Haym Salomon was sentenced to death as a British spy, escaped, and then poured his fortune into keeping the American Revolution afloat, only to die penniless at 44. This episode traces how a Polish-born Sephardic Jew who spoke Ladino, Hebrew, German and French built the skills to become a key financial engine of American independence, working alongside Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris.

We cover his time with the Sons of Liberty, his forced work as a translator for Hessian troops and how he encouraged them to desert, and the mechanics of bills of exchange that he turned into hard cash for a broke government. We also look at the moment Washington needed $20,000 to march to Yorktown, his loans to James Madison and others, his fight against Pennsylvania’s religious test oath, and the myth about the dollar bill.

• How Salomon used his language skills to undermine the British from inside a prison ship
• Why bills of exchange were nearly useless locally until Salomon guaranteed them
• The four-word reply, send for Haym Salomon, and the money behind the Yorktown march
• His public response to antisemitic slander: I am a Jew, it is my own nation
• Why his unmarked grave and worthless Continental debt left his family penniless