Soon after the start of the war, it became apparent to George Washington that the American Revolution would end prematurely because of lack of funds. The troops had not been paid and were disinterested in re-enlisting for an empty promise, and the army was running out of armaments and supplies.

The problem was the Continental Congress had no reliable means to raise money.

The war needed a new source of funding and it found it in the most unlikely of places – and persons.

The individual who would help finance the Revolution was born in 1740 to Portuguese Jews who had been driven from the Iberian Peninsula by the Spanish monarch and Catholic Church. Raised in Poland, the young man developed a passion for politics and resisted the attacks against Jewish property and residents in his village, but was forced to flee Holland in the 1760s.

After traveling throughout Europe, he returned to Poland around 1770. But amid political unrest he was again forced to flee, this time to England in 1772, ultimately finding refuge in Britain’s colonies across the Atlantic.

Arriving in New York, he embraced the revolutionary fervor and joined the Sons of Liberty, merchants and traders who apposed British rule and restriction on colonial commerce.. In 1776, he was accused of spying and jailed by German Hessians, contract soldiers working for the Redcoats..

Given his talent for languages, a Hessian General used him as an interpreter. It was in this capacity that he not only convinced his captors to free him but to abandon loyalties to Britain and become Americans.

He was arrested again in 1778 for plotting to set fire to British warehouses and the fleet at New York harbor. But this time, he was sentenced to the infamous prison at Provost, where the death sentence likely awaited. However, quick thinking and a few hidden gold coins helped to bribe prison guards.

After escaping, he moved to Philadelphia to be closer to the cause. It was then that George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin and Robert Morris, the superintendent of finance for the Revolution, came to rely on his services.

Armed with business acumen, a passion for freedom, and a small fortune he amassed as a financier, he proceeded to broker loan after loan worth hunfreds of thousands of dollars for the war.

He sold bonds and managed the details of loans from France and Holland that kept the soldiers fed and armed, and even offered interest-free loans to such Founders as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. In all, he brokered almost $700,000 for the Continental Congress.

Fate was unkind to the Jewish Financier of the Revolution. When the war ended, he contracted tuberculosis and spent his final days petitioning — unsuccessfully — government for repayment for all he had done.

He died in 1785 at the age of 45, leaving behind a pregnant wife and three young children. But not before he helped to found the largest synagogue in Philadelphia.

History has been equally unkind to this hero of the American Revolution: Haym Solomon (also spelled Salomon in the historical record).

Despite the fact that Robert Morris’ own diary contains dozens of entries crediting Solomon with financing the war, Morris gets the credit and Solomon is largely forgotten.  

In 1941, a statue of Washington, Morris, and Solomon was erected in Chicago in honor of "American tolerance and unity" and in 1980, an engraved marker was placed in memory of Solomon in the cemetery of Congregation Mikvah Israel in Philadelphia, the synagogue he founded.

It reads simply: "An American Patriot."

Indeed, America is strongest when individuals of all persuasions are both involved in the democratic experiment and recognized for their contributions.

Solomon was himself a revolutionary and the epitome of the American story.

***Robert Watson, Ph.D. runs the American Studies Program at Lynn University