In the summer of 1795, a Scottish-born American merchant named James Swan did something extraordinary: he personally paid off the entire US debt $2,024,899 owed to France from the Revolutionary War.

Let’s set the stage.

When the war ended in 1783, America’s total debt reached $75 million, with France being the largest foreign creditor. The young nation lacked the tax authority to pay its bills and had stopped making payments to France in 1785, defaulting entirely three years later. For a country trying to establish credibility on the world stage, this was more than embarrassing: it was existentially threatening.

Swan’s scheme was noble and financially beneficial. He paid France the full amount in cash, and in return, the U.S. government issued him brand new Treasury bonds worth $2 million at attractive interest rates of 4.5-5.5%. He then broke these bonds into smaller shares and sold them to private investors, primarily in Britain.

The irony is delicious: British investors, whose nation had just lost the Revolutionary War, ended up funding America’s debt settlement to France, the very ally who had helped America win independence from Britain. Many British investors either didn’t know or didn’t care that their money was indirectly helping their geopolitical rival.

Despite Swan’s undertaking of personal risk and payout with recouping his investment will a profit and giving his young nation breathing room by not demanding immediate repayment, Swan’s story ends tragically.

In 1808, while visiting France, he was accused of failing to pay a small debt to a business partner. Insisting he didn’t owe the money, Swan refused to pay on principle—even though he could easily afford it and friends like Lafayette offered to cover it. He spent 22 years in a Paris debtors’ prison, where his wife sent him money to maintain a surprisingly luxurious lifestyle, even throwing parties from his prison apartment. He was finally released in 1830 when revolutionary crowds liberated the debtors, and he died shortly thereafter in 1831, having lost his wife, children, businesses, and homes over a point of honor.