OPINION:
Nearly 250 years ago, the Continental Army the ragtag army of the fledgling 13 Colonies won the Revolutionary War against the imposing British forces.
What you might not know is that the American army almost lost.
The Battle of Bunker Hill in Boston in June of 1775, which sustained heavy losses, was won by the British. Two months later, the British won the Battle of Long Island, which allowed them to take control of New York City, making it a strategic base for their operations.
What was worse, General George Washington was out of money. Soldiers had not been paid, and they lacked food and even the weapons and ammo needed to fight. They were deserting.
Washington was desperate. In 1781, he turned to Robert Morris, his secretary of finance and uttered the four words which would alter all of human history: “Send for Haym Salomon.”
Haym Salomon is the forgotten Founding Father who, had he not done what he did, you would be giving allegiance to the King of England.
The backstory
Salomon, born in Poland in 1740, traveled throughout Europe during his 20s, developing a relationship with the banking houses while teaching himself eight languages. At age 32, he arrived in New York City in 1772, took up the cause of the Patriots and immediately became respected as a broker.
The British arrested him and put him in one of the horrific prisons in which more Americans died that were killed in the war. However, once the Redcoats realized Salomon’s linguistic skills, they put him to work communicating with the Hessian solders Germans who had been coerced to come to the New World as mercenaries to fight a war which they neither understood nor desired to be involved.
Speaking in German, which was not understood by his captors, Salomon began convincing the Hessian soldiers to desert. Many did.
While imprisoned, Salomon functioned as part of the “Culper Ring” of spies, which kept General Washington supplied with intel regarding the British.
Angered by this, the British sentenced Salomon to be hung. But before the executioner’s date, Salomon escaped with a bribe to a Hessian prison guard and fled 100 miles south to Philadelphia, temporarily abandoning his wife Rachel and son Ezekiel.
Arriving in Philadelphia penniless, this economic genius and entrepreneur quickly established a brokerage office and acted without salary as the intermediary between European banks and the Continental Army. He subscribed heavily to government loans, endorsing notes for the American cause.
The European banking houses in France, the Netherlands, Spain and elsewhere did not trust the 13 colonies, which had no money, or the new Continental Congress, which had no capacity to tax or ever pay back any loans. However, the bankers knew and trusted Haym Salomon. They loaned to him, and he financed the war for the Patriots.
The 1781 call
When Robert Morris followed Washington’s order to “Send for Haym Salomon,” Morris obeyed and located Salomon at the Mikveh Israel Synagogue celebrating Yom Kippur.
Jews cannot transact business on a shabbat or high holy day, unless it will save a life. However, Salomon raised $20,000 on the spot, a sum worth many millions in today’s dollars. Washington’s troops were paid, fed, armed and went on to win the Battle of Yorktown, which altered the course of the war.
From 1781 to 1785, Salomon transacted major loans for the new American nation at least 75 times. In addition, he provided personally guaranteed no-interest loans for Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and Alexander Hamilton, as well as many lesser known, financially needy supporters of the American cause.
Through Haym Salomon’s personal brokerage and language skills, “a Jew saved America.”
Without his personal funding, the Continental Army would have lost.
It is hard to know the total amount of what he loaned, but it is suggested that given today’s valuation, it might have been as much as $6 billion. Some estimate much higher.
Salomon died in 1785 at age 44 from tuberculosis, contracted while in the squalid British prison in New York in 1776 and 1778.
He also died penniless due to the failure of the new U.S. government to repay him as did his widow Rachel, as did his four children. As a pauper, he was buried in an unmarked grave at his Philadelphia synagogue.
Honored with only a 1944 ship named in his honor and a 1975 postage stamp commemorating him, he has been largely forgotten. Although Los Angeles and Chicago have statues honoring him, there is no such statue in our nation’s capital.
Now is the time to honor him. You can get your own personal 13-inch tall statue of Haym Salomon from www.wellversedworld.org/haym. More importantly, we need a heroic statue recognizing the Jew who funded the American Revolution.
• Jim Garlow, Ph.D., is a historian, pastor, and founder and CEO of Well Versed, (www.WellVersedWorld.org), a ministry to bring biblical principles of governance to government leaders and elected officials worldwide. He has six earned degrees, authored 26 books, including “ReVersed: From Culturally Woke to Biblically Awake,” and done 1,700 interviews. Married to Rosemary, they have eight children, 14 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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