The men who waged the Revolutionary War and established the United States were wealthy men who became quite powerful, but they were still men like so many others, with human emotions and sometime irrational responses. And because of who they were, these irrational responses were recorded for history. Take that time Thomas Jefferson had a moose shipped to Paris. When Jefferson was minister to France, he heard that the French believed bad air in America led to stunted growth. He decided to show them the biggest thing he could think of that was native to America.
Over the next year, Jefferson kept badgering his colleagues back in America to stop doing all that unimportant statecraft and bag him a moose. Eventually they put the governor of New Hampshire on the case, and he sent out hunters to shoot the biggest moose bull they could find. Which they did. 20 miles from the road. In the middle of winter. But if Thomas Jefferson needed a moose, by god would he get one. The hunters dragged the beast through towering snow for 14 days to deliver it to civilization, had it spruced up a bit by a taxidermist, and shipped it off for a year-long-voyage to Europe.
Naturally, by the time the moose arrived in Paris, it was a putrid, stinking mess with no antlers -- though the governor had included spare parts from other animals, in case Jefferson wanted to "mix and match as he saw fit."
Read the rest of that story plus four others concerning the weirdness of our Founding Fathers (yes, Ben Franklin is there) at Cracked.