navigation and working closely with Albert Gallatin of western Pennsylvania. He founded and became the first president of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Company, overseeing construction of the Lancaster Pike, a road and bridge system linking Philadelphia and Lancaster that was among the earliest major turnpikes in the United States.

Bingham’s formal political career advanced in parallel with his commercial and developmental enterprises. He represented Pennsylvania as a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1786 to 1788, participating in the national deliberations under the Articles of Confederation. After the adoption of the federal Constitution, he entered state politics. In 1790 and 1791 he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and in 1791 he served as the first speaker of that body under the new state constitution. He continued to advocate for internal improvements and western development through his work with the Society of Roads and Inland Navigation. Although he ran unsuccessfully in 1792 for Pennsylvania’s at-large seat in the United States House of Representatives, he remained influential in state affairs and was elected to the Pennsylvania State Senate, serving from 1793 through 1794.

In 1795 Bingham was elected to the United States Senate from Pennsylvania, where he served until 1801 as a member of the Federalist Party. His Senate service coincided with a formative period in American national politics, including the administrations of George Washington and John Adams and intense debates over foreign policy and the scope of federal authority. Initially meeting in Philadelphia before the federal government’s move to Washington, D.C., Bingham aligned himself with the Federalist and Nationalist factions that favored a strong central government, commercial development, and closer ties with Great Britain. During the public controversy surrounding the Jay Treaty in 1795, he became a target of political hostility in Philadelphia and was subjected to political violence amid the broader unrest over the treaty. A strong supporter of John Adams, Bingham rose to a position of leadership in the Senate, serving as President pro tempore during the Fourth Congress. On March 4, 1797, at the opening of the Fifth Congress, he administered the oath of office to Vice President Thomas Jefferson. His prominence and wealth drew criticism from Jeffersonian Republicans, who accused him of “extravagance, ostentation and dissipation.” Even after his death, his influence was remembered; in 1813 John Quincy Adams remarked that the presidency, the capital, and the country had effectively been governed by Bingham and his family connections. Within Federalist circles, his estates in and around Philadelphia became important social and political centers, hosting European aristocrats and serving as venues where Federalists often agreed on party positions in private before bringing measures to public debate in Congress, thereby fostering party unity.

Beyond politics, Bingham’s financial and diplomatic reach extended into international affairs. He played a role in facilitating the Louisiana Purchase by helping to broker arrangements with leading European financiers Francis Baring and Henry Hope; their agent, Alexander Baring, later married Bingham’s daughter Anne, further cementing the family’s transatlantic financial ties. His landholdings and investments remained significant long after his death, and the city of Binghamton and Binghamton University’s Bingham Hall commemorate his role in the development of upstate New York. His cultural patronage was also notable. He commissioned the artist Gilbert Stuart to paint the famous Lansdowne portrait, a full-length depiction of President George Washington completed in 1796 and presented to William Petty, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, the former British prime minister who had helped secure a peaceful end to the American Revolutionary War. The commission followed closely upon American approval of the Jay Treaty, symbolizing reconciliation between the United States and Great Britain. Stuart also painted portraits of Bingham, his wife, and their children, reflecting the family’s prominence in early American society.

Bingham married Anne Willing, daughter of Thomas Willing, president of the First Bank of the United States, thereby linking himself to one of Philadelphia’s most influential mercantile and financial families. They had three children who figured prominently in Anglo-American and European social and financial circles. Their eldest daughter, Ann Louisa Bingham (1782–1848), married Alexander Baring, later 1st Baron Ashburton, in 1798; the couple had nine children and were central figures in Anglo-American finance and diplomacy. Their second daughter, Maria Matilda Bingham (1783–1849), was briefly married at age fifteen to the French aristocrat Jacques Alexandre, Comte de Tilly, and later married Henry Baring, Alexander Baring’s brother, with whom she had five children; they divorced in 1824, and in 1826 she married the Marquis de Blaisel. Their son, William Bingham (1800–1852), married Marie-Charlotte Chartier de Lotbinière, Seigneuresse de Rigaud, in 1822; they lived in Montreal, Paris, and London and had six children. Although Anne Willing Bingham and the couple’s two daughters were central figures in the social life surrounding American politics, Anne died when their only son was about one year old. William Bingham left his son to be raised in America by his grandfather Thomas Willing, while Bingham himself increasingly spent time abroad. The Bingham estate remained in the family into the twentieth century, passing to William Alexander Baring Bingham (1858–1915) and not being fully settled until 1964.

In 1801, after completing his Senate term, Bingham left the United States for England when his wife’s health declined, and he did not return to American public life. He died on February 7, 1804, in Bath, England, and was interred in Bath Abbey. His wealth, landholdings, and family alliances ensured that his influence persisted long after his death, both in the United States and in Europe, and his name remains associated with early American finance, internal improvements, and the political culture of the Federalist era.