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He was an astute merchant and banker and succeeded in accumulating a huge fortune, which he subsequently devoted to the use of the American Government during the American Revolution. For example, he negotiated all the war aid from France and Holland, endorsing and selling bills to American merchants.
He was the paymaster-general of the French military forces in the early times of the United States. It is asserted that over $100,000 he advanced was never repaid. He lent the young United Sates government about $600,000, and at his death about $400,000 of this amount had not been repaid. This was irrespective of what he had lent to statesman and others while performing public duties and trusts.
He was a brilliant financier and one of George Washington's personal friends. At one point he was sentenced to death by the British, but he bribed his jailer and escaped. During the American Revolution, Solomon went to France and raised an additional 3.5 million British pounds from the Sassoon and Rothschild banking houses and families. He spoke eight languages. When Solomon was in France he passed himself off as a French diplomat.
Solomon supposedly wrote the first draft of the United States ConstitutionLaw for the United States of America The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America and is the oldest written national constitution still in force. It was completed on September 17, 1787, with its adoption by the according to some historians. Some claim that he designed The Great Seal of the United States , which is why it has a Jewish Star above the eagle's head design, and it is also on the back of every American one dollar bill. He believed the United States would become a world power. At war's end, many in the Continental CongressThe Continental Congress was the federal legislature of the Thirteen Colonies and later of the United States from 1774 to 1789, a period that included the American Revolutionary War and the Articles of Confederation. There were two Continental Congresses. were desperately poor and ironically Solomon too died completely bankrupt.
He was involved in Jewish community affairs, being a member of Mikveh Israel Congregation in Philadelphia, and in 1782 made the largest individual contribution towards the construction of its main building. In 1783 Haym Solomon and other prominent Jews appealed to the Pennsylvania Council of Censors urging them to remove the religious test oath required for office-holding under the State Constitution. In 1784, he answered Anti-Semitic slander in the press by stating: "I am a Jew; it is my own nation; I do not despair that we shall obtain every other privilege that we aspire to enjoy along with our fellow-citizens."