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Haym Salomon · Anonymous America

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  Speaker 1: I'm Jerry Broadway and This is Anonymous America where we
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  dig a little deeper into American history to find the
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  unsung heroes behind our country story. And in this episode,
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  if Alexander Hamilton was America's financial architect, Hame Salomon was
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  the guy who kept the lights on long enough for
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  Hamilton to have something to build from. Haydad Productions, This
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  is Anonymous America. Hame Salomon was born in seventeen forty
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  in what is now known as Poland. He spoke multiple
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  languages and he had experience in international finance before he
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  moved to New York in seventeen seventy five. Now, of course,
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  the following year the colonies would declare their independence, which,
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  as we all know, did not sit well with the
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  King of England. Seventeen seventy six was also the year
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  that the British Army occupied New York City, basically turning
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  it into a military base for the next seven years.
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  And once they had settled in, they sent for Hame
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  Salomon because the British command had learned that one of
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  the languages ham spoke was German, and so he was
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  volume told that effective immediately, he was going to be
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  an interpreter for the Hessian mercenaries that were serving under
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  the British. Ham agreed, but he had other plans. Instead
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  of just translating orders from the army, Ham encouraged the
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  mercenaries to desert and convinced them to help a large
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  number of patriot prisoners escape on their way out of town.
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  Now the British discovered what he was up to, and,
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  needless to say, they weren't happy, so he was arrested
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  and thrown in prison for eighteen months, at which point
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  he received a pardon from the King on the condition
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  that he continued working as an interpreter between the British
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  and the Hessians. Look nobody ever said the king was
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  a genius. In seventeen seventy eight, Ham got caught doing
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  the exact same thing again and was arrested. This time,
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  he was charged with espionage and sentenced to death by hanging. Now,
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  the details of what happened next are a little fuzzy.
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  They've been lost to history because records from that time
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  aren't exactly pristine. But here's what we do know. Hame
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  escaped custody before the sentence could be carried out, presumably
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  with the help from a group called the Sons of Liberty,
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  which he had been a member of for many, many years,
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  a little fact that the British overlooked during the vetting
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  of spy candidates process. Hame and his family left New
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  York City and they moved to Philadelphia. Now they were
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  essentially penniless when they got there because the British had
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  seized all of his property and all of his assets.
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  But since Philly was the financial hum of the revolution,
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  Hame set up shop as a broker, specializing in international
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  finance and government securities. His knowledge in those fields allowed
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  him to become one of the most successful wealthiest people
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  in the country, which worked out great for the country
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  because at the time the revolution was not going well.
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  The Continental Congress had a recurring problem in those days.
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  They broke, not budget deficit, broke, not government shuntdown. Broke.
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  I'm not sure we can feed the army next week. Broke.
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  Congress was printing money so fast it became nearly worthless.
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  Soldiers weren't getting paid, Morale was coming apart at the seams.
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  The revolution was in danger of running out of cash
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  before it ran out of courage, and that's when Hame
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  Salomon stepped up. One of the wildest facts about Ham
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  is that the people at the time trusted him more
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  than they trusted the US government. In seventeen eighty one,
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  Ham began to sell government bonds by backing them with
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  his own reputation and credit because investors believed that Ham
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  would make good on obligations more than they believed the
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  young American government would, and through the sale of those bonds,
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  an enormous amount of money was raised for the cause. Now,
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  we all know that it was in seventeen eighty one
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  that the Battle of Yorktown was fought. But here's the
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  part that gets overlooked about that very decisive battle of
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  the war. George Washington needed money to move and supply
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  his troops for the Yorktown campaign, and Congress didn't have it.
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  Robert Morris, who was America Superintendent of Finance at the time,
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  didn't have it. So Robert Morris turned to his personal broker,
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  a guy named Hame Salomon. Hame loaned the government twenty
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  thousand dollars for the campaign. In today's dollars, that would
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  be about seven hundred thousand, and Washington used Ham's money
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  to end the war, but Ham didn't just loan money
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  to the government. He loans money directly to key leaders.
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  Future President James Madison was among those who received financial
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  assistance from Ham. Several members of Congress relied on him
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  because they couldn't even afford their living expenses while serving
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  the new nation, and between fundraising efforts and personal loans,
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  Hame helped direct or provide enormous sums for the Patriot cause.
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  But when he died in Philadelphia in seventeen eighty five
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  at the age of forty four, many of those loans
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  had never been repaid. Hame's family spent years unsuccessfully seeking
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  reimbursement from Congress. The man who helped fund America's birth
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  never got to see America pick up its tab as
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  the government kicked off a habit of being in debt
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  that continues to this day. And while Hame Salomon has
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  gone mostly unnoticed in history books, a US postage stamp
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  honored him back in nineteen seventy five as a financial hero.
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  And if you look hard enough in the city of Chicago,
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  you'll find a monument featuring George Washington, Robert Morris, and
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  Haym Salomon standing together, But a stamp and a statue
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  just doesn't feel like enough recognition for the guy who
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  pretty much single handedly saved the revolution. And that's why
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  we're honoring him here. Because when Americans talk about the
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  heroes of the Revolution, we remember the soldiers who fought,
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  the statesman who debated, and the generals who led. But
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  sometimes the fate of a nation can come down to
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  a guy with a ledger book, a good reputation, and
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  enough courage to bet his entire fortune on an idea
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  called America. That guy was same Salomon in That's Anonymous America.