Haym Salomon

Haym Salomon was a Polish-born Jew who reached New York, was arrested by the British as a suspected rebel, and later made Philadelphia the place he did the most damage to the Crown — with bills of exchange. He worked with Robert Morris. He discounted paper, raised specie, and kept the government's credit from collapsing on weeks when Congress had more resolutions than coin.

He was not a general. He was the man who could find money when a payroll or a French bill came due. Later patriotic art would put him in scenes that the documents do not always support. The documents do support a broker who lent to the cause and to individual delegates, and who died before the new government settled its accounts with him.

He died in Philadelphia on January 6, 1785, about forty-four, leaving debt and a young family. The United States was slow to remember the debt. It was not slow to spend what he had helped raise.

A country that talks about sacrifice should be able to say the word “broker” without embarrassment. Salomon's war was liquidity, and he spent himself on it.