A coffeehouse in Philadelphia fills toward noon. A broker takes his place by the window with a sheaf of paper bills in his hand, and the merchants gather to learn what French and Dutch money will bring that day. The paper in his hand is worth more than the coins in the room.
It is 1782.
By most accounts, he had been born around 1740 in Lissa, a town in Poland, to poor Jewish parents. Historians still debate whether he reached New York in 1772 or 1775. What the record shows is that he arrived with a gift for languages and a head for commerce, and that he took the American side early.
In 1776 the British arrested him in occupied New York on a charge of espionage. His captors, needing a man who spoke German, set him to work among their Hessian troops, and by most accounts he turned the position to American use and helped prisoners escape. A second arrest in 1778 brought a sentence of death. Before it could be carried out, he escaped and made his way to Philadelphia, having lost nearly everything he owned.
There he rebuilt. By February 1781 he was advertising bills of exchange on France, Amsterdam, and the Dutch island of St. Eustatius. When Robert Morris took charge of the new Office of Finance that year, he made this man his broker. Within a year the advertisements named him broker to the Office of Finance, to the Consul General of France, and to the Treasurer of the French Army. Morris held his commission to one half of one percent, a fraction of what other brokers took.
Popular memory would later crown him the man who bankrolled the Revolution from his own purse. The documents are quieter and more honest. In truth he was a broker who sold the government’s bills and moved French and Dutch subsidy money, not a rich man emptying his vaults. Yet the smaller truth carries its own weight. From his own modest stock he lent to James Madison and other members of Congress, often taking no interest and no fee. Madison wrote that his assistance would preserve him from extremities.
To the building of Philadelphia’s first synagogue, Mikveh Israel, he gave the largest single pledge, and later he served on its board. Then, on January 6, 1785, he died at about forty-five of a lingering illness.
His estate looked large on paper and proved nearly worthless, held in government certificates that had lost their value. His debts came to more than his cash. A man who had helped move the money of a revolution was buried in an unmarked grave, insolvent, at the age of forty-five.
His name is Haym Salomon.
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