Known as the "Financier of the Revolution," Robert Morris played a critical role in winning and securing American independence. As chairman of the Continental Congress's Finance Committee between 1775 and 1778, Morris traded flour and tobacco to France in exchange for war supplies such as guns, powder, and blankets. Morris risked his own ships in bringing these supplies past the fearsome British Navy. He was also the architect of the financial system of the early republic. As superintendent of finance under the Articles of Confederation, Morris almost single-handedly saved the United States from financial catastrophe in the 1780s. His plan to fund the national debt and to deposit federal money in a private bank foreshadowed the financial system that Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton would implement in the 1790s.